The WSJ looks at the upcoming week in Los Angeles, and asks if the city is ready for a step onto the stage of the global art market. “Los Angeles has never had that choke-point week where the auction houses and galleries get the art world’s undivided attention, and we sell big,” says Muys Snijders, U.S. head of postwar and contemporary art for Bonhams, which does hold auctions in the city. “We’re clearly looking to see if Frieze L.A. could become that pinnacle.” (more…)

Nari Ward gets a profile in New York Magazine this week, as he opens his show at the New Museum.  “With these shows we want to celebrate the artist, but there also has to be a bit of an argument to be made,” says curator Massimiliano Gioni says. “And the argument we felt could be made about his work was also how he participated in a generation at the beginning of the ’90s, which was part of the beginning of the internationalism of art.” (more…)

Inside Philanthropy looks inside the fundraising for The Shed this week, charting the impressive amount of money raised for such a daring architectural and artistic project. The piece cites “a small group of visionary individual and corporate leaders—led by the indomitable Dan Doctoroff [its board chair],” according to Chief Development Officer Margaret Pomeroy Hunt, “who believe in the unique mission of The Shed: to commission original works of art across all disciplines for all audiences.” (more…)

Axel Rüger, head of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum for more than a decade, has been appointed as the new head of the Royal Academy of Arts, The Guardian reports. “I am excited about the opportunity to join at this critical moment and to work to tell great stories through ambitious and varied exhibitions, innovative programs and debate and, more generally, to make the RA, its activities and collections even more accessible to audiences from around the globe,” he says. (more…)

The Liverpool Biennial has named Fatoş Üstek, director and chief curator of the David Roberts Art Foundation, as its next director. “Through ten editions, Liverpool Biennial has gained a reputation for being one of the most important contemporary art events accessible to the large national and international public,” Üstek said in a statement. “In my new role I will be taking Liverpool as my point of reference, while reflecting on current global discourses and developments in the international arena.” (more…)

The Louvre Abu Dhabi has announced the acquisition of a £9.4 million Rembrandt, Head of a young man, with clasped hands: Study of the figure of Christ, ca. 1648–56.  “We make each new addition to Louvre Abu Dhabi’s expanding collection with great rigor and care, in order to deepen and enhance the museum’s universal narrative,” says Dr. Souraya Noujaim, Scientific, Curatorial and Collections Management Director, Louvre Abu Dhabi. “This exceptional work reflects the new cultural perspectives that emerged during the Dutch Golden Age due to international trade expansion and exchange of ideas. It also demonstrates the great Master’s understanding of the fragility and intense spirituality of life, which inspired so many artists after him.” (more…)

A London judge has ruled for the Tate in a privacy case over an adjacent tower with residents complaining of viewers peering into their flats. “They have moved more of their living activities into a quasi-balcony area and provided more to look at,” ruled Mr. Justice Mann. “Had they not done that, there would have been less worth looking at – less to attract the eye – and fewer living activities to be intruded upon.” (more…)

Artist Edmund de Waal will install a major new work in the 500-year-old Jewish Ghetto in Venice for the 58th Biennale. De Waal’s installation, part of a two-part exhibition called psalm, will go on view in a 16th-century synagogue located in the Ghetto Novo in the north-western Cannaregio sestiere (district) of the city.  “New installations of porcelain, marble and gold [displayed in 12 vitrines] will reflect the literary and musical heritage of this extraordinary place. For the first time the Women’s Gallery within the synagogue will hold contemporary art,” a project statement reads. (more…)

A performance piece in DC by Jennifer Rubell, which features a performer dressed as Ivanka Trump endlessly vacuuming an expanse of floor, has drawn the ire of the first daughter.  “Women can choose to knock each other down or build each other up,” Trump said online. “I choose the latter.” (more…)

Artists Guadalupe Rosales and Hank Willis Thomas have received this year’s Gordon Parks Foundation fellowships, Art News reports. “Both Guadalupe and Hank will engage the visual life of their communities through their work as artists, archivists, and photographers, and will explore completely distinct and individual narratives,” says executive director Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. (more…)

Cory Arcangel is opening a pop-up of his Arcangel Surfware brand at Dover Street Market Los Angeles this week, Art News reports.  “The space that Dover Street Market has given me is about the same size as my shop in Stavanger,” Arcangel said. “It is also weirdly about the same shape, which is kind of trapezoidal.” (more…)

A group of protestors stormed the Guggenheim this weekend, raining down pamphlets criticizing the museum’s ties to the Sackler Family, part of artist Nan Goldin’s ongoing protests against the family behind the manufacture of OxyContin. “I want the Guggenheim and others publicly to disavow themselves from the Sacklers and refuse future funding from them, and I want them to take down the Sackler name from the museums,” Goldin said. (more…)

Christie’s London will auction off the art collection of songwriter and singer George Michael this year, The Guardian reports, with the funds raised going to charity. “Philanthropic work was hugely important for George during his lifetime and it was his wish that this work would continue after his passing,” Trustees of Michael’s estate said in a statement. (more…)

The National Museum of Scotland has completed a fifteen-year renovation, Art Newspaper reports, repositioning the collection and allowing each part to be more focused.  “It wasn’t clear what the museum was or what it was trying to be, which led to strange juxtapositions,” says director Gordon Rintoul. “On one floor you had British birds and on a floor above you had material from the Middle East—in an atrium space.” (more…)

Christie’s has achieved its highest ever sales total for 2018, with a final tally of $7 billion, bolstered by the sale of the Rockefeller collection.   “Clients like to go to the platforms they have read about as being successful. Some of our clients preferred the US over the UK, but this is an American situation, not a UK issue,” says Dirk Boll, the president of Christie’s in Europe, the Middle East, Russia and India. (more…)

Two new films by Paul and Damon McCarthy will premiere next week in Los Angeles during Frieze Week.  The works will screen at Montalbán Theater in Hollywood, and will feature the pair’s trademark approach to sexuality and violence. (more…)

Garage Magazine has a piece on Dan Colen, and his recent projects providing food from his farm upstate to those in need. “In 2012, I started talking to friends who knew about farming, and one of them started talking to me about ‘food deserts,’” he says. “The idea of Sky High Farm was to distribute sustainably grown vegetables and meat locally—we work with local food banks and Food Bank for New York City to bring good, healthy food to people without access to it.” (more…)

Henry Timms, current head of the 92nd Street Y, will become the next president of Lincoln Center, the New York Times reports. “I don’t think you should ever pretend that there aren’t some real, and interesting, management challenges here,” Timms said. “But I think it’s the case that every constituent’s best interest is served in a collaborative culture.” (more…)

Frieze has announced the exhibitor list for the 2019 edition of its New York fair, including a series of expanded curated sections and projects.  (more…)

The City of Venice has approved a new fee for day-trippers to the lagoon island.  “Finally, day-trippers will start paying their way,” says Claudio Scarpa, head of the Venetian Association of Hoteliers. “People who arrive in the morning and leave in the evening, contributing little economically but imposing a heavy strain on services, need to understand that not everything is free.”  (more…)

Catherine Carver Dunn will take the helm as executive director of The Tate Americas Foundation, a charity working on funding and acquisition projects for the Tate. “Catherine has a proven record in key cultural institutions of implementing organizational strategy,” says Pamela J. Joyner, chair of the board of the Tate Americas Foundation. “I look forward to working with her to advance Tate Americas Foundation’s work to promote art and artists of the Americas. She will play the lead role in developing the talent and creative thinking necessary to make the foundation effective in the future.” (more…)

The heated divorce of Harry and Linda Macklowe has exasperated courts as the order to split up their famously impressive collection seems to have raised difficulties. “People in the art world don’t want to get in the middle of the divorce,” said lawyer Dan Rottenstreich.  (more…)

The Met is teaming with Microsoft and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create a series five digital prototypes that use artificial intelligence to work with images from the Met’s collection. “This is a conservative institution by nature,” says Max Hollein, the Met’s director. “We need to shake it up.” (more…)

The New York Times has a lengthy piece on the finishing touches of the MoMA expansion project, which will see the museum close for four months this summer and open in a completely new configuration.  “A new generation of curators is discovering the richness of what is in our collection, and there is great work being made around the world that we need to pay attention to,” Glenn Lowry says. “It means that the usual gets supplanted now by the unexpected.” (more…)