British Museum renames gallery after UAE’s Sheikh Zayed | The British Museum has signed an agreement with the Department of Culture and Tourism-Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) to rename a gallery in the museum after the late founder of the United Arab Emirates. According to The National (UAE), the museum’s Gallery 51, which displays objects relating to the introduction of farming in Europe from the Middle East, will be renamed ‘The Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Gallery for Europe and the Middle East’. On Wednesday, the museum reached a further agreement with the DCT, renewing a previous loan partnership with Abu Dhabi’s Zayed National Museum (ZNM), which had ended earlier than anticipated due to delays in the ZNM’s projected opening date.
Pasadena Museum of California Art to close | The Board of the Pasadena Museum of California Art has voted to close the institution once its current exhibition ends on 7 October, Pasadena Now reports. The non-collecting museum opened in 2002, and developed a programme of temporary exhibitions of California state artists with independent curators. The Chairman of the Board, Jim Crawford, has claimed that the museum was ‘financially unsustainable’. Twelve of the museum’s staff, including nine full-time employees, are expected to be made redundant when the museum closes.
Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen to be exhibited at National Gallery | The Monarch of the Glen, Edwin Landseer’s celebrated painting of a Highland stag, will be displayed at the National Gallery in London for the first time in 160 years, the Guardian reports. The painting was commissioned for the Houses of Parliament, and first displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1851. Landseer’s painting was saved for the nation last year, after a fundraising campaign enabled the National Gallery of Scotland to acquire the work.
V&A’s touring Bowie exhibition welcomes two million visitors | The Victoria and Albert Museum’s touring exhibition ‘David Bowie Is’, a survey of the influential musician and performer’s career, has welcomed over two million visitors. The exhibition opened in London in 2013, and has since travelled to 11 venues in 10 countries, with its final stint at the Brooklyn Museum set to close on 15 July. In November 2016 it broke the record for the most visited exhibition in the V&A’s 165-year history.