A rare pair of floral paintings by Queen Victoria will go to auction next week, expecting prices of £8,000 and £10,000, Art News reports.  (more…)

Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz is proposing that the British Museum return one of its ancient Assyrian treasures to Iraq in exchange for the donation of his fourth plinth sculpture to the UK. “As I pondered my gift to the nation of Great Britain, I began to fantasise that it could be attached to a second gift: the return of one of the British Museum’s lamassu to the country of Iraq, to replace what was destroyed by Daesh [or Islamic State],” he writes in an open letter. (more…)

Art News has a piece this week discussing ongoing issues with repatriation at The Met, reviewing some disputed works still on view. “Once you know that someone is acquiring artifacts without looking too closely as a source, the first thing you should do is look deeper,” says Erin Thompson, an associate professor of art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. (more…)

UNESCO is holding programs in Warsaw to help identify looted cultural materials from the Ukraine. “Poland is really a country at the forefront of this work,” Krista Pikkat, UNESCO’s director of culture and emergencies, says. (more…)

The New York Times writes on the revival of artist Robert Whitman’s 1959 happening American Moon at Pace. “I used to try to explain things to myself — what I was doing,” he said. “Then I suddenly realized my ideas and thoughts and rationalizations were nonsense, and I just decided to go with my intuition.” (more…)

The New York Times profiles Whitney Museum curator Marcela Guerrero, the first Puerto Ricaan curator at the Museum. “She is at the right place at a time when Latinx art is emerging as a force to be reckoned with,” says Mari Carmen Ramírez, the first curator of Latin American art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “We all expect her to contribute to this transformation in a significant way.” (more…)

Clearing Gallery will depart its longtime home in Bushwick for a new space on the Bowery. “There’s nothing wrong with Brooklyn, but there’s more to New York than Brooklyn,” says founder Olivier Babin. “We’re not leaving for a bigger or better space. We’re leaving for a better location.” (more…)

Musician and artist André Heller fabricated a falsely attributed Jean-Michel Basquiat for sale at TEFAF in 2017, Art News reports. “In retrospect, the whole thing is, firstly, a childish prank. Secondly, it is naturally showing off. And thirdly, it is a stupid mixture of fiction and truth,” he says. “Just a private fairy tale.” (more…)

Monica Bonvicini has “paused” her relationship with König Galerie after sexual harassment allegations broke against its founder, Johann König. (more…)

Artist Oscar yi Hou gets the profile treatment in the New York Times this week, as he opens a show at the Brooklyn Museum. “I think by creating symbolic densities, you’re able to invite the viewer to pay more attention to the works,” he says. “I try to honor the opacity of the subject.” (more…)

Artists staged a protest of Mahsa Amini’s death at the Guggenheim Museum this week, draping banners over the walkway of the museum. The protestors also released “a call for action to support the current revolution in Iran.” (more…)

Climate Activists have struck again this week, as a pair of climate protestors covered a Claude Monet in mashed potatoes during an action at the Museum Barberini. “Monet loved nature and captured its unique and fragile beauty in his works. How is it that so many are more afraid of damaging one of these images of reality than of the destruction of our world itself, the magic of which Monet admired so much?” says Aimée van Baalen, a spokesperson for the group.  (more…)

The Guardian has a piece on the challenges arts venues are facing in the UK as the country battles its way through a cost of living crisis. “I don’t want to manage decline. I’m ambitious for what we can achieve for our communities, and we know there is huge demand for what we do,” says Sarah Munro director of one of Britain’s biggest art galleries, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.  (more…)

Peter Schjeldahl, the long-running art critic for the New Yorker and a major voice in American arts criticism, has died aged 80. “Criticism joins poetry, for me, in having a civic duty to limber up the common word stock, keeping good words in play,” he said in an interview in Artforum. “My sidekick is the Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.“ (more…)

A woman claiming to be a former girlfriend of Banksy is loaning unseen and early art allegedly by the artist to an upcoming show in Salford. (more…)

Dealer Wendy Beard, head of Halsted Gallery, is alleged to have run a $1.6 million fraud swindling valuable art photographs and prints from their owners, the FBI alleges. Beard is thought to have sold a number of works and kept the money, making excuses as to why the works could not be returned to their consigners. (more…)

Art News profiles new artist studios popping up in the Parisian suburbs, thanks to government grants supporting new studio space.  “At first, the landlords were skeptical,” says Hervé Digne, who has spearheaded several studio projects. “Artists in an abandoned building? They didn’t think it would go well.”  (more…)

The British Museum is testing the waters on a “Parthenon partnership” that could send the Elgin Marbles back to Greece, Bloomberg reports. “What we are calling for is an active ‘Parthenon partnership’ with our friends and colleagues in Greece,” says deputy director Jonathan Williams, noting that the move seeks to “change the temperature of the debate” around the disputed works. (more…)

Harold Ancart has joined the roster at Gagosian after leaving David Zwirner, the gallery announced this week. (more…)

A group of armed men broke into TEFAF Maastricht this week in an attempted robbery, causing an evacuation of the fair.  “TEFAF has robust procedures in the event of a security breach,” a spokesperson for the fair said. “These were precisely followed, and all visitors, exhibitors and staff were safely evacuated. The fair has now reopened.” (more…)

A recently unearthed Michelangelo sketch, considered to be the artist’s first nude, has sold  at Christie’s Paris for a record 23 million euros ($24 million). “Michelangelo has decided to make the figure into something that corresponded more to his aesthetic by making him much more robust and monumental, while at the same time keeping the fragility of the figure, who is exposed and shivering” as he awaits baptism,” says Christie’s Old Masters expert Stijn Alsteens. (more…)

The Jean-Michel Basquiat work from the collection of Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa had a strong return to auction last night at Phillips, where it achieved $85 Million, part of a total sale of  $224.9 million, the highest in the company’s history.  (more…)

The Independent Art Fair will launch a new fair in September this year that will focus on 20th Century Works. “Over the years, there has been a shift, with next-generation dealers showing a more diverse group of artists and territories, geographically, socially, politically,” says Independent director Elizabeth Dee. “They are looking forward and looking back, saying, ‘We need to have a canon that looks like our program.’” (more…)

The second leg of Sotheby’s sale of works from the collection of real estate magnate Harry Macklowe and his ex-wife Linda Macklowe has netted $246.1 million, bringing the total sale price for the collection to a record $922 million, with fees. “Either art is one of the few assets that seem to have a good immunological protection against recession, or inflation is much stronger than we think,” says specialist Loic Gouzer. “The art market feels very close to the spare parts market — good works are hard to find and very expensive.” (more…)