Transgender activists to be honoured with monument in New York

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Transgender activists to be honoured with monument in New York | A permanent monument is to be constructed in New York to commemorate the transgender activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, it was revealed on Thursday. The installation, which is set to be unveiled in 2021 in Greenwich Village, will celebrate Johnson and Rivera’s influence in the gay liberation movement of the 1960s and ’70s, and is part of an initiative by She Built NYC, which aims to increase the number of public commemorations to women in New York (there are currently five). The monument has been announced shortly before the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, a seminal protest for gay rights which Johnson and Rivera joined in June 1969.

Debate sparked about 13th-century anti-Semitic relief on Lutheran church | A debate between church leaders and art historians over an anti-Semitic relief on the façade of a Lutheran church in Wittenberg may lead to its removal, The Art Newspaper reports. The sandstone sculpture, which depicts Jewish people drinking from a sow’s teats whilst a rabbi lifts its hind legs, can be found on the exterior of the 13th-century UNESCO world heritage site, and is thought to be one of 30 anti-Semitic ‘Judensau’ (Jewish sow) images in existence around Europe. An online petition launched by British theologian Richard Harvey advocating the relief’s removal has reached over 10,000 signatures, urging the church to take action.

RIAS announces winners of 2019 awards | The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) has named the ten winners of its annual award. Recipients include the V&A Dundee, the first building in the United Kingdom to be designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, as well as Collective on Calton Hill, Edinburgh, and The Macallan Distillery and Visitor Experience, Craigellachie. The winners make up the longlist of the RIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award, the result of which will be revealed in October.

22,000 photographs from Arab Image Foundation’s archive made available online | An online database launched by Beirut’s Arab Image Foundation will give users access to 22,000 images from its collection of Middle Eastern photography. The $255,000 digitisation will eventually encompass around 55,000 images, all taken from the foundation’s archive of over 500,000 images from more than 300 collections. The foundation’s building reopens this summer, following a closure in 2016.