NEW YORK—This week marked the end of an era for the opera world, with the death of legendary singer Luciano Pavarotti. The fashion world also felt a loss, as haute couture king Valentino Gravani announced his impending retirement. In addition, Judy L. Larson, the director of Washington D.C.’s National Museum of Women in the Arts, made a mysterious departure.

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MILAN—Valentino Gravani plans to retire from the fashion business in January 2008. The haute couture designer, now in his 70s, recently celebrated 45 years in the business with three days of extravagant events and a retrospective exhibition in Rome.

KASSEL, Germany—The Fridericianum museum has named Rein Wolfs as its new director. Wolfs comes to the museum from Rotterdam's Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, where he is serving as director of exhibitions. His past experience includes serving as founding director of the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich.

NEW YORK—European art scholar Mariet Westermann, currently the director of the university’s Institute of Fine Arts, will head New York University’s planned branch in Abu Dhabi. Details have not yet been released for the new endeavor, which the university is expected to announce next month, but NYU officials told the New York Times that the campus will be paid for by the Abu Dhabi government and will operate with American values, with “no discrimination on the basis of national origin, race, sex, or religion.”

NEW YORK—The Museum of Arts & Design has hired Lowery Stokes Sims as a full-time curator. Sims has served as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and executive director and president of the Studio Museum Harlem. The announcement comes on the heels of news that the museum will move to a larger space in Columbus Circle in 2008.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—National Museum of Women in the Arts’ director Judy L. Larson has resigned. The museum declined to give a reason for the departure of Larson, who previously served as director of the Art Museum of Western Virginia and a curator of American art at the High Museum of Art, and has been at the women’s museum since 2002. "She resigned last Friday and we accepted her resignation," Mary Mochary, the president of the museum's board, told the Washington Post. “I can't say what was going on."

RENO, Nevada—The Nevada Museum of Art has appointed David B. Walker as its new executive director and CEO. Walker, who takes over the post on Oct. 15, has served as Dean of Public Programs at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., director and founding partner of Walker and Walker Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif., an associate at investment firm McBain, Rose Partners, and editor and publisher of Element, a quarterly arts magazine.

Farewells
ROME—Opera great Luciano Pavarotti died on Sept. 6 at the age of 71. The tenor known for his legendary voice and crossover celebrity status died of pancreatic cancer. He became well-known in the opera world after winning a competition in 1961 and moving on to perform around the globe, including at such famous performance halls as the Covent Garden and Royal Opera House in London, the New York Metropolitan Opera, and the Opera House in Vienna. He also collaborated with pop stars including U2’s Bono and Sting and formed a group known as the “Three Tenors” with two other leading opera singers, Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo. "There were tenors and then there was Pavarotti," Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli told Agence France-Presse. "It is thanks to Luciano Pavarotti that the culture of opera spread to new generations."

HOUSTON—The sculptor John T. Scott died Sept. 1 at the age of 67. He had been battling pulmonary fibrosis and had recently undergone a double lung transplant. The artist, whose “vibrantly colored kinetic art filtered the spirit of the African diaspora through a modernist lens,” according to the New York Times, was a New Orleans native and lived there until Hurricane Katrina hit. Scott taught for 40 years at his alma mater, Xavier University, where he once studied with Jackson Pollock’s brother Charles. Scott recieved a “genius” grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1992. He also created a huge site-specific sculpture called Spiritgate (1994) for the entrance court to the New Orleans Museum of Art and had a career retrospective at the same museum in 2005. He was represented by the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans and by Harris Brown Gallery in Boston.