The board of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., has voted to reinscribe Donald Trump’s name on the building’s facade – but in a different way to how it previously appeared, the New York Times reports. The building officially changed its name to the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in December; Trump’s name was removed in June, after US district judge Christopher Cooper ruled that only Congress could have the Center’s name changed. Now the board is proceeding with its plan to shutter the main building for a two-year renovation – which Cooper also blocked – and is planning to add an inscription that will reportedly read: ‘Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.’ Joyce Beatty, a Democratic representative from Ohio who sits on the museum’s board, said that the development is ‘a transparent effort to circumvent the Court’s ruling’. Cooper will review the proposals to close the museum and add the new inscription in the coming weeks.
Italian police have recovered three paintings by Cézanne, Renoir and Matisse that were stolen from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation near Parma in March, Reuters reports. Renoir’s Les Poissons (1917), Cézanne’s watercolour Still Life with Cherries (1890) and Matisse’s Odalisque on the Terrace (1922) were stolen in less than three minutes on the night of 22 March. They are estimated to have a combined value of more than €9m. The authorities are still investigating the theft. In similar news, Brazilian police have recovered eight prints from Matisse’s Jazz series (1947), the BBC reports. Armed robbers stole the works from the Biblioteca Mário de Andrade in São Paulo in December; authorities found the works in an apartment in São Bernardo do Campo in the south of the city. Five engravings by the Brazilian artist Candido Portinari also stolen in the heist have yet to be found.
The San Diego Museum of Art has laid off 11 employees, Hyperallergic reports. The affected departments include exhibitions, programmes and operations. Kari Kovach, chief operating officer at the museum, cited budget cuts, rising costs and falling federal grants. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the museum was awarded $350,000 in funding by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2024 but received only $250,000 after the grant was cancelled in 2025. That year the museum also received a federal grant of $25,000. In 2023 the museum absorbed the Museum of Photographic Arts and is currently raising funds to expand its west wing to double its exhibition space, in a project designer by Foster + Partners.
Elvira Dyangani Ose will be the new director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town. The appointment comes more than a year after the previous director, Koyo Kouoh, died from cancer in May 2025. Dyangani Ose is currently artistic director of the 2026–27 edition of the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial; before that, she was director of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. David Green, co-founder and co-chair of Zeitz MOCAA, said that Dyangani Ose’s appointment reflects ‘who we are as an institution – one rooted in Africa, while connected to the world’. She begins the role on 1 October.
Martin Clark will be the new CEO and director of Towner Eastbourne. He will take up the new role in January 2027 after ten years as director of Camden Art Centre in London. From 2013–17 Clark was director of the Bergen Kunsthall, during which time Apollo named him one of its 40 Under 40. Before that he spent six years as artistic director of Tate St Ives. In a statement shared with Apollo, Stephen Welton, chair of Towner’s board of trustees, said that with his ‘distinguished career in leading visual arts organisations in the UK and abroad’, Clark will bring ‘creativity, expertise and dynamism to the next stage of Towner’s evolution’.
