On Thursday, the governments of Thailand and Cambodia accused each other of instigating clashes in the disputed border region. Cambodia said Thai soldiers ordered the closure of an ancient Khmer-Hindu temple and fired on Cambodian troops, while Thailand says that Cambodia was surveilling Thai troops near the border with drones. The Khmer Times, a Cambodian publication, reports that Thailand has bombed Preah Vihear Temple, an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Cambodian ministry of culture, reports the New York Times, said that ‘The destruction of Preah Vihear Temple is both a cultural disaster and a moral tragedy.’ At time of writing on 26 July, 13 people have been killed and tens of thousands of people have fled the region.
Amy Sherald has cancelled her upcoming exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, citing concerns about censorship. ‘Amy Sherald: American Sublime’, currently at the Whitney Museum of American Art, was due to travel to Washington, D.C. in September. However, discussions about the painting Trans Forming Liberty (2024), which depicts a Black transgender Statue of Liberty, led Sherald to cancel the final leg of the show’s tour. Sherald says that the Smithsonian suggested replacing the work with a video about visitor reactions to the portrait and transgender issues, a charge the institution denies. ‘I cannot in good conscience comply with a culture of censorship, especially when it targets vulnerable communities’, Sherald said, adding that ‘at a time when transgender people are being legislated against, silenced, and endangered across our nation, silence is not an option.’ Read Emily Raboteau’s review of the show in the July/Aug issue of Apollo.
The United States announced on 22 July that it will leave UNESCO. This is the second time it has withdrawn from the UN cultural agency under a Trump presidency – it previously did so in 2017 – and the third time since 1984, during the Reagan administration. A US State Department spokesman said that ‘Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the national interest of the United States’, and accused the organisation of working ‘to advance divisive social and cultural causes’ and of anti-Israel bias. Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, expressed her regret at the decision, but added that ‘this announcement was anticipated, and UNESCO has prepared for it ’. The United States currently provides 8 per cent of the organisation’s funding, compared to 40 per cent for some UN bodies. The US withdrawal will take effect from December 2026. Read William Carruthers on the US decision to rejoin UNESCO in 2023.
The French minister for culture, Rachida Dati, will stand trial on charges of ‘passive corruption and influence peddling by a person holding elective public office within an international organization’, Politico reports. Dati was first charged by French magistrates in 2019 over allegations that she lobbied for the car-maker Renault-Nissan between 2010 and 2012, when she was a member of the European parliament, and accepted €900,000 from a Renault-subsidiary for ‘consultancy work’. The fugitive former CEO of Renault-Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, is also headed to trial. Dati, who plans to run in the Paris mayoral election in 2026, denies all allegations of misconduct. A trial date will be set at a hearing in Paris on 29 September.
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York will be free to low-income residents of the city, the Art Newspaper reports. The ‘Discoverer’ programme also allows those receiving food stamps – some 1.8m New Yorkers – to bring up to four guests with them to the museum on an annual, renewable membership. The AMNH’s president, Sean M. Decatur, said that the scheme ‘embodies our belief that the museum, and science, belong to everyone and everyone belongs at the museum.’
In recent museum appointments, the respected art historian and author You Hong-jun is the new director-general of the National Museum of Korea and its 13 affiliate institutions. In the United States, Johanna Burton will be the next director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. She is currently director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and will take up her new post on 1 November. Also, on the East Coast, Julia Day has been appointed chief conservator of the Frick Collection, while Jennifer Saunders will become the new director of the New York State Museum, the largest and oldest museum of its kind.
