AO Art Observed™

Polly Apfelbaum, HWP 10-20 (2014), via Art Observed

The White Columns Annual offers a particularly resonant opening note for New York’s art world each year.  Refusing an overly objective approach to the curation of a “year in review” style group show, the event encourages, and even emphasizes subjectivity, turning the keys over to one group or person each year.  This year, the all-female art collective Cleopatra’s has been handed the reigns for the Annual’s 9th Edition, with the end result being a colorful, expansive show that is at turns somber, wry and compelling. (more…)

The U.S. Army is searching for a new group of cultural affairs officers to supervise the securing and preservation of important cultural monuments, property and locations in conflicted areas.  The Army had long taken a more lax, reactive approach to cultural preservation, but is looking to strengthen its methods.  “The civil affairs units have always had ‘functional specialists’, but the individuals were often not qualified in any meaningful way,”said Brigadier General Hugh Van Roosen, the director of the Institute for Military Support to Governance (IMSG) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  “At the same time, if you have one person who was just the right fit, you probably didn’t have two of them. It was just a broken system.” (more…)

Artist Kehinde Wiley is profiled in the New York Times this week, discussing his early life in Los Angeles, and his responses to the outrage over police violence in Ferguson, MO.  “I know how young black men are seen,” the artist says in his Williamsburg studio. “They’re boys, scared little boys oftentimes. I was one of them. I was completely afraid of the Los Angeles Police Department.” (more…)

Employees at The National Gallery in London have planned a five day strike in response to the museum’s privatization of their positions, which union general secretary Mark Serwotka claims “risks damaging the worldwide reputation of what is one of the U.K.’s greatest cultural assets.” (more…)

The BBC looks at the early career of Vincent Van Gogh, and the artist’s decision to enter divinity school in his mid-20’s.  It was during this time that the artist visited the depressed Borinage region, and where his work among the laypeople inspired him to draw and paint.  “The people were poor and illiterate, and their work was hard and dangerous,” says curator Sjraar Van Heugten. “Yet for Van Gogh, there was some kind of bigger truth in their simple way of life. After he became an artist, he chose to find his subject matter there. Like artists that he admired, such as Jean-François Millet, he wanted to portray the life of working-class people, and he remained interested in doing so certainly for the first half of his career.” (more…)

Hauser and Wirth has announced that it will serve globally as the representative for the Mike Kelley Foundation.  Established by the artist in 2007, the organization issues grants to artists working on challenging projects among Kelley’s preferred mediums.   (more…)

French filmmaker Pierre Bismuth is going in search of a long-forgotten sculpture by Ed Ruscha, a fake rock that was created and then abandoned in the Mojave desert.  The work, titled Rocky II, does not have a confirmed location, but Bismuth is determined to locate it, and has launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund the completion of the film.  “We will answer the questions ‘Where is this rock?’ ‘Why is it hidden?’ and ‘What is there to hide?'” says Bismuth. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal profiles collectors Aaron and Barbara Levine, whose focus on collecting conceptual art has led to an impressive collections of 20th century art focused around works by On Kawara and Marcel Duchamp, among many others.  “The first time I saw the early 20th-century abstractions of Kazimir Malevich, I was in tears,” Ms. Levine says.  (more…)

As Sotheby’s prepares a new round of auctions in the upcoming weeks, the company has announced a series of increases in its sales percentages.  Buyers at upcoming auctions will now pay 25 percent on the first $200,000 of a work’s hammer price, 20 percent on the value between $200,000 and $3 million, and 12 percent on any amount remaining above $3 million, up from the previous upper threshold of $2 million.  “This will improve Sotheby’s revenue, strengthen the company’s profit margins,” says current CEO Bill Ruprecht. (more…)

The recent arrest of artist Tania Bruguera after her performance in Cuba has raised a number of questions regarding the freedom of artists in the country, the New York Times reports.  “You never know how far you can go,” says well-known novelist Leonardo Padura.  “Sometimes it seems as if spaces open and then close again.” (more…)

Pointing to concerns over security, the Victoria and Albert Museum has attempted to withhold information on its ownership of a devotional image of Muhammad following the terrorist attacks in Paris earlier this month.  “Unfortunately we were incorrect to say there were no works depicting the prophet Muhammad in the V&A’s collection,” said spokeswoman Olivia Colling. “As the museum is a high-profile public building already on a severe security alert, our security team made the decision that it was best to remove the image from our online database (it remains within the collection).” (more…)

Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait Of A Young Man With A Book, via Christie’s

The auction calendar kicks off with its first major sales of 2015 this week, as collectors of Renaissance and Classic works flock to New York City for Sotheby’s and Christie’s Old Masters week sales. With a group of sales lined up for each auction house in the coming days, and a number of impressive works available, the auctions should mark a strong start to the auction season. (more…)

Claude Monet’s L’Embarcadère will hit the auction block next week during Sotheby’s auction of Impressionist and Modern works next week in London.  The “museum-quality” work featuring the landscapes of Zaandam in the Netherlands, is estimated to sell for between £7,500,000 and £10,000,000.    “Monet captures the Dutchness, not merely externally…but also the delicate enveloping light and atmosphere, subtly different from the Ile de France,” writes art historian Ronald Pickvance.  “The superb manner in which he registers the immense and often changing Dutch skies is sufficient proof of this.” (more…)

The Guardian looks at the current labor struggles at London’s National Gallery, as the museum transfers staff management over to a private company, leaving little in terms of real job protection.  “I came to work at the National Gallery, but I could be transferred to a supermarket car park,” says one assistant. (more…)

The Storm King Art Center in Upstate New York has announced a new residency program, opening in conjunction with the long-running Shandaken Project Residency, which is putting its own program on hold during the partnership.  The new program will “encourage artists to engage with Storm King Art Center in new ways.” (more…)

New information released by the Tate this month has revealed that the museum accepted between £150,000 and £330,000 in annual sponsorship funds from British Petroleum over the course of 17 years, totaling over £3.8 million in funds.  The relatively minor amount of funding each year underscores claims by the activist group Platform, which accuses BP of using the donations to help “greenwash” its reputation.  “The BP sponsorship figures are even lower than we had estimated,” says Anna Galkina of Platform. For nearly a decade, Tate provided a veneer of respectability to one of the world’s most controversial companies for just £150,000 a year.” (more…)

Danh Vo, Your mother sucks cocks in Hell (2015), all images courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

Vietnamese-born Danish artist Danh Vo and his family fled Vietnam in a homemade wooden boat a few years after the Communists’ victory, when Vo was just four. In his current exhibition, “Homosapiens,” at Marian Goodman London, as in much of his body of work, the intersection of the historical and the personal is explored through artifacts, documents, and photographs—fragments, begging for the viewer to find their context, that bring into question the nature of identity and belonging. (more…)

Famed Modigliani scholar Marc Restellini is preparing to open a new location for his Paris-based private museum, Pinacothèque, in Singapore this summer.  The $24 million site will open with a show focusing on Cleopatra, and will include a free “heritage gallery.”  “In Paris, a lot of our income comes from ticketing,” Restellini says. “We have more than one million visitors a year. In Singapore, we have to develop other processes of income.”  (more…)

The New York Times notes the growing trends at major museums towards including experimental and contemporary choreography among its programming, noting both the cultural and practical benefits for an institution.  “Live performance encourages audiences to be more frequent visitors to your building,” says Sam Miller, president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. “In terms of being responsive to what artists are doing today and bringing in a more diverse audience, it makes sense.” (more…)

Abraham Cruzvillegas, the Mexican artist who fashions sculptures and situational works out of reclaimed materials, has accepted an offer from the Tate Modern to take part in its Turbine Hall commission.  “His work reflects Tate’s deep interest in showing truly ground-breaking international art,”  says director Chris Dercon. (more…)

For the first time, Italy has launched an international search for directors to some of its most important museums, among them the Uffizi in Florence, the Galleria Borghese in Rome and the Accademia in Venice.  The move is seen as an attempt for major Italian institutions to get closer in line to international counterparts like The Louvre.  “It’s a giant leap ahead,” Dario Franceschini, Italy’s culture minister.  “Italian museums should be more dynamic. They should have more bookshops, more restaurants. They should be attractive and have more multimedia.” (more…)

The New York Times profiles artist Daniel Arsham, and his legion of high-profile fans and collectors, among them Usher and Jay-Z.  “I couldn’t tell you how it happened,” Mr. Arsham says of his popularity. “I work with a lot of people who aren’t famous, too. And in some cases, it’s been the celebrities who gravitate towards me.” (more…)

The Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris is focusing on expanding its collection of photography, the Art Newspaper reports, earmarking over €100,000 a year to increase the size of its holdings in the upcoming years.   (more…)

Following a notable expansion project that boosted its gallery size from 800 square feet to 1,800, James Fuentes Gallery is opening a 400 square foot “project space” inside its space titled Allen & Eldridge.  “Because we’re starting a new chapter with the gallery, with the new space,” Fuentes says, “it just seemed like a really great juncture to try and incorporate some new voices into the program and have the ability to present these intimate exhibitions by great and interesting young artists.”  The space opens tonight with a show of work from Edward Shenk and Victor Vaughn’s ongoing series of King of the Hill inspired pieces. (more…)