Knight Foundation to invest $20m in Detroit arts organisations

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Knight Foundation to invest $20m in Detroit arts organisations | The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation yesterday announced plans to invest $20m in arts organisations in Detroit between now and 2023. Of this total, $8m will go directly to institutions – including the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD – to fund programming, and $6m to the continuation of the Knight Arts Challenge, an open call matched-funding initiative. The Miami-based Knight Foundation has long been committed to the city in Michigan, having invested more than $170m since 1960.

Restitution committee says Stedelijk can keep Kandinsky | The Restitutions Committee in the Netherlands has today issued a binding opinion stating that the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is not required to restitute the painting Bild mit Häusern (1909) by Wassily Kandinsky. A request for the committee to research the claim was submitted in late 2013 by the heirs of its former owners, who were Jewish: Irma Klein and Robert Lewenstein. The work was sold at auction in 1940 but the committee could not find proof of the Nazi regime’s involvement, or that the museum acquired the painting in bad faith. 

Kimerly Rorschach to retire as director of Seattle Art Museum | The Seattle Art Museum has announced that its director Kimerly Rorschach is to retire from her position in autumn 2019, directly following the opening of the newly renovated Seattle Asian Art Museum. Rorschach has served in her role since 2012, overseeing the $54m transformation project; prior to that she was the founding director of Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art.