Peggy Guggenheim Collection appoints new director

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Karole P. B. Vail appointed director of Peggy Guggenheim Collection | Karole P. B. Vail has been appointed the new director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and foundation director for Italy, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced today. Vail, a granddaughter of Peggy Guggenheim, has been a member of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s curatorial team for 20 years. Vail’s appointment makes her the second director in the collection’s history, following Philip Rylands, whose departure after 37 years was announced in December last year.

2018 Jerwood/FVU Awards winners announced | Artists Maeve Brennan and Imran Perretta have been announced as the recipients of the latest Jerwood/FVU Awards, each winning £20,000 for the development of a new moving image work to be premiered in 2018. The awards, now in their fifth edition, are conferred annually to two moving-image artists in the first five years of their practice, who submit their proposals via an open application programme in response to a curatorial theme. The theme of the 2018 edition is Unintended Consequences. For our review of Maeve Brennan’s recent exhibition at Chisenhale gallery, London, click here.

European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture is launched | A centre for the art and culture of Europe’s Roma community was launched today at Germany’s foreign ministry in Berlin. The European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) has been officially established after decades of lobbying by artists and writers, writes the Art Newspaper. While the institute’s new building is not due to open until September this year, the launch was marked by a special exhibition of contemporary Roma artists from across Europe.

Mayfair dealer accused of grand larceny loses extradition battle | Timothy Sammons, a Mayfair art dealer and former specialist at Sotheby’s, has lost his battle against extradition to the US over charges of fraud and grand larceny (The Times, £). Sammons is alleged to have stolen around $10 million from his clients through the unreimbursed sale of works by artists including Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Henry Moore.

Recommended reading | Today’s general elections in the UK have provided plenty of fodder for artists and journalists alike. Writing for the Art Newspaper, Martin Bailey takes a close look at the Labour and Conservative parties’ manifesto promises for arts and culture, asking whether the ‘new cultural development fund’ proposed by the Conservatives might provide the government with ‘a reason for reducing grants and lottery proceeds for the arts’. Benjamin Ramm for Frieze, meanwhile, combs the manifestos of a range of political parties, finding that ‘the words “art” and “culture” do not appear at all’ in the cases of the Green party, Scotland’s SNP and Plaid Cymru in Wales. At Artnet, however, the focus is on the contributions of artists rather than politicians, in an entertaining overview of the posters, performances and Instagram feeds that have weighed in throughout the election campaigns.