It is this unique perspective and approach to curating and institution building that has made Filipovic one of today’s most closely watched curators. After nearly 10 years of running the non-collecting, contemporary-focused Kunsthalle, she embarked on a new journey two months ago, becoming the director of the storied 17th-century Kunstmuseum Basel. A child of immigrants who grew up in Southern California’s Inland Empire, she is still somewhat of an outsider in Basel; she is the first non-European and only the second woman to lead the Kunstmuseum, the holdings of which span from the 15th century to today.

“I’d like to think I bring the best of both worlds with me,” Filipovic recently told ARTnews of her upbringing in the US and her adopted home of Europe, where she in 1998. During her tenure at the Kunsthalle, she organized more than 60 exhibitions, including acclaimed ones for artists like Michael Armitage, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Yngve Holen, Anne Imhof, and Tiona Nekkia McClodden. In 2022, she organized the Croatian Pavilion at that year’s Venice Biennale, and, prior to moving to Basel, she was senior curator at Wiels in Brussels, from 2009 to 2014, and she co-curated, with Adam Szymczk, the 2008 Berlin Biennale.

MoMA PS1 director Connie Butler once called Filipovic a “visionary,” adding that she had “one of the best curatorial programs anywhere.” When she was selected to lead the Kunstmuseum, the selection committee’s president Felix Uhlmann said, at the time, that Filipovic’s “infectious enthusiasm for the entire spectrum of art history, and her ability to inspire people for art” is ultimately what made the committee choose her for the position.

Filipovic is a conciliatory figure, whose new mandate includes strengthening the museum’s global standing and ushering it into the future, at a time when art institutions around the world strive for more inclusivity, both in terms of their public and in the telling of art history. With the support of the institution, Filipovic said she is also “pushing to go further and faster.”

She added, “It’s important that we all remember that this should not be a cemetery of beautiful dead things, but a spaceship. It should carry us into the future.”

A museum spaceship may seem like a concept out of step with a 17th-century institution, housing over 300,000 works spanning seven centuries. But Filipovic argues the Kunstmuseum was radical for its day: it became the world’s first public museum in 1661.

The question that animates her vision for the Kunstmuseum, which will also undergo a renovation beginning in 2027, she said, is “How can you run a very old museum that nevertheless has inscribed in its DNA the idea that it should still speak to generations in the future?”

One way Filipovic hopes to carry the institution forward is by exhibiting the work of underrepresented artists more frequently, including in a planned rehang beginning this summer in the museum’s newest building that draws on an expansive acquisition strategy that she has already implemented, adding pieces by Helen Frankenthaler, Julie Mehretu, and Cameron Rowland. “Every acquisition becomes a manifesto of sorts, and a chance to rethink what legacy we leave for future generations,” she said.

Filipovic recently commissioned Louis Lawler to create a work for the new building’s foyer. Lawler’s photographs can seem to swipe across, distort, or blur canonic artworks, questioning the systems and institutions that have lionized and valued them. Lawler’s work “becomes a commentary on what has been glorified in the museum and how we are taking steps to actually look at that,” she said.

But, Filipovic also wants to continue to activate works already in the collection, including some of the museum’s most famed ones, by pursuing and displaying new research, which is also already underway, about their historical contexts, subjects, and provenance. Part of her aim is to show how centuries-old work remains acutely relevant to the questions we face today. Take Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521–22), a life-size and somewhat jarring depiction of the deceased Jesus in the early stages of decay. The work, she said, “speaks to our present at a time of crisis and war and death. Our society has had some of the same problems and questions and yet resilience has carried us through.”

And in maintaining a permanent collection that dates back nearly 400 years, Filipovic will also have to navigate the Kunstmuseum through delicate situations like restitution claims, several of which have come up in the past few years. These include a 2020 settlement for an undisclosed sum over the museum’s purchase of 200 works once owned by a Jewish collector from a 1933 auction, and an ongoing claim over a Henri Rousseau painting a collector sold to support herself while in exile in Switzerland after fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany. (In a statement in January, the museum said it is negotiating a “just and fair solution” with the latter collector’s heirs.)

While Filipovic had not been involved in those restitution claims, she spoke more broadly about how she plans to address such claims going forward, including continuing to support extensive, proactive research into the provenance of artworks in the collection, begun by her predecessor Josef Helfenstein, and then finding ways to share that information with the public.

“Once that the research has been done, I think it is the responsibility of the museum—and it has already been committed to this before my time, and it will continue to during my time—to render this information accessible,” she said.

When it comes to the collection rehang, an exercise that has become something of a global trend of late, Filipovic said the initiative is less about following the lead of other institutions than it is a “feeling that there are so many stories that can be told,” she said. “By rehanging the collection, you’re demanding that the public notice. That every juxtaposition might provoke a new reading of each work.”

Her aim, she continued, is “not to give the public the feeling that [the collection] has been set up and is sleeping [nor] that these truths are inalienable. It is not so.”

As Art Basel enters its public days, Cruse spoke to ARTnews about the challenges of staging such a monumental art fair while the market is in a questionable state and interest rates are high, why Art Basel continues to be successful, and offers the slightest of hints at what might be in store for next year’s edition.

ARTnews: Opening day has come and gone. What can you tell me about the energy on the ground?

Maike Cruse: The energy has been great. You know the art market here in Basel has proven to be very resilient. We were very confident going in, but what we’ve seen so far has really exceeded our expectations, and, I think, also the expectations of many of the galleries. The pace is much more normal, as opposed to last year when little bit more cautious behavior than what’s happening right now.

That’s good to hear. There has been lots of talk about the market softening or losing its froth, euphemisms to say that people aren’t buying as much as even a few months ago. Many people were unsure what to expect, especially with the fair being so close to the May auctions in New York, which had less than stellar results. 

Absolutely. We were all aware of this and, as I said people were nervous going into the show, I think. But as we see, the market is about human-to-human relationships and about unique objects. And so those relationships can also change and develop very fast and that’s what’s happened here.

What were some of the approaches that you took this year considering that overall feeling of trepidation regarding the market?

We basically do what we’ve always done. We observe the art market very closely, and we adapt to it. That really involves more long-term planning as opposed to just reacting to the current state of the art market or what people are saying. The goal this year was to really further rejuvenate and diversify the fair. We have 285 galleries coming from 40 countries, and 22 of these galleries are newcomers to the fair, which is quite a high number. So it’s really interesting to see so many new faces and all new approaches on the show floor and so many high quality booths.

We also extended the citywide program this year by bringing [Agnes Denes’s] Wheatfield: A Confrontation (2024), where it takes up nearly the entire Messeplatz, as well as bringing the Parcours sector, which [this year] is curated by Stefanie Hessler, director of the Swiss Institute, closer to Messe Basel on Clarastrasse, the regular shopping street that connects the Messeplatz and the Rhine. There’s also a music and performance program at the Hotel Merian, which is very exciting.

What are some of the more under the radar things that people shouldn’t miss at the fair?

I think for me one of the big highlights of the show are the more tightly curated works in the Statements sector. This year presents very emerging artists like the Sandra Poulson from Angola with Jahmek Contemporary Art or the Norwegian-Sudanese artist Ahmed Umar, who brought 15 sculptural works that represent personal prayers; [Umar] is represented by a first-time participant to the fair, OSL Contemporary. The Features sector is also wonderful. There, we are showing 16 historical projects like Parker Gallery’s presentation of works by Gladys Nilsson or oil paintings by artist Irène Zurkinden, who was born in Basel, by the New York gallery Meredith Rosen Gallery.

Are you already thinking about next year, about things that you might want to change?

Oh yes, I’ve been thinking about next year for quite a long time [laughs], but I can’t tell you anything specific yet. I have a lot of ideas, I can say that. I’m really waiting to analyze what the re-contextualization of Parcours presents and how the [Denes] project works. I really look at every single detail, the conversations program, Hotel Merian, and then we really look into how we can further improve it or what new inventions we will bring next year. It’s too early to say, but there are a lot of ideas in my head.

The fair happens every year. How much prep time is involved in that on your end?

Here’s an example. When I first came on I had the idea to change the Parcours sector right away. And I’m so glad that I immediately had the thought and the support because it needed to be an implemented immediately for it to really work. It took the whole year. So, you really have to start changes well in advance, maybe one and a half years before the next show.

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk, especially here in the States, that Art Basel Paris, launched in 2022, might be more attractive, particularly to American collectors, than Art Basel’s Swiss fair. What makes the two fairs unique?

Well, first I have to say that we’ve profited very much from Paris. Otherwise, we wouldn’t do it. [Laughs.] Every fair that works well for our galleries really broadens our network. We profit from that and vice versa. So since we launched the show in Paris, we have many more French collectors also coming to Basel. And that happens all over the place, especially since we opened Miami Beach [in 2002] and Hong Kong [in 2013]. Each fair attracts a different kind of crowd. The Paris show is more concentrated. It’s a little bit smaller. But of course it’s taking place in the major art metropolis of Paris. We’ll have around 190 galleries, and a third of those are from France. In Basel, we have 285 galleries, 60 percent  of which are European, with the rest coming from other countries from all over the world.

The program in Basel [this year] is very ambitious and complex. It won’t exist like this for a second time. It’s very modern and broad—and it should be. Basel is where we come from. It’s our mother fair, our flagship. It’s our center.

They were found at a residential development project at Calthorpe Gardens, on the outskirts of the historic market town Banbury in southern England. The contractor Orbit Homes, which is overseeing the development, announced the find in a press release.

A group of Mesolithic flint tools dating from 10000 BCE to 4000 BCE were among the oldest artifacts found.

The remains of a small settlement from the Late Bronze Age or the Middle or Late Iron Age was also unearthed, as was an Anglo-Saxon cemetery from the early Medieval period. There, the remains of 52 people have been identified, along with a variety of such goods as beaded necklaces, pendants, and weapons. Among those items was a gold pendant with an intertwined serpent design.

“This is a once-in-a-decade site … with once-in-a-lifetime kinds of finds that are coming up—it’s incredible,” BA field archaeologist Hayley Parsons said in video released by Orbit Homes.

“I think the potential of the site is to show people were here over a very long period of time, doing different things at different times,” McLeish said. “We’ve been so lucky at Calthorpe Gardens, we’ve been totally spoiled with the finds that have been recovered.”

St. Anne’s Anglican Church has the unique distinction of being a Byzantine revival style church containing more than 15 artworks by J.E.H. MacDonald, Frank Carmichael, Frederick H. Varley and other members of the Group of Seven. The rare works depict scenes from Jesus’ life, a departure from the group’s renowned scenes of nature. The church was designated a national historic site in 1997.

The four-alarm fire on Sunday, June 9, destroyed most of St. Anne’s, including all of the artistic works, The interior has been gutted and its central dome collapsed. Only the building’s front remains.

According to The Art Newspaper, there were no reports of injuries and police are still trying to determine the cause of the fire.

Alejandra Bravo, the Toronto city councillor for the ward where St. Anne’s is located, told reporters at a press conference on June 10 the works by the members of the Group of Seven were “something we cannot replace in Canada and in the world”.

Reverend Canon Lawrence Skey commissioned the church’s artworks in 1923. The Parks Canada website describes the artworks as “elaborate interior mural decorations” which “cover the walls and ceiling of the apse, the main arches, the pendentives and the central dome. The cycle combines narrative scenes, written texts, as well as decorative plasterwork and detailing accentuating the architectural lines of the building.”

The artistic project was led by MacDonald, a founding member of the Group of Seven. MacDonald brought in fellow members Carmichael and Varley as well as the artists Arthur N. Martin, S. Treviranus, H.S. Palmer, H.S. Stansfield, Neil McKechnie and his son, Thoreau MacDonald.

The result of the collaboration was St. Anne’s Anglican Church bestowed with more than a dozen large murals and paintings, as well as reliefs and medallions of the four apostles John, Peter, Mark and Paul by the sculptors Florence Wyle and Frances Loring.

The Parks Canada website also noted the church’s paintings belong “to the revival of mural decoration that emerged in the last quarter of the 19th century and is a manifestation of the Arts and Crafts movement which sought to ally architecture with the sister arts of painting and sculpture”

One of the church’s highlights was Varley’s Nativity, featuring a self-portrait of the artist as a young shepherd. The destruction of Nativity was even noted by Varley’s great-granddaughter, Emma Varley, through a post on X (formerly Twitter): “Such a loss.”

Red paint was splashed across the front door and windows of Pasternak’s home. Unfurled between two columns was a banner that read: “Anne Pasternak / Brooklyn Museum / White Supremacist Zionist.” Beneath that statement, in a smaller, red font, were the words “Funds Genocide.”

The residences of several Brooklyn Museum board trustees were also reportedly targeted, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said on X.  

“This is not peaceful protest or free speech,” he wrote. “This is a crime, and it’s overt, unacceptable antisemitism. These actions will never be tolerated in New York City for any reason. I’m sorry to Anne Pasternak and members of @brooklynmuseum’s board who woke up to hatred like this.”

Adams added: “I spoke to Anne this morning and committed that this hate will not stand in our city. The NYPD is investigating and will bring the criminals responsible here to justice.”

ARTnews has reached out to the Brooklyn Museum for comment. 

On May 31, a large pro-Palestine march culminated at the Brooklyn Museum, where some 30 activists occupied the lobby for a demonstration, beating drums, waving banners, and calling for the museum to condemn the killing of Palestinians in Gaza. Activists also demanded that the institution disclose its financial ties to Israel and divest from them.

Amid a sizable police presence, approximately 1,000 protestors echoed their calls from outside. Some then climbed onto the ceiling of the museum’s glass pavilion, eventually unfurling a large banner from the museum’s roof that read “Free Palestine From Genocide.” According to Democracy Now, at least 34 demonstrators were arrested.

In the following days, activists decried the excessive force used against the crowd by riot police and members of New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Strategic Response Group onsite. In a statement to Hyperallergic, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Museum said that “the police brutality that took place [on May 31] is devastating.” The spokesperson said that the museum did not call the NYPD. As the building is city property situated on city-owned land, officers do not need permission to enter the premises. 

The museum stated that it would not press charges against the protestors and promised to work with NYPD leadership to focus “on de-escalation going forward.”

The Brooklyn Museum, like other major art institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, has faced calls from artists, activists, and cultural workers to sever financial ties to Israel and to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. In many cases, activists have also called on these institutions to term Israel’s military actions in Gaza a genocide.

According to local health authorities, more than 37,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7 as a result of Israel’s air and ground campaign.

Protests at the Brooklyn Museum in December called out the institution’s corporate partnership with Bank of New York Mellon, which has investments in Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems and which has supported the Friends of Israel Defense Force Donor Advised Fund. (The Bank told the Financial Times in April that it invests in Elbit “as a result of requirements by its passive index investment strategies.”)

The Association of Art Museum Directors, an industry group for institutional leaders that counts some 240 members, including Pasternak, denounced the vandalism of her home in a statement issued on Wednesday. “We, the members of AAMD, unequivocally and forcefully condemn this antisemitic act,” the group wrote. “As cultural leaders—and also as people of different backgrounds and experiences—we understand the emotion and anger the Israel-Hamas war has wrought.”

“This,” the AAMD added, “does not mean that protestors have unencumbered rights to attack individual persons in pursuit of their cause. Whether at someone’s home or at a museum, this behavior is inexcusable. It does tremendous disservice to discourse and conflict resolution, and the ends simply do not justify the means.”

Goldsmiths’s Centre for Contemporary Art said on Wednesday that it had been forced to close because its staff could not resume operations as usual.

“We’re doing this because while the occupation continues, we are unable fulfil the terms required by our insurers for keeping artworks safe and unable to maintain health and safety standards for visitors and staff,” the art space said in a statement.

A show devoted to the German artist Galli will be rescheduled from this summer to early 2025. A residency program at the center was also put on hold.

The students’ occupation of the Centre for Contemporary Art was related to a larger protest at Goldsmiths surrounding the school’s ties to Israel. Students had occupied other buildings at the school, moving the university to make a set of commitments in May that included a scholarship fund for Palestinian students, a statement on the conflict, and a review of the school’s investments.

That set of commitments did not include a call for a ceasefire in Gaza, where more than 37,000 people have been killed since October 7, according to the local health ministry. As a result, students at the school announced an occupation of the Centre for Contemporary Art.

“We reject an institution that co-opts the student movement for Palestine whilst continuing to fund genocide,” a group representing the students wrote on Instagram in late May. The statement called on the center to cut ties with Candida and Zak Gertler, two donors who have been linked to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Outset, a British arts fund cofounded by Candida, has also been the subject of recent Palestine-related protests.

The center’s statement did not mention Israel and Palestine by name, and said the protest “prevents us from being able to operate properly as a public art gallery.”

“We want to express our extreme sadness and sorrow to stakeholders (artists, educators and audiences) and staff for this temporary closure, which is a decision we have taken with a heavy heart,” the center wrote. “We hope for an end to the occupation, so Goldsmiths CCA can return to supporting artists, making exhibitions, and hosting our Residents.”

A spokesperson for Goldsmiths said, “We have looked to work with the campaign group and are making progress on the College’s commitments to them, so it is very disappointing that they are occupying a campus building again. It’s also deeply regrettable that their presence in the gallery means it cannot operate normally which includes being able to insure works of art and meet health and safety guidance for visitors. The gallery is a very special place which provides a cultural space for students, staff and our local community through a dedicated outreach programme.”

Update, 6/12/24, 1:20 p.m.: This article has been updated to include a statement from Goldsmiths University.

Stefanie Hessler, director of the Swiss Institute in New York, curated this year’s iteration, and it focuses on themes of circulation and transformation. As fairgoers wander the city streets in search of the Parcours installations, it behooves them to pay close attention to distilleries, shops, and bridges for such art interventions.

To learn more about her approach to curating Art Basel’s public art sector, ARTnews spoke with Hessler ahead of the fair’s opening.

ARTnews: I know this is your first time curating Parcours, which was previously overseen by Samuel Leuenberger. What was your approach to curating Art Basel’s public art sector?

Stefanie Hessler: Yes! Parcours is accessible to the public without a ticket to the fair. And it really—this year, especially—will engage a lot of locations in the city along Clarastrasse, the street leading from the fair building toward the river Rhine. Alongside it, there are 22 projects in all sorts of different venues and locations, from empty storefronts—a former pharmacy, a former bakery, an empty restaurant, and a shop in a shopping center—to a functional hotel, a food court, a car ramp leading underneath the Congress Center, and a bunker, as well as some outdoor locations such as a public park and flags on the bridge leading over the river. It’s really interesting to think about public space in a way that is more expansive and about how people perceive artwork differently when they visit it in non-art spaces.

How has the public sphere influenced your curatorial approach?

For this project, in particular, it was important for me to have artworks that respond to the sites. There are certain challenges that come with exhibiting works in non-art spaces, but also really exciting challenges that make us engage and interact with art differently than we normally would.

Tell me about some of the most notable projects.

All of the works engage the sites they’re shown at. For example, Alvaro Barrington is creating a structure inspired by his grandmother’s house in Grenada and the Caribbean where he grew up. This “distracter” will, on the outside, be clad with paintings that he’s making for this occasion, and on the inside it will house the products that are usually on sale in the shop. There will also be an artwork in the window and large wallpaper in the back of the shop. Outside of this project, the shop is called tropical zone, and it specializes in importing products from Africa to Basel, Switzerland.

Rirkrit Tiravanija is making flags with pirate symbols that are going to line the bridge leading over the Rhine. He is of course interested in communication structures and how different symbols change meaning over time as they transfer from one culture to another. The pirate symbol has been, in the Western imagination, this symbol of a romantic outlaw, but it’s also been appropriated by the fashion industry. The pirate skull and crossbones, as well as lesser-known symbols, are printed on flags, with newspaper article backgrounds. This, combined with its location on the Rhine, which has played such an important role in the history of Europe, refers to travel and the circulation of information.

Another one that I’m really excited about is by Ximena Garrido-Lecca, who is an artist from Peru researching the oil-rich coastal town of Lobitos, known for petroleum extraction. In recent years, there has been a discussion about whether this town will be turned into a tourist resort. And Ximena made these sculptures from ceramic and steel, combining a traditional material and technique also used in pre-Columbian cultures with steel used in industrial processes like petrol extraction. There are also references to Minimalism. These sculptures are installed inside an artisanal distillery in Basel, creating a beautiful connection between the distillation processes for liquor and oil.

This is a pretty big undertaking, with a lot of moving parts. What are some of the biggest challenges that you faced?

It’s been such a joyful process thinking about these projects in all of these very diverse spaces. It’s like a puzzle finding the right match between the artists, galleries, and venues. Many of the artists also came for site visits so that we could have direct conversations, and look at potential places where their works could make sense and how they would be installed. We visited so many sites and offer such amazing selection for the 22 projects. Most people were really excited about partnering with us.

There are some really unique pairings. What are you most looking forward to?

I’m excited about Parcours night on Wednesday, where we’ll have three performances from 8 pm until midnight. The first performance is a major new commission by Madeline Hollander, a former choreographer and visual artist, who has taken inspiration from the Carnival tradition in Basel. During my visits to the city, I came across these spaces used by the Basel Carnival crews to practice their instruments and so on, some of which are in bunkers underneath the city. Madeline was inspired by the invisible forms of circulation underneath the city, and she made a connection between the people practicing for Carnival underground and the sewer system—these hidden infrastructures and performances [happening below the city]. For Parcours, she cast seven manhole covers to be passed back and forth by 14 dancers, while they’re leading a procession from the fair to the Rhine, in Basel’s cleaning crew outfits and masks made out of confetti, which the cleaning crews have to clean up after Carnival each year.

That performance will be followed by a karaoke bar night at the Merian Hotel, organized by Wendy’s Wok World, the alter ego of Sam Lui, an artist who’s been interested in the principles of Cantonese cooking. She’s collaborated with the Savory Project, which is a bar in Hong Kong, to create three specialty cocktails that will be available during the night. Visitors can perform two songs chosen by Wendy that reflect some of the works and concepts in her practice. There’s also a performance by Chuquimamani-Condori, hosted by Jan Vorisek and Mathis Altmann.

Also stuck to Yao’s painting was a speech bubble that said, “No cheese, Gromit. Look at all this cruelty on RSPCA farms!” Animal Rising wrote in its social media post: “Find out why King Charles, patron of the RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] should ask them to drop the Assured Scheme”, alongside a link to its website.

The RSPCA Assured Scheme is a program intended to raise welfare standards for farm animals throughout the United Kingdom. According to the RSPCA, farms, abattoirs, hatcheries, and haulers must be assessed and confirmed to have met its standards to remain in operation. A RSPCA Assured sticker is used on products to indicate their high quality.

However the Assured Scheme has faced scrutiny from animal rights activists over the exact criteria used to determine whether a farm passes inspection. Shortly before the vandalism, Animal Rising published an investigation into 45 RSPCA Assured farms, whose operations they described as “indefensible” 

In response to the vandalism, the RSPCA said in a statement: “We cannot condone illegal activity of any kind. Our staff and volunteers work extremely hard rescuing, caring for, and speaking up for animals. Animal Rising’s sustained activity is distracting from our focus on the work that really matters—helping thousands of animals every day.” 

According to the RSPCA, its Assured Scheme is “the best way to help farmed animals right now, while campaigning to change their lives in the future”. The statement added that “concerns about welfare on RSPCA Assured certified farms are taken extremely seriously and RSPCA Assured is acting swiftly to look into these allegations. After receiving the footage on Sunday morning, RSPCA Assured has launched an immediate, urgent investigation.”

Philip Mould told The Telegraph that he was “delighted to say there was absolutely no damage” to the portrait after the stickers were peeled off.

The first official portrait of King Charles III since his coronation last year, Yeo’s painting was unveiled at Buckingham Palace last month.

Bernini is renowned as a master of Baroque architecture, and the disappearance of the 18-page manuscript spurred an elaborate sting operation. The suspect allegedly met with Mauro Gambetti, head of administration at St. Peter’s Basilica, on May 27 under the belief that Gambetti was interested in buying the gilded document, which contains details of ornate features Bernini created to decorate the famous canopy rising above the basilica.

Gambetti, however, had secretly partnered with Vatican investigators to ensnare the suspect, who was reportedly accompanied by an unidentified accomplice. After handing the seller a €120,000 ($129,000) check in exchange for the manuscript, Vatican gendarmes arrived and arrested him.

The seller has been identified in Italian media reports as the art historian Alfio Maria Daniele Pergolizzi, who is believed to have stolen the manuscript from the archives of the Fabric of St. Peter’s, an institution established in the 16th century to manage the construction of the basilica and that now oversees restoration of the structure. Pergolizzi served as head of the communications department between 1995 and 2011. Per Reuters, he is being detained in a Vatican prison on charges of attempted extortion. 

Vatican News, the state’s official media channel, reported that Alessandro Diddi, promoter of justice for the Church, will decide this week whether to indict Pergolizzi.

A spokesperson for Creo, which operates the contemporary art fair dedicated to photo-based works, digital art and new media, told ARTNews that market conditions and consultations with “our community of galleries and partners” led to the decision.

“Our priority is mounting a dynamic and high-quality event, so we feel it is best to hold the fair once market conditions improve,” the spokesperson said in an email. “In the meantime, we remain committed to PHOTOFAIRS and to its role as a vital platform and convenor for the photography and contemporary art community.”

The debut of Photofairs New York last year at the Javits Center included the participation of 56 galleries from over 20 cities around the world. VIP attendees included Whitney Museum curator Rujeko Hockley, Inditex chair Marta Ortega Pérez, actor Chris Rock, actress Jane Seymour, English artist Zoë Buckman, and photographer Joel Meyerowitz.

Photofairs New Yor was founded by Scott Gray, the founder and CEO of Creo Arts. Gray also founded Photofairs Shanghai and serves as CEO of exhibition consultancy firm Angus Montgomery Arts.

In a previous interview with ARTnews, Gray acknowledged that Covid-19 was one of the challenges to bringing a Photofair to New York, as well as finding the right venue in an increasingly packed international art fair calendar.

The spokesperson from Creo Arts confirmed to ARTnews that Photofairs Shanghai would still take place in 2025, after it held its most recent edition with 46 exhibitors at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre in April.