Doris Salcedo wins inaugural $1m Nomura Art Award

Our daily round-up of news from the art world

Doris Salcedo wings inaugural $1m Nomura Art Award | The Columbian artist Doris Salcedo was announced the inaugural winner of the Nomura Art Award at a ceremony today in Shanghai. The new $1m prize is named for the founder of the Nomura financial services group and is the largest for contemporary art in the world. Its aim is to recognise artists for the cultural significance of their work, and to support the creation of a new project which the artist could not otherwise realise.

Fire destroys World Heritage Site of Shuri Castle in Japan | A fire has destroyed Shuri Castle, leaving only a skeleton of the former structure on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. The UNESCO World Heritage Site was a post-war reconstruction of the original wooden castle, which was built around 600 years ago and for centuries was the seat of the Ryukyu dynasty, before being destroyed during the Second World War when it served as a headquarters for Japan’s imperial army. The blaze broke out today at around 2.40 a.m. local time and was brought under control more than ten hours later with no reported injuries. 

Phil Collins withdraws from MoMA PS1 show in support of prison divestment campaign | The British artist Phil Collins announced yesterday that he is withdrawing his work, a video entitled baghdad screentests (2002), from the exhibition ‘Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011’, which opens on Sunday at MoMA PS1 in New York. In a statement issued to Hyperallergic, Collins explained that the decision was an act of solidarity with the MoMA/BlackRock Divest coalition, which has called for museum board member Larry Fink, the CEO of investment firm BlackRock, to divest from prison companies. Collins states that ‘museums and cultural spaces […] should not be aligned with or funded by investments in mass incarceration’. A spokesperson for MoMA has stated that ‘neither the Museum of Modern Art nor MoMA PS1 invests in for-profit private prisons’.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont to direct of Lucas Museum of Narrative Art | Sandra Jackson-Dumont has been named the new director and chief executive of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which is still under construction in Exposition Park in Los Angeles. The new museum will exhibit illustrations, photography and films from the collection of film-maker George Lucas, and Jackson-Dumont joins from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she has headed up the education and public programmes since 2014.