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ARTS PEOPLENADIA FALL One of Britain’s most influential young directors, Nadia Fall, is to become the director of the Theatre Royal Stratford East, famous as the place where Joan Littlewood established her Theatre Workshop in 1953. Fall is associate director of the National Theatre and has much directing experience. She succeeds Kerry Michael at the end of the year. HILARY CARTYHilary Carty, who ran the Arts Council England’s cultural leadership programme from 2006 to 2011, succeeds Sue Hoyle as director of the Clore leadership programme in September. “She is exactly the right person to take forward the next phase of the Clore programme’s development,” said Dame Vivien Duffield, founder and trustee of the programme. WORK STARTS ON MANCHESTER’S FACTORY VENUEKIWI MADE INTO NATIONAL MONUMENTTO MARK WW1 BATTLEEUROPEAN RECOGNITION FOR YORK GALLERYWALES GETS WILSON PORTRAITThe construction of Manchester’s £110m Factory, the flagship performance venue for the north towards which the government has pledged £78m, is now under way. Artist Laurie Anderson (above) was tasked with the first hammer strike. Designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his OMA practice, the Factory will be run by Manchester International Festival and it is planned to open in 2020. Further funding is coming from Arts Council England and Manchester City Council.A giant kiwi carved into the chalk of Salisbury Plain has been declared a national monument. The listing was made on the advice of Historic England and marks 100 years since the Battle of Messines, just one of the battles in 1917 in which New Zealand troops were involved.The kiwi (shown as it was in 1919) is 130m tall and was made by New Zealand soldiers waiting to be transported home in 1918, in memory of their fallen colleagues. It was maintained by volunteers until its recent restoration.York Art Gallery (above), which reopened in 2015 after an £8m transforma-tion, has won a certificate of special commendation in the prestigious European Museum of the Year Award. It was one of only five of the 46 nominees from 24 countries to be comm-ended, and was the only British museum to be shortlisted. York Art Gallery was also short-listed for the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2017. Reyahn King, chief executive of York Museums Trust, said: “We are incredibly proud.”A rare portrait by the Welsh landscape painter Richard Wilson has been acquired by the National Museum of Wales with help of the Art Fund. |Thought to depict Miss Mary Jenkins, it was painted in about 1750. “This portrait not only strengthens the female presence in our 18th-century displays, but it also enables us to undertake interesting further research – the identity of the sitter is speculative and we’d love to be sure who she really is,” said the museum’s keeper of art, Andrew Renton. IMAGES: NATIONAL MUSEUMS WALES; RED JESTER PHOTOGRAPHY; PAMELA RAITH PHOTOGRAPHY; MICHAEL SHELFORD; RICH28ARTS NEWSThe Arts Society ReviewAutumn 2017