After 12 years with the fair, Annette Schönholzer has resigned as Art Basel‘s director of new initiatives to pursue other as-of-yet unidentified opportunities, as reported by artnet News in “With Senior Management Fleeing, Is Art Basel in Turmoil?” Her departure follows that of Magnus Renfrew, formerly director of Art Basel’s Asian operations, now deputy chairman of the Asia division at Bonhams. (See: “Magnus Renfrew Drops Art Basel for Bonhams.”)

As Waterhouse & Dodd prepares to move its New York location to a new space, the gallery has hired Stefany Sekara Morris, a senior specialist in Christie’s Impressionist and modern art department, as a new director, as reported by artnet News in “Waterhouse & Dodd Hires New Director, Moves to Larger NYC Space.”

Daniela Stigh, most recently of Rubenstein Communications and longtime assistant director of communications at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, is the new director of communications at New York’s Lehmann Maupin, as reported by Gallerist.

Harlem’s Studio Museum has hired a new assistant curator, reports Culture Type. Amanda Hunt of LAXART replaces Thomas J. Lax, who departed for MoMA in May.

Promotions and appointments are afoot at New York’s Museum of Biblical Art: Nathaniel Prottas, formerly of New York’s Frick Collection, is the museum’s new director of education; Daniel C. Beaudoin, formerly of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, is the museum’s new director of development;  and Adrianne Rubin, Taylor Catalana, and Bruno Nouril have all received internal promotions.

The J. Paul Getty Museum welcomes two new senior curators: Davide Gasparotto, director of the Galleria Estense in Modena, Italy, in the department of paintings, and Jeffrey B. Spier, from the University of Arizona Classics department, in antiquities.

Lee Yong-woo.
Photo: Courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation.

Following the censorship of a painting satirizing Korean president Park Geun-hye, in the Gwangju Bienniale‘s 20th anniversary exhibition, “Sweet Dew—After 1980,” at the Gwangju Museum of Art, Lee Yong-woo, the president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, has resigned in protest (see “Gwangju Biennale President Resigns Over Censorship“).

The Pérez Art Museum Miami has named real estate mogul Jeff Krinsky as president of its board of trustees, replacing Gail Meyers. T. Christian Armstrong, Chloe Berkowitz, Manuel A. Diaz, John Fumagalli, Laura Kaplan, Daniel Koffsky, and David Martin are the board’s newest trustees, while Rosie Gordon-Wallace has been named president of the PAMM Docent Association.

Thomas Welsh has been officially promoted by the Cleveland Museum of Art to director of performing arts, a position he has essentially held since the resignation of his predecessor, Massoud Saidpour, in February, reports the Plain Dealer.

Otto Hans Ressler, formerly the managing director of Vienna’s im Kinsky auction house, which he co-founded, is back in the European auctions game, opening a new house, Ressler Kunst Auktionen GmbH (see “Im Kinsky Alum Opens New Auction House“).

Spain’s Institut Valencià d’Art Modern has appointed a new director, academic and former head of Castelló’s Espai d’Art Contemporàni José Miguel García Cortés, to replace Consuelo Ciscar, whose decade-long stint in the role was marked by considerable controversy (see “New Appointment Heralds New Era for Spain’s IVAM“).

Art Alliance Austin has a new executive director in Asa Hursh, formerly the organization’s deputy director.

Aurélie Filippetti.
Photo: Didier Plowy/Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.

Turmoil in the French government saw the resignation of culture minister Aurélie Filippetti over her dissatisfaction with president François Hollande’s administration. Prime minister Manuel Valls has named Fleur Pellerin, formerly of the finance ministry, as Filippetti’s replacement, as reported by artnet News in “Korean-Born Fleur Pellerin Is France’s New Culture Minister.”

Bonhams has hired lawyer and photographer Teresa Ybarra as its representative in Bilbao, to cover northern Spain and southwest France.

Jodi Throckmorton, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University, has been named as the new curator of contemporary art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, as reported by Artforum.

The New Mexico Museum of Art has hired curator Carmen Vendelin, most recently of the La Salle University Art Museum in Philadelphia.

The Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, has hired Jason Smith, the director and CEO of Victoria’s Heide Museum of Modern Art, as its new curatorial manager of Australian art. The Heide Museum is also losing curatorial manager Kathryn Weir, who is will direct the department of cultural development at Paris’s Centre Pompidou, and curatorial manager Russell Storer, who will be the senior curator at the National Gallery Singapore, slated to open next November.

Francesca Grillo, one of two Italian sisters accused of defrauding Charles Saatchi and his ex-wife Nigella Lawson (a crime of which they were found not guilty), for whom they served as personal assistants, is starting a new art world venture with Sharrine Scholtz, another Saatchi alum. The pair have opened Laissez Faire Art, a gallery-without-walls (see artnet News report “Cleared of Fraud, Saatchi’s Former PA Launches Art Venture“).