Decline in numbers taking GCSE art and design courses

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Decline in numbers taking GCSE art and design courses | The latest GCSE results from England and Wales show that the number of students taking art and design subjects has fallen again, reports Dezeen. In 2017, 175,792 students took art and design courses – a 4 per cent drop on the previous year. The decrease reflects a trend in recent years. ‘We are alarmed about the impact of continuing drops in the numbers of arts GCSEs being studied on children’s education,’ said Samantha Cairns of the Cultural Learning Alliance. ‘This year’s arts GCSE entries showed the greatest falls for over a decade.’

New appointments at MoMA | New York’s Museum of Modern Art has filled two key roles. Rob Baker, formerly of the Tate, will take over as director of marketing and creative strategy, while Leah Dickerman, a curator in the museum’s painting and sculpture department, will become the museum’s director of editorial and content strategy. Both will take up their new positions in October.

President of Pennsylvania College of Art & Design to retire | Mary Colleen Heil is to retire from the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design after 25 years as president, reports Lancaster Online. Under her direction, the college has expanded significantly, from 30,000 sq ft to more than 100,000. Heil will step down in June 2018.

Recommended reading | The Art Newspaper carries a report on a ‘bizarre’ forgery scam aimed at first-time buyers. Several individuals submitted works supposedly painted by Jackson Pollock for authentication, all of which had their provenance in the collection of a mysterious ‘mad recluse’. In the New York Times, Holland Cotter enjoys the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art’s ‘Found: Queer Archaeology; Queer Abstraction’, while the Village Voice’s Dan Callahan argues that a new play based on the letters of Vincent Van Gogh ‘prettifies’ mental illness.