On February 10, Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili has approved of the dismissal of Marine Mizandari, the nation’s first deputy minister of culture and monument protection. This order to step down came after a meeting with the cultural heritage protection council on January 27 where Mizandari proposed to reinstate the heritage status of the Sakdrisi gold mine, a 5400-year-old mine in central Georgia that was previously protected under heritage laws, which were lifted in 2013.  

Beirut Art Center (BAC), a non-profit space dedicated to contemporary art in Lebanon, has appointed Marie Muracciole as its new director on February 20. BAC’s co-founders and directors, Sandra Dagher and Lamia Joreige, announced their resignation from their five-year directorial post in January, promising to remain active as members on BAC’s board.

Prominent Chinese art collector, Guan Yi has donated 37 works to M+, Hong Kong’s much-anticipated museum for visual culture. Dating from 1980 onwards, the collection, which comprises of mainly New Wave, conceptual and large scale installations, traces key moments in the history of contemporary Chinese art. 

On Saturday, January 18th, at Singapore’s Suntec City convention center, the inaugural Prudential Eye Awards (PEA) for emerging Asian artists went to Ben Quilty of Sydney, Australia. Comprising of five categories—digital/video, installation, painting, photography, sculpture—the award recognized Quilty as the overall winner as well as the category winner for painting.  Judging the PEA was a panel of seven art and cultural professionals including Nick Mitzevich from the Art Gallery of Southern Australia, Nigel Hurst from the Saatchi Gallery, Serenella Ciclitira of Parallel Contemporary Art, and Tan Boon Hui from Singapore’s National Heritage Board.

Following a successful run at the 55th Venice Biennale this past year, the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (

Yet another Thai cinematic production has won over a festival jury abroad, despite struggling against film censors at home.Shakespeare Must Die (2012), an allegory of Thailand’s recent political struggles critiquing the legacy of Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed prime minister, was awarded two prizes at Lebanon’s inaugural Tripoli International Film Festival, held in November, which was organized around the theme of “cultural resistance.”

Michael Sullivan, a pioneering British art historian in the field of Chinese traditional and contemporary art, died in his home in Oxford, England, on September 28, at the age of 96. He had just completed a three-week trip to China.

Following the highly praised co-curated Whitney biennial of 2012, for the 2014 edition, which commences in March, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York will bring in not two but three curators, to further diversify the Biennial’s range and scope. Stuart Comer, chief curator of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Anthony Elms, associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and artist and professor in the painting and drawing department at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, Michelle Grabner will channel their collective experiences to give the Biennial a “bold new form.”

The Australia Council has announced that veteran Australian mixed media artist Fiona Hall will represent Australia at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.

Celebrated contemporary Indian artist Jitish Kallat will curate the second edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India’s first biennale, which is to take place in December 2014. Kallat hopes to bring artists in dialogue with one another to “induce shifts in each other’s perceptions and practices and to collectively expand the tools with which we might propose versions of the world today.”

Sydney-based artist Tony Albert will install Yininmadyemi–Thou Didst Let Fall, the first memorial sculpture in Australia to honor the military service of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women. The “long overdue and necessary” monument will be revealed on Anzac Day 2015 in Sydney’s Hyde Park South, coinciding with the centenary of Australia’s involvement in World War I.

Eungie Joo has been announced as curator of 12th edition of the Sharjah Biennial, which opens in March 2015. Previously the Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs at the New Museum in New York City and presently the Director of Art and Cultural Programs at Instituto Inhotim in Brazil, Joo has led a career “focused on working closely with artists and communities.” The Biennial’s president, Sheikha Hoor Al-Qasimi, hopes that Joo’s collaborative perspective “will find resonance in Sharjah.”

This week 49 galleries throughout Hong Kong joined forces to launch the inaugural Hong Kong Art Gallery Week. Founded by the collective of like-minded commercial gallery heads who make up the Hong Kong Art Gallery Association (HKAGA), the event seeks to entice audiences to explore the city’s numerous artistic offerings. 

In 2010, the United States Census counted around 3.4 million Filipino-Americans nationwide—the largest Filipino population outside the Philippines and the second-largest Asian-American population behind Chinese-Americans. Given that at least 17,500 museums currently exist in the United States, according to the American Alliance of Museums, the conspicuous absence of a museum engaging the interests of a considerably large demographic makes the recent launch of the Filipino American Museum (FAM) all the more significant.

On November 1, the newly established Hugo Boss Asia Art Award went to Hong Kong artist Kwan Sheung Chi. In a ceremony which took place at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum (RAM), the 33-year-old artist was recognized for works containing “against-the-grain criticism of the system” and which open up the possibility for “personal utopias,” earning a USD 48,000 prize.

Last night, the newly established Hugo Boss Asia Art Award went to Hong Kong artist Kwan Sheung Chi. In a ceremony which took place at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum (RAM), the 33-year-old Kwan was recognized for his outstanding contribution to the field of contemporary art in Asia.  Works that contain “against-the-grain criticism of the system” and open up the possibility for “personal utopias,” have earned the artist a USD 48,000 prize.

Sydney artist, Nigel Milsom, has won the AUD150,000 acquisitive Doug Moran National Portrait Prize—now in its 25th year—from behind bars. Milsom’s works channel the condition of loneliness or the singularity of the human experience—a sensation that may be all too familiar for the artist, who is currently serving a six-year jail sentence for robbery and assault he committed while on a drug binge in 2012.