Judy Blame (1960–2018)

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Judy Blame (1960–2018) | British art director, designer and stylist Judy Blame died today at the age of 58. In 2016 Blame was the subject of a solo exhibition at the ICA in London, charting the punk figure’s varied output, from DIY jewellery made from found objects in the early 1980s to high-profile fashion editorials with photographers such as Mark Lebon, Jean Baptiste Mondino and Juergen Teller. Among the public figures responding to news of Blames death was musician Boy George, who tweeted this morning: ‘R.I.P to my friend Judy Blame who was beautiful, talented and arch as hell.’

Peter Gorschlüter appointed director of Museum Folkwang | Peter Gorschlüter will take the place of Tobia Bezzola (now director of Lugano’s Il Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana) as director of Museum Folkwang in Essen, it was recently announced (German-language article). The appointment was approved unanimously by the museum’s board of trustees. Gorschlüter, who has been director of Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst since 2010, is set to start his eight-year term at the Museum Folkwang on 1 July.

Chinese authorities voice anger over stolen fragment of ancient sculpture | An American man was last week charged with the theft and subsequent concealment of a fragment of an ancient Chinese terracotta warrior sculpture at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Michael Rohana from Delaware is alleged to have broken off the figure’s thumb while attending a party held at the institute in December. The 2,000-year-old work, valued at $4.5 million, is currently on loan to the museum from the government-run Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Centre in China. Chinese authorities have since ‘strongly condemned’ the US museum for being ‘careless’ with the loaned objects, and ‘ask that the US severely punish the perpetrator’, according to state media reports.

Peggy Cooper Cafritz (1947–2018) | American art collector, patron and civil rights activist Peggy Cooper Cafritz died on Sunday at the age of 70. Cafritz was a co-founder of the Duke Ellington School of Arts in Washington and chairman emeritus of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. For more on Cafritz’s life and career, see the Washington Post’s obituary here.