Towner Art Gallery faces major funding cut

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Towner Art Gallery faces major funding cut | Eastbourne borough council yesterday agreed to cut the funding of the Towner Art Gallery by £200,000, reports the Art Newspaper. Further reductions leading to a total cut of 50 per cent are planned in subsequent years. The borough’s council leader David Tutt states that the decision was inevitable given the significant decrease in the UK government’s annual grant to Eastbourne council, which ‘has been cut in half to £5m and…will be reduced by a further £1m next April’.

Frieze to launch in LA next year | Frieze today announced the launch of a Los Angeles edition, which will debut at the Paramount Pictures Studios between February 14–17 next year. Thai architect Kulapat Yantrasast and his firm wHY have been put in charge of creating the tent to surround Frieze LA, while writer and founder of LA organisation ForYourArt, Bettina Korek, has been appointed executive director of the new fair.

Madrid art fair removes photographs of Catalan politicians | The Spanish art fair ARCOmadrid yesterday decided to take down one of its exhibits. The piece titled Political Prisoners in Contemporary Spain was created by Santiago Sierra and displayed pixelated photographs of 24 figures labelled by the artist as ‘political prisoners’, including separatist Catalan politicians. A statement from Ifema, the fair’s operator, said the decision was made to prevent Sierra’s work ‘damaging the visibility of [other artworks] that ARCOmadrid 2018 brings together’.

Sherri Geldin to retire as director of Wexner Center | Sherri Geldin is to step down after 25 years as director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at the Ohio State University. During her tenure, exhibitions at the centre include a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective (1995), the first showings of Annie Leibovitz’s Master Set and Pilgrimage series (2012) and last year’s residency project from Sarah Oppenheimer.