The art patron, collector and philanthropist Agnes Gund has died at the age of 87, the New York Times reported on Friday. Gund was born in a suburb of Cleveland in 1938 and inherited her fortune from her father, who was president of what was then the largest bank in Ohio. She is best known for the transformative effect she had on MoMA: she joined the museum’s international council in 1967 and its board in 1976, and supported major projects, including its expansion in 2004 as well as the launch of MoMA PS1. She served as president of MoMA from 1991–2002 and, at the time of her death, was president emerita and a life trustee. Gund was also a trustee at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Morgan Library and Museum. She was known to be a considered patron of the arts who sought to bring then-marginalised artists into museums, as well as being a generous philanthropist: in 2017, for instance, she sold a Roy Lichtenstein work for $165m (including fees), of which $100m went to the Art for Justice Fund, an initiative she founded to fight mass incarceration in the United States. The following year, the New York Times ran a profile of her with the headline ‘Is Agnes Gund the last good rich person?’.
Thieves have stolen more than €600,000 worth of gold from France’s museum of natural history in Paris. The break-in occurred on the evening on 15 September, with the intruders reportedly using a blowtorch and angle grinder to force their way into the museum’s geology and mineralogy gallery. A museum spokesperson told AFP that while the stolen gold objects are ‘valued at around €600,000 based on the price of raw gold, they nevertheless carry an immeasurable heritage value’. The robbery follows recent thefts from other French institutions: earlier this month, porcelain wares were taken from the Musée national Adrien Dubouché in Limoges; in November 2024, four men stole several 18th-century artefacts from the Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris in broad daylight. The director of the natural history museum, Emmanuel Skoulios, said that the heist was carried out by an ‘extremely professional team, perfectly aware of where they needed to go, and with professional equipment’. The mineralogy gallery is closed while the museum checks for additional losses.
Israeli airstrikes damaged the National Museum of Yemen, located in the country’s capital, Sanaa, on 10 September. More than 45 people were killed. Images released by the Associated Press showed damage to the museum facade and courtyard; Amida Sholan, an archaeologist and professor at Sanaa University, told the Art Newspaper that the destruction extends ‘to the museum’s main hall, where a number of artefacts and photographs are on display, as well as to the museum’s doors, windows and storage rooms’. The Houthi government’s ministry of culture has since called on UNESCO to condemn the airstrike and help ensure the preservation of the country’s cultural property. A spokesperson for the organisation said that because UNESCO suspended its activities in Houthi-controlled areas when four of its staff were detained by the authorities, it has ‘not yet been able to verify the damages to cultural heritage’.
The Trump administration has ordered a national park to remove a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man, the Washington Post reports. The photo, taken in 1863, is of a man believed to have been named Peter Gordon, and shows scars on his back caused by whippings. In response to the Post’s article, the US Interior Department told the Hill that this was false and that ‘NPS [National Park Service] sites were not asked to remove the photo’. The Post also reports that other exhibits and signs across US parks have been flagged for removal. Sources told the newspaper that these moves were in line with an executive order issued by the White House in March, which criticised the former administration’s ‘corrosive ideology’ that the United States is ‘inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed’.
A man has been killed in Washington, D.C. while unloading a car that had been painted by Andy Warhol. WJLA, a local ABC affiliate, said that the man became trapped under the vehicle after a winch gave way. He was pronounced dead at the scene and his identity has not yet been released. The car, which Warhol hand-painted in 1979 as part of BMW’s Art Car programme, was to be displayed as part of ‘Cars at the Capital’, a pop-up exhibition taking place in temporary pavilions on the National Mall. The exhibition has been cancelled.
L.A. Louver will close its physical location in Venice, Los Angeles and transition to a new model that focuses on ‘private dealing, artist support, consulting, and projects’, the gallery announced on 16 September. Its closure follows the shuttering of two other prominent LA galleries, Blum and Clearing, earlier this year. Established by Peter and Elizabeth Goulds in 1975, L.A. Louver is one of Los Angeles’s longest-running galleries. In the last 50 years it has mounted some 660 exhibitions, working with artists including David Hockney and Leon Kossoff. The gallery’s entire archive and library will be donated to the Huntington Library, a gift that Goulds says will ‘aid in telling our and Los Angeles’ story for generations to come’.