New director for Berlin’s Humboldt Forum

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

New director and head of collections for Berlin’s Humboldt Forum | The Art Newspaper reports that Hartmut Dorgerloh, currently head of the Prussian Palaces and Garden Foundations, is to be nominated as the next director of the Humboldt Forum – the new museum of ethnography set to open in the Berlin’s reconstructed royal palace at the end of 2019. Germany’s culture minister Monika Grütters will submit Dorgerloh’s name to the institution’s board for approval before he can officially replace its three founding co-directors, Horst Bredekamp, Hermann Parzinger and Neil MacGregor. The appointment of the ethnomusicologist Lars-Christian Kochof as the museum’s director of collections was confirmed this week.

Rio de Janeiro’s Modern Art Museum plans to sell Pollock | Rio de Janeiro’s Modern Art Museum is planning to sell a key work from its collection in order to help the institution ‘stay afloat’, Agence France-Press reports. The painting, Jackson Pollock’s No. 16 (1950), was donated to the museum by Nelson Rockefeller in 1954; its estimated value is $25 million. The Brazilian culture ministry has publicly supported the planned sale, the proceeds from which will be channelled into a new fund to keep the private, non-profit museum in operation for the next 30 years. The Brazilian Museum Institute has announced its opposition to the sale.

Hauser & Wirth announces representation of Amy Sherald | Amy Sherald, the artist who painted the recently unveiled official portrait of Michelle Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., is now represented exclusively by Hauser & Wirth. The Baltimore-born artist was previously represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago.