The Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado has died at the age of 81. Acclaimed for his black-and-white images of labourers and migrant workers and the natural world, Salgado’s photojournalism also captured crises including the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Rwandan genocide. Trained as an economist, Salgado worked for the World Bank before he took to photography full-time. A member of the Magnum for many years, he left the collective in 1994 to found his own agency with his wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado. Salgado’s focus turned increasingly to the environment and in the late ’90s he and Lélia founded the Instituto Terra, a conservation project that also led to him travelling across the Amazon region documenting its rivers and forests and the Indigenous peoples trying to prevent their despoliation. Salgado’s many awards included several World Press Photo prizes and membership of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, paid tribute to Salgado, describing him as ‘one of the best […] photographers the world has given us’.
Robert Morgan, chair of Creative Australia, has announced his early retirement, reports the Art Newspaper. In February, Creative Australia named the artist Khaled Sabsabi and the curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives at the 2026 Venice Biennale. But in a meeting that Morgan chaired only days later, the organisation dropped both men after concerns arose regarding two of Sabsabi’s video works, made in 2006 and 2007, which feature footage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Wesley Enoch, a First Nations playwright and artistic director, will be acting chair.
Art Basel will launch a new art fair in Doha in February 2026. The fair, which will be called Art Basel Qatar, is a partnership between MCH Group, the parent company of Art Basel; QC+, the commercial arm of Qatar Museums; and Qatar Sports Investments, which also owns the football team Paris Saint-Germain. The first edition is expected to feature some 50 exhibitors, making it the smallest of Art Basel’s five international fairs. Noah Horowitz, CEO of Art Basel, told the Financial Times, ‘We are building long-term and gradually.’ Amid concerns over Qatar’s human rights record, particularly its treatment of migrant workers, Horowitz said, ‘there is a very stringent MCH code of conduct that we stand behind and will apply locally’.
The directors of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. have issued a statement after a man shot and killed two Israeli embassy staff members outside the museum and shouted ‘Free, free Palestine’ as he was being taken into custody. The statement, released by Beatrice Gurwitz, executive director of the museum, along with the museum’s board of directors, said, ‘We are heartbroken by the murders of Yaron Lishinsky and Sarah Milgrim, and send our sincere condolences to their families and friends […] The Capital Jewish Museum was built to tell the centuries-old story of the greater Washington region’s vibrant Jewish community. We are proud to tell these stories of Jewish life [and] are working to re-open the museum in the coming days, with all necessary security in place.’
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is returning three ancient artefacts to Iraq. They are a Sumerian alabaster vessel supported by two rams (c. 2600–2500 BC) and a Babylonian ceramic head of a woman (c. 2000–1600 BC), which were donated to the museum in 1989 by the Norbert Schimmel Trust, and a Babylonian head of a man (also c. 2000–1600 BC), which the museum purchased in 1972. The museum decided to restitute the statues after new information arose from the ongoing investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into the disgraced dealer Robin Symes. The Sumerian vessel and the Babylonian head of a male had previously been sold by Symes.
Meanwhile, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has handed over eight looted artefacts to Peruvian authorities. In a ceremony that took place at the Peruvian consulate in New York on 15 May, US officials handed over items including a ceramic effigy bottle in the shape of a man’s head (c. 1000–700 BC) and a gilded copper mask created in c. 300 BC by the Moche people, a civilisation noted for its advanced metalworking capabilities. Most of the antiquities are from the northern coast of Peru, where looters have raided numerous archaeological sites in the last 50 years. Last year the DA’s office returned two 18th-century paintings that were stolen from a church in southern Peru in 2012.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has made 15 full-time and 7 part-time redundant. This amounts to 14 per cent of its full-time staff, reports the LA Times. In a statement sent to ArtNews, the museum, which is due to open in Los Angeles in 2026, said that most of the cuts are to personnel in its museum services and its learning and engagement teams. The museum, founded by George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson has been beset by problems: it has postponed three openings to date and in February this year its director and CEO, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, resigned after five years in the job, leaving Lucas himself to take over the ‘content direction’ of the museum.
Les Arts décoratifs, the institution that governs the Musée des arts décoratifs and the Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris, has appointed Sophie Justine-Lieber as director general. Justine-Lieber, who since 2022 has been director of the Grande Halle de la Villette, and previously worked at the French ministry of culture, will take up the new role in July. She replaces Sylvie Corréard, who had been director general since 2019 before leaving her post in March. The director of the Musée des arts décoratifs, Christine Macel, stepped down in October 2024, citing a ‘crisis of governance and organisation’ at the museum. In other museum news, Marcelle Polednik has left her post as director of the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Polish-born curator had been in charge since 2016 and oversaw several large donations as well as the museum’s acquisition of more than 3,000 works.
Two leading figures at Phillips have resigned. Cheyenne Westphal, who until now has served as global chair at the auction house and was described by Forbes in 2017 as ‘the most powerful woman in contemporary art’, is setting up a new business working directly with artists and collectors. Jean-Paul Engelen, president for the Americas and the global head of modern and contemporary art, is taking up a role at Acquavella Galleries in New York. Westphal has said that the rise of private sales was a contributing factor to her decision: ‘I look forward to being at the forefront of the art market’s next evolution,’ she told the Art Newspaper. The announcement comes at the end of an underwhelming marquee auction season.
Much of the interior of the Breuer Building on Madison Avenue has been designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, reports ArtNews. The building, a brutalist structure designed by Marcel Breuer in the 1960s, was home to the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1966 until 2014. It was leased by the Met from 2016–20 and then by the Frick Collection, which used the space while its permanent home on Fifth Avenue underwent renovation. In 2023, Sotheby’s bought the building to be its new global headquarters. Renovations by the firm Herzog & de Meuron are currently under way, but the designation – which covers most of the interior, including the lobby, gift shop, cafe and stairwell – means that any changes will have to be approved by tShe Commission. The building’s exterior has been protected since 1981.