The Dia Foundation is no longer planning on a new building project in Chelsea, the Art Newspaper reports, as new Director Jessica Morgan is pushing for a more active use of the Foundation’s existing space in the city.  “I want to be programming constantly in Chelsea again because it makes no sense to have this incredible real estate and to be renting it out,” Morgan says. “It’s essential that we have a presence in the city.” (more…)

London’s Royal College of Art has suspended admissions for the incoming year’s design interactions course due to a shortage of teaching staff for the program.  “Several tutors left this summer instead of working their notices until December,” says an anonymous alumnus. (more…)

The New Yorker profiles the Korean art group Tansaekhwa this week, as the group of post-war conceptualists prepare a selling exhibition of work split between Christie’s locations in New York and Hong Kong.  “I am unbelievably happy,” says included artist Ha Chong-Hyun. “I’m eighty-one years old. Back in the day, Koreans didn’t live this long. I shouldn’t be here. But to have this happen in my lifetime, I can’t be more thankful.” (more…)

Rhizome has appointed Zachary Kaplan as the organization’s new executive director.  “Zach is a proven leader and a passionate advocate for Rhizome’s mission. He brings a wealth of experience and a strong vision to this evolving organization, and we’re excited for him to shape the future of Rhizome,” says Greg Pass, the chairman of Rhizome’s board. (more…)

Frank Stella, La Scienza della Fiacca, 3.5X (1984), © 2015 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Precluding Frank Stella’s career retrospective at The Whitney Museum, which opens at the end of October, Paul Kasmin Gallery has opened a similarly focused exhibition of the New York artist’s particular brand of formal innovation, moving from his early minimal and shaped canvas works during the 1960’s on through to his vividly constructed and layered assemblages of the 1980’s on through to the current day.  Pulling one major work from each of the artist’s most prominent series, the nine works trace the artist’s continued evolution and investigation of shape, space and color as his material interests have gradually changed. (more…)

Banksy has announced that the materials from his Dismaland installation in Weston-super-Mare will be sent to migrants and refugee camps in Calais, France.  “All the timber and fixtures from Dismaland are being sent to the ‘jungle’ refugee camp near Calais to build shelters,” a statement on the artist’s site read. “No online tickets will be available.” (more…)

China’s economic slump and campaign against graft has many forecasting slow sales in the country’s once thriving art market, the SCMP reports, although those outside the secondary market remain optimistic.  “Now in fact is a better time because the speculators go away and we can focus on working with seasoned collectors and find new clients,”says Andy Hei, co-chairman and director of Fine Art Asia. “Prices will be more rational.” (more…)

An historic drought in Utah has brought water levels around Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty to their lowest point since 1963, a point which many familiar with the work state is part of the work’s execution.  “The current thinking by most is that Robert Smithson would have loved to see the environmental changes that occur around his artwork, so there is no real talk of intervention,” Bonnie Baxter, the director of the Great Salt Lake Institute. (more…)

Bloomberg looks ahead to the coming November auctions in New York, and previews the ongoing position battles the auction houses are taking as the secondary market continues to skyrocket.  “It is ruthless out there,” said Wendy Cromwell, an art adviser. “You need to do what you need to do in order to get the consignments you want.” (more…)

Soho nonprofit gallery Artists Space will temporarily suspend exhibitions while it sorts out a dispute with its landlords over construction work.  “The underlying agenda is to bully us until we move out,” says gallery executive Stefan Kalmár. “But that is not going to happen.” (more…)

Trevor Paglen, NSA-Tapped Fiber Optic Cable Landing Site, New York City, New York, United States (2015), via Art Observed

Continuing his investigation of covert military and intelligence operations, Trevor Paglen returns to Metro Pictures for his second exhibition with the gallery, charging his work with the intricacies of research and formal explorations of color and abstraction, while focusing particularly on the geography and aesthetics of the National Security Agency’s global surveillance programs.

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Cheim & Read Partner Adam Sheffer has been appointed as the new president of the ADAA.  “As Chairman of The Art Show, Adam has been an especially important force in shaping the high standard of artistic quality and connoisseurship that distinguishes our fair each year,” said Linda Blumberg, ADAA’s executive director said in a statement. “And through his renowned leadership of Cheim & Read’s rigorous and dynamic program, Adam commands a great deal of respect from his colleagues, making him an ideal successor to Dorsey Waxter’s terrific work.” (more…)

The Whitney’s move to the foot of the Highline has resulted in double the number of visitors during the four month span than the museum saw in the previous year.  “People feel so strongly about the Whitney because it’s a museum that is very much in and of New York,” Museum President Adam Weinberg said. “The Whitney is a spirit, not a place.” (more…)

The French government has thrown its hand in the ring for the purchase of one of the two Rothschild Rembrandts currently offered for sale, part of an effort to split the works between the Netherlands and France, despite the Netherlands seeming desire to take both pieces.  “I’m still confident that we’re heading in the right direction,” says Dutch parliament leader Alexander Pechtold, who is working to secure the pieces. “The seller wants to keep them together and made an arrangement with the Rijksmuseum, so that’s the phase we’re in now.”
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Song Dong, Waste Not (2005), photo courtesy Groninger Museum

The Groninger Museum in the Netherlands has gained an enormous installation, filling up much of their open space with the household items and various collectibles of Waste Not, the collaborative installation created between Chinese contemporary artist Song Dong and his mother, Zhao Xiangyuan.  The work is centered around the artist’s mother, who dealt with numerous hardships during her upbringing in China, and how she began to cherish and hoard all of the objects, detritus and material she acquired during the course of her lifetime. (more…)

Anthony Caro, Sunshine (1964), via Sotheby’s

Curated by Royal Academy Artistic Director Tim Marlow, Sotheby’s  tenth edition of its outdoor sculpture exhibition at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, titled Beyond Limits, swings for the fences with its studious and somewhat understated take on the impact and influence of Britain’s sculptural greats over the past 65 years.  Tracing lines of exchange and dialogue from the formal innovations of the 1950’s and 60’s through the irreverent inversions of the YBA’s during the 1990’s and on to the present, the exhibition is an intriguing examination on Britain’s own sense of the art historical as much as it is a review of its products. (more…)

Piet Mondrian, Ovale Komposition mit Farbflächen (1914), photo courtesy Martin Gropius Bau © Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Nie-derlande

With his famous works focusing on geometric lines and primary colors, Piet Mondrian’s history as an artist is often obscured by his iconic later output.  Yet, the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin is exhibiting work by Piet Mondrian in an exhibition entitled The Line, taking the artist’s creative evolution and exposition as its starting point.  Initially starting his career painting in the Impressionist style, this exhibition of Mondrian’s work dedicates itself to showcasing the artist’s career and subsequent development of his unique stylistic innovations.  With over 50 drawings and paintings, the journey through Mondrian’s career is exposed through his many lenses and creative phases, and is the first major exhibition of the artist’s work in Berlin since the opening of the Neue Nationalgalerie in 1968.

Piet Mondrian, Komposition mit rot, schwarz, gelb, blau und grau (1921), photo courtesy Martin Gropius Bau © Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Nie-derlande

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The estate of Philip Guston is now represented by Hauser and Wirth, the New York Times reports.  The gallery will open its first show of the artist’s work in the spring, and was selected “especially because Iwan Wirth has been such a Guston enthusiast for years,” says Musa Mayer, Guston’s daughter. (more…)

An article in Fortune notes the increasing difficulty to authenticate works in the current market, as more and more collectors are willing to resort to litigation to intimidate and block the process.  “One year our legal bill ran up $7 million,” says Joel Wachs, the Warhol Foundation’s director. “The cost to defend them became so great, we got tired of giving money to lawyers. We’d rather be giving it to artists.”  (more…)

Hartwig Fischer has been appointed the new Director of the British Museum, making him the first foreign director in over 200 years.  He will replace the outgoing Neil MacGregor. (more…)

Harvard University has relaunched its Student Print Rental Program, allowing students to rent original prints by artists as impressive as Matisse and Picasso from the school collection, intended for hanging in dorms and student residences.”We want (students) to be inspired by it, to absorb something special in addition to what might already be going up on their walls,” says Jessica Diedalis, the curricular registrar at the Harvard Art Museums. (more…)

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is offering grants to artists for projects addressing the issues of mass incarceration in the United States.  Almost half the 2.2 million people in American prisons are African American, the foundation cited in a statement, making as incarceration rate increase of over 500% in 30 years.  “One in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime,” the foundation continues. “This constitutes an epidemic.” (more…)

The Guardian details the story and industrial efforts behind the move of Kurt Schwitters Merz Barn installation from the English Lake District to Newcastle, featuring the original news article detailing both the creation and movement of the work.  “Today and tomorrow all 23 tons of it will be eased on skids down a 150-yard slope to the road and loaded on to a transporter which will take at least two days to cover the 120 miles to Newcastle,” the article reports. (more…)

Kara Walker has been named the Tepper Chair of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts.  “If anything, I can foster an environment of openness and maybe willingness to live with contentious images and objectionable ideas, particularly in the space of art,” Walker said in a statement. “For me, it gets us to a place where we can talk to those concerns and how as artists we can creatively solve problems when problems arise.” (more…)