Hammer Museum Elects Eric Esrailian as Board Chair

The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles has elected Eric Esrailian as board chair and Karen Hillenburg as vice chair, the museum's trustees announced.

What new members joined the Hammer board?

The Hammer added Leslie McMorrow, Alicia Miñana de Lovelace, and Joan Weinstein to its now 24-person-strong board. The museum's board of advisors separately expanded by five: Robyn Field, Jordan S. Goodman, Allison Gorsuch Corrigan, Ayesha Selden, and Akio Tagawa.

Which museums received ADAA Foundation grants?

The Art Dealers Association of America Foundation will distribute $10,000 grants to four institutions:

• Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut
• Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York
• Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida
• Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri

The annual funds, drawn primarily from ADAA membership dues, support exhibition development, curatorial research, and public programming.

Which artists moved or joined galleries?

• Denzil Forrester has signed with Thaddaeus Ropac. The London-based painter, known for vibrant depictions of the city's reggae and dub scenes, was featured in Alvaro Barrington's 2019 group show "Artists I Steal From" at the gallery. Ropac will show two Forrester canvases from 2025 in its Frieze London booth next month.
• Citra Sasmita has joined Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, which will co-represent the self-taught Balinese artist with Singapore's Yeo Workshop. Sasmita opens her first Hjellegjerde solo in December at the gallery's West Palm Beach, Florida, outpost.
• Laeh Glenn and Oliver Osborne have joined Jessica Silverman Gallery. Glenn, based in California, will mount her first solo in May 2027; Osborne, based in Berlin, will stage his second Silverman exhibition in 2029.
• Adam de Boer is now represented by Jane Lombard Gallery, having previously shown with Lombard at Frieze LA in 2025. His first solo opens in 2028.

Who is taking over at the Gottlieb and Haring foundations?

Tricia Laughlin Bloom will become only the second executive director of the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation since its 1976 founding. She currently serves as senior curator of American art at the Newark Museum of Art in New Jersey.

The Keith Haring Foundation has hired Alison Coplan as director of strategic initiatives. Coplan, currently chief curator of the Swiss Institute in New York, will oversee publishing, institutional partnerships, licensing, communications, and special initiatives.

How much wealth has left the UK?

Roughly $160 billion in billionaire wealth has exited the United Kingdom over the past two years, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index data. Reporter Benjamin Stupples attributed the churn to the Labour Party's rise to power, the "abolition of perks that benefited the ultra rich, and near constant speculation that more measures are coming," and a sense that "the country is becoming less business-friendly." Most of the capital is moving to the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, and Monaco.

What is the Whitney showing this week?

The Whitney Museum opens its long-awaited Roy Lichtenstein retrospective, "Like New," later this week. Co-curated by Meg Onli and Alex da Corte, the show is reviewed early by ARTnews deputy editor Alex Greenberger, who questions the title but credits the curators with surfacing the artist's prescience. "He saw our pictures-obsessed moment coming," Greenberger writes, noting Lichtenstein's interest in "mean-spirited aesthetic thievery more so than anything else." A Whitney collaboration with Gap and updated Lichtenstein auction results accompany the opening.

The October leadership shuffle lands as galleries and foundations plan exhibitions stretching into 2029, a timeline that will test how new rosters and programs fare in a market reshaped by sustained cross-border capital flight.