MOSCOW—Yuri Samodurov, director of the Andrei Sakharov Museum, has announced that he is stepping down. Samodurov was charged in May with inciting religious hatred because of an exhibition he helped organize at the museum, "Forbidden Art — 2006." The show featured previously censored Soviet and post-Soviet art, including a number of semi-pornographic artworks mocking the Orthodox Church. Artforum reports that Samodurov announced his resignation on the museum's Web site, writing, "“I am announcing to my colleagues and to the partners of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and the Sakharov Center that I have ceased working for the museum, the center, and the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, and that I am leaving them on my own accord."

KANSAS CITY—The Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City has announced the retirement of its president, Joan Israelite, the Kansas City Star reports. Israelite has led the organization for 10 years — since its conception — helping to establish the ArtsKC regional fund, the Business Committee for the Arts, and the ArtatWork project, among other programs. Before coming to the arts council, she worked in development at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Kansas City, the Lyric Opera, and the Kansas City Symphony. A search committee has been formed to find a new president.

WOOLLOOMOOLOO, Australia—Viscopy, the visual arts rights management society in Australia and New Zealand, announced today that Joanna Cave will be its new chief executive. Cave goes to Viscopy after eight years as chief executive of the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), an equivalent organization in the U.K., where she played a key role in introducing the artists' resale right to the country. The governments of Australia and New Zealand are currently considering implementing such a right. Cave assumes the position at Viscopy in February 2009.

MEMPHIS, Tenn.—The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art has announced the appointment of Cameron Kitchin as its new director. Kitchin currently heads the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. Before joining the museum six years ago, he worked for the American Association of Museums and as a museum consultant. He will assume his position at the Brooks on November 1, succeeding Kaywin Feldman, who left in January to become the director and president of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Farewells
CHICAGO—Modern art collector Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman died on August 22 at the age of 94. Newman studied painting but said she gave up her own art when she met the Abstract Expressionists and saw the work they were creating. She began building her collection in the 1940s and, at the height of her collecting, from 1949 to 1954, would visit New York several times a year and buy Abstract Expressionist works, sometimes directly from the artists themselves. She also traveled extensively with her second husband, Albert Newman, and collected Asian, African, and Oceanic pieces. Newman gave the Metropolitan Museum of Art 63 pieces from her collection and later donated more than 170 works to the Art Institute of Chicago.

NEW YORK—British art critic John Russell died on August 23 at the age of 89. Russell began his career in arts criticism at the Sunday Times of London, reviewing books, plays, and music. In 1950, he became the paper's art critic and began championing emerging British artists Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Bridget Riley, among others. In 1974, the chief art critic of the New York Times, Hilton Kramer, brought Russell to New York. Russell took over the helm as the paper's chief art critic from 1982 to 1990. In addition to his work as a critic, he published monographs on a number of artists, travel books, a biography of conductor Erich Kleiber, and a few translations of modern French novels.