Portuguese Art Collector Joe Berardo Arrested—and More Art News – ARTnews.com

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The headlines

LOS ANGELES PHOTOGRAPHER CATHERINE OPIE has been appointed chairman of UCLA’s arts division and will not serve on the board of directors of the city’s contemporary art museum, the LA Times reports. Opie succeeds Andrea Fraser, who has held the position since 2018 (and recently interviewed fellow artist Lorraine O’Grady on ARTnews). Opie said in an interview with the Times that she would focus on fighting student debt. For “ongoing security with scholarships” she wants to “bring in at least 10 million dollars” over the next three years. “LA is an increasingly expensive city to live in,” she said, explaining that “UCLA has problems with student hunger. Some students slept in their cars. “

On the subject of matching items

Police in Portugal have arrested art collector Joe Berardo for money laundering and fraud, Reuters reports, an escalation of his legal problems in recent years. Authorities claim that Berardo moved works of art to a trust to avoid creditors. He and a lawyer who was also arrested have not commented on the allegations. Berardo is the founder of the Museu Coleção Berardo in Lisbon, which displays major modern and contemporary works of art that he has collected through a company called the Berardo Collection Association. In 2019, the Art Newspaper reported, three banks filed lawsuits to reclaim nearly $ 1 billion (about $ 1.19 billion) in debt from him. “In 2019, the banks confiscated the art collection of the Museu Colecao Berardo in Lisbon as security and handed over the security of the works to the state,” reports Reuters.

Digestion

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond has selected SmithGroup for a $ 190 million renovation and expansion project. Construction is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2023 and will take two years. [NBC 12 and Press Release]

Lucian Freud’s portrait of David Hockney was sold for an overestimated £ 14.9 million (approx. [ARTnews]

The Italian artist, architect and designer Umberto Riva, who designed famous residences and residential properties and often collaborated with the Triennale di Milano, has died. He was 93. [Wallpaper]

Mark Johnson, who ran the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Alabama, developed a sculpture garden, and opened an educational wing for more than 20 years from 1994 to 2017, has died. [Montgomery Advertiser]

Big names are moving to the board of the planned National Museum of the American Latino in Washington, DC, including actresses Sofía Vergara and Eva Longoria and chef José Andrés. [The Washington Post]

Thomas Gainsborough’s legendary Blue Boy (approx. 1770) will be loaned to the National Gallery in London next year and is thus returning to Great Britain for the first time in 100 years. It is shipped from the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, whose founder, Railroad King Henry E. Huntington, bought it from dealer Joseph Duveen in 1922. [ARTnews]

The kicker

Few people are citable as reliably as Frank Gehry. In an interview with Dezeen on the occasion of the opening of his fantastic tower for the Luma Arles art complex in France, the 92-year-old architect left a lot of ground in his typically robust way. What does he think of the economic boom that accompanied the opening of his Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain in 1997? “People always tell me how I changed the city,” he said. “I didn’t want to change the city, I just wanted to be part of the city.” When asked about the environmental profile of the Luma building, he explained: “I react to every damned detail of the time we are with people who we live here. ” [Dezeen]

Thanks for reading. We will see you tomorrow.

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