The Shed Gets New CEO, Simon Lee Gallery Goes Into Administration, and More: Morning Links for July 13, 2023

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The Headlines

THE TOP JOB. New York’s multifarious art center the Shed has hired Meredith Hodges to be its CEO, the New York Times reports. Hodges is executive director of the Boston Ballet, and will be taking the place of Alex Poots, who relinquished the chief executive title early this year to be solely artistic director. ● The University of Washington announced that the next director of the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle will be Kris Lewis, who is coming from the Fowler Museum at UCLA, where she is director of development. Lewis takes the place of Sylvia Wolf, who is retiring. ● And art historian Sarah Victoria Turner has been tapped to lead Yale’s Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. She had been its acting director since March.

NEW MANAGEMENT. London’s Simon Lee Gallery has gone into court-ordered administration after reportedly facing financial issues, according to the Art Newspaper. A notice at the gallery says that it is now being run by members of an outside advisory firm, BDO LLP, who said in a statement that they are working for “the best outcome for creditors as a whole.” (The change is also noted on the gallery’s website.) TAN had the scoop last month that a notice to be dissolved had been filed against the firm, but Lee said at the time that it pertained to a tax dispute that had been resolved. The gallery has recently hosted solo exhibitions of work by Serge Attukwei Clottey, Josephine Meckseper, Winston Branch, and many other notable names.

The Digest

Architect Robert Mangurian, who was involved in founding the Southern California Institute of Architecture, aka SCI-Arc, died week at 82, Carolina A. Miranda reports. With his business and life partner, Mary-Ann Ray, his projects included a gallery and residence for dealer Larry Gagosian in Venice, California. [Los Angeles Times]

The documentary filmmaker Ellen Hovde, who was a co-director of the 1975 classic Grey Gardens, and who was also a director on the Academy Award–nominated short Christo’s Valley Curtain (1974), died earlier this year at 97. (Her passing had not previously been reported widely.) [The New York Times]

Three artists have filed suit against online fast-fashion behemoth Shein, alleging that the firm used an algorithm to take their art and turn it into clothing without their permission. Shein did not immediately comment. [Gizmodo/Yahoo! News]

Archaeologists working at the Chavin de Huantar archaeological site in Peru have found a sealed corridor that dates back three millennia. They believe it could lead to other chambers in the complex, and that it was closed off because of a structural issue. [Reuters]

The next edition of the Photography Show of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (aka AIPAD) will be staged in 2024 at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan. It’s a homecoming for the event, which long took place there before heading to the piers on the west side of Manhattan in 2017. [The Art Newspaper]

At a dinner for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign in New York, gossip columnist Doug Dechert, the event’s host, loudly denounced what he termed the “climate hoax,” leading art critic Anthony Haden-Guest to tell him to “shut up!” Reached later, Haden-Guest said, “I thought this was pretty ridiculous.” [Page Six]

The Kicker

LOST AND FOUND. In October in Paris, Sotheby’s will offer 19 pieces by the wildly inventive sculptors and furniture makers Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne that no one knew were in their estate, the Financial Times reports. François-Xavier died in 2008, and Claude died in 2019, and the works that they still held were sold off through the auction house. But then assistants at their workshop moved huge bronze bulls by François-Xavier that were in front of a door. That door opened onto a room with 19 more works that were not catalogued. “Nobody knows why they put the bulls in front of this door,” Florent Jeanniard, the chairman and co-worldwide head of design at Sotheby’s Paris, told the FT. [FT]