Fashion Designer Mary Quant Dies at 93, New Steve McQueen Film Will Be at Cannes, and More: Morning Links for April 14, 2023

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

The Headlines

HUMAN RESOURCES. President Biden appointed two dozen luminaries to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, including singer Lady Gaga, actor George Clooney, artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, and art historian Nora Halpern. The committee, which advises the White House on cultural policy, saw all of its members resign in August 2017, following President Trump’s comments that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the Unite the Right rally. Meanwhile, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has named Margot Gerené its managing director, a position that is responsible for day-to-day operations of the museum. She currently holds the role in an interim capacity. And museum consultant Robin Nicholson, a former CEO of the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia, was hired as director of the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art in St. Petersburg, Florida, per ArtDaily.

FASHION DESIGNER MARY QUANT, who was known as “the mother of the miniskirt,” died yesterday at the age of 93, Penelope Green reports in the New York Times. In 1955, Quant began selling venturesome, bracingly contemporary clothes out of a London shop called Bazaar with Alexander Plunket Greene, her boyfriend, and sometimes designed her own pieces. In the ensuing years, she developed a vast and influential international business; she “explored geometric designs, polka dots and contrasting colors, and played with new fabrics, including PVC and stretch fabrics, to achieve a modern and playful look,” BBC News writes. The Victoria & Albert Museum, which gave Quant a retrospective in 2019, said in a statement that she “represented the joyful freedom of 1960s fashion, and provided a new role model for young women.” In a 1967 article quoted by the BBC, she argued that “good taste is death, vulgarity is life.”

The Digest

Leonard Abrams, who in 1979 founded the East Village Eye in order to document the hothouse cultural scene in that Manhattan neighborhood, died earlier this month at 68. [The New York Times]

When the National Portrait Gallery in London reopens after a refurbishment in June, it will feature a new bar that will remain open after the museum closes. During the day, it will offer lunch and tea. [The Guardian]

The Milwaukee Art Museum received $4.4 million from Bader Philanthropies to create an endowment to support its efforts in European art. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

The 44-year-old Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe in New Mexico said that it will close, citing fundraising difficulties and the pandemic. [Artforum]

Artist and director Steve McQueen’s latest film—Occupied City, a documentary about the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam—will be screened at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival next month. [Indiewire]

After postponing an auction of glitch art last month, following complaints that it included no women artists, Sotheby’s is relaunching it next week with a more diverse slate. Its title is “Glitch: Beyond Binary.” [CoinDesk]

The Kicker

IN THE LAP OF LUXURY. On Thursday in Paris, activists fighting the French government’s pension changes stormed the headquarters of luxury giant LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and set off flares inside. Footage in the Guardian shows the demonstrators entering the building, whose facade is lined with steel spheres, as part of Vuitton’s collaboration with Yayoi Kusama. The firm’s CEO, premier-league art collector Bernard Arnault, currently has a fortune in the realm of $200 billion. “You’re looking for money to finance pensions? Take it from the pockets of billionaires,” Sud Rail trade unionist Fabien Villedieu said while inside the headquarters, according to the outlet. [The Guardian]