Museum of Modern Art, New York
Tania Bruguera’s Havana 2000
Untitled (Havana 2000), a large-scale performance and video installation, is the first work by the Cuban artist to enter the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Originally created for the seventh Havana Biennial in 2000, the work was installed in a former military fortress where prisoners had been held during the Cuban Revolution. The Cuban authorities censored the work after one day because it includes naked male performers.
National Gallery, London
Giovanni da Rimini panel painting
The National Gallery in London has preserved a 14th-century Italian panel painting for public display in the UK, thanks to the US cosmetics heir and art collector Ronald Lauder. Scenes from the Lives of the Virgin and Other Saints (around 1300-05) by Giovanni da Rimini was placed under a temporary export bar by the UK government after it came to auction in July 2014. Lauder provided the £4.9m that was required to buy the work. The painting will be shown at the gallery in 2017, and once every three years after that during Lauder’s lifetime. The gift will become permanent after his death.
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
Bloch collection
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City has accessioned 29 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works from the collection of Henry Bloch, the co-founder of the tax preparation company H&R Block, and his late wife, Marion. The gift includes paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet, and studies of dancers by Edgar Degas in pastel and bronze. The Blochs made the bequest in 2010 as part of the museum’s 75th anniversary call for art. The family’s foundation also gave $11.7m to renovate the museum’s European galleries, where the works will go on show in spring 2017.
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Picasso’s Study for Temptation of St Anthony
The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool has acquired an ink drawing, Study for Temptation of St Anthony (1909), by Pablo Picasso from the personal collection of the artist Lucian Freud. The work was allocated to the gallery by Arts Council England in lieu of inheritance tax that Freud’s family owed to the UK government after Freud’s death in 2011. It is on show at the gallery until 31 October.