Suhanya Raffel to take over at M+ in Hong Kong

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Suhanya Raffel named Executive Director of M+ | The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority has confirmed that Suhanya Raffel is to take over as executive director of Hong Kong’s M+ museum of visual culture. Raffel, who is currently deputy director and director of collections at Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales, has previously held positions at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. Raffel succeeds Lars Nittve, who will continue to work with the museum in an advisory role. There have been a number of delays to the construction of M+, but the museum has built up a large collection; when she takes up the role in November, Raffel’s task will be to guide the museum to its planned opening in 2019.

First World War-era submarine wrecks given protected status | The wrecks of two submarines sunk off the English coast more than 100 years ago have been granted protected status. The British submarine A-3 sunk off Dorset after an accident in 1912, while the German U-8 was destroyed in action in the Dover Strait in 1915. The latter has received its protected status as part of a Historic England project to investigate the 11 known First World War submarine losses located in English territorial waters.

Gurlitt: collector allegedly held more than 90 works ‘likely to have been looted’ | After an evaluation of the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt, the German Lost Art Foundation now believes that 91 items are likely to have been looted from Jewish owners between 1933 and 1945. According to the Associated Press, the GLAF says it has so far evaluated 502 of more than 1,400 works once owned by Gurlitt.

Unlucky recipient of Van Gogh’s ear identified | The Art Newspaper has identified the young woman to whom Van Gogh presented his severed ear as Gabrielle Berlatier, a farmer’s daughter. Following detailed research in a recently published book by author Bernadette Murphy, TAN tracked down the woman’s identity in the records of the Institut Pasteur, where she was treated for an infection in 1888. Though the woman in question was referred to in Murphy’s Van Gogh’s Ear: The True Story, she was not named.