The Menil Collection’s new Drawing Institute will be headed by chief curator Edouard Kopp, Art News reports. “I’m very passionate about the drawing medium and have been for the past 20 years,” Kopp says, “so to join an organization with such a stellar reputation as the Menil’s when they are devoting a new program to the study and celebration of modern and contemporary drawing in an amazing new building purposefully designed for that mission is very exciting.” (more…)

The Art News’s annual power list of the top 200 collectors is out for 2018, with Roman Abramovich once again topping the list. New additions include Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of the Emerson Collective and widow of Steve Jobs, and Elizabeth and Phillip Chun, founders of the art-filled resort Paradise City in Incheon, South Korea. (more…)

Christian Marclay sits down with The Guardian this week, as he prepares for the opening of The Clock at the Tate. “I’m always seeing clocks in films and thinking, ‘Damn, now that would have been great for The Clock!’” he jokes. (more…)

The Al-Thani family of Qatar is reportedly eyeing an exhibition space for its art in Paris, Art Market Monitor reports.  Reports note that the family is in negotiations with a private developer representing the French state which has plans to re-develop L’hôtel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde. (more…)

The Tate has reportedly turned to Wikipedia to fill in gaps in artist biographies for works held in its collection, Art Newspaper reports. A Tate spokesperson said it is “working on a partnership with Wikipedia to ensure the biographies for artists in our collection are as accurate as possible.” (more…)

Greenspon Gallery has cancelled a show featuring the work of the alleged Ne0-Nazi Boyd Rice, following stark criticism from across the art world. “Given the issues this show and these artists raise, we will try to use this episode to consider the various meanings and histories of provocation and dissent in art. As contexts, boundaries and political realities continue to transform, so do the the codes of what can and cannot be accepted,” said gallerist Amy Greenspon. “I deeply regret my lack of oversight when I planned this exhibition, and I apologize to anyone the gallery may have offended when we sent out our email announcement.” (more…)

Giacometti (Installation view), via Art Observed

White, for Alberto Giacometti, is presented as something of an etheric form, the color of death or absence playing on is interrelation with temporal action.  Space is generated only from the presence of space, and not from its reciprocal orientation. His practice is disposed towards the ideal void, where reality, untouched, is always waiting to be discovered. Giacometti’s opposition to easily read concepts of reality lies in his belief that merely representing figures alone, leaving behind the density and materiality of their  surroundings and ignoring the distance between himself and the object of his perception, offered an incomplete picture of the truth. Giacometti’s eye was profoundly sensitive to different kinds of empty, negative space. He wanted to give form to space, opening his figure from within to its presence or surroundings. (more…)

Charline von Heyl, New Work (Installation View), via Art Observed

Few artists possess the sort of free-ranging, exploratory style and vocabulary that seems to mark the output of artist Charline von Heyl.  The German-born painter’s work is relentlessly committed to the canvas as a space for both formal reinvention and ongoing investigation.  Moving through a new selection of works this fall at Petzel Gallery, von Heyl returns to this mode, presenting a series of new compositions that marks her continued interest in texture and space as formative modes of the painter’s internal language.   (more…)

Moritz Wesseler previously director of the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Germany will lead the Fridericianum museum in Kassel, Germany, Art News reports. “My goal is to offer a platform for key players in the realm of contemporary art still largely unknown in Germany,” he said in a statement to press. “In addition, I intend to strengthen the institution’s connection within the city and the local region.” (more…)

The Städel Museum in Frankfurt will publish a series of discussions with leading figures of the West German postwar art scene, looking to create a broader perspective on the era’s art scene. “By publishing both online and in print, we want to enable access for as many people as possible to this unique primary source, and we hope that both interested amateurs and expert readers will make rich discoveries,” says Franziska Leuthäußer, the leader of the project. (more…)

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac will host an installation by artist Tom Sachs during Frieze Week, Sachs’s studio issuing its own version of Swiss passports to anyone who is willing to pay €20. “With this project we break down the borders and eliminate the concept of nationality,” Sachs says. “This comes at a time where our liberal democracies are being threatened, and oppressed people all over the world live in danger and without refuge. Borders are artificial. They are artificially created by governments and the corporations who control them.” (more…)

Marguerite Humeau, Birth Canal (Installation View), via Adelaide Pacton for Art Observed

Marking a new chapter in a body of work that has long mined the strange juxtapositions of history, culture, form and space, artist Marguerite Humeau has touched down at the New Museum this month, opening a show of works that will remain on view throughout the fall season.  The show, titled Birth Canal, presents a new body of digitally rendered sculptures realized in cast bronze and carved stone, each proposing its own unique vision of how to think through the understanding of the body and it relation to modernity.   (more…)

The estate of Barney Ebsworth, the founder of Royal Cruise Lines, will go to Christie’s in the coming months, estimated at over $300 million, including Edward Hopper’s famed Chop Suey, which is estimated at $70 million. “This is the greatest collection of American modernism ever to come to market,” Marc Porter, chairman of Christie’s Americas.

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Johannes Vogt Gallery will relocate to the Upper East Side, Art News reports. “If you told me five years ago that I’d be setting up shop on the Upper East Side, I’d have called you crazy,” Vogt said. “What I show is not as well-represented [on the Upper East Side], and that’s very exciting, to me. I can create a new framework for the work I’m showing.” (more…)

NADA has added 14 new members, including the Upstate New York arts center Art Omi and commercial galleries Bureau and Fridman.  The announcement comes as the organization re-evalutates its operating strategies.  (more…)

Dealer Mary Boone has plead guilty to filing false federal income tax returns, the New York Times reports. “This is the worst day of my life,” she says. “I have learned from my mistake and I am working very hard to put it behind me.” (more…)

Harold Ancart, Untitled (2018), via David Zwirner

Over the past few years, Belgian-born, New York-based painter Harold Ancart has remained one of the more unique voices in modern painting.  The artist’s deceptively simple, ragged style of painting and his intuitive interpretations of natural phenomena and iconographies have seen his work move through a broad range of styles and iterations, including massive depictions of flames, icebergs and lush forests, always offset by a sense of spatially-sound minimalism.  Captivating in their spare, exploratory style, the artist’s works are a fascinating look at the language of modern practice, and how historical touchstones can double back on themselves to create new structures and vocabularies.  (more…)

The Guardian interviews Ilya and Emilia Kabakov this week as the pair prepare for a retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and looks back at the artists’ move out of the Sovient Union. “He took all his baggage with him, the cultural stuff that rooted him in the country,” Emilia says. “What saves Ilya is his magnificent imagination. All of his work is based on fantasy, whether he’s in America, France or Russia.” (more…)

Collectors Aaron and Barbara Levine are donating their collection of Marcel Duchamp works to the Hirshhorn Museum, a major acquisition that bolsters the institution’s holdings. “This is the art world equivalent of the Wizards getting LeBron James,” says Hirshhorn board chairman Daniel Sallick. “Any museum in the world would want this collection.” (more…)

A second round of cultural organizations in Baltimore and Denver have been announced as recipients of funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Art News reports. “We’re thrilled that Bloomberg Philanthropies has selected Baltimore for this significant funding that will serve to equip a new generation of artistic leaders with the support and professional training in the essential areas that constitute thriving arts organizations,” says Catherine E. Pugh, mayor of Baltimore. (more…)

New York’s Kasmin gallery has hired Tianyue Jiang, previously of Christie’s as its new director.  “It is wonderful to welcome someone of Tianyue’s immense experience to the gallery to lead our ambitions both in Asia and at home here in New York,” the gallery said in a statement. “Her specialized knowledge of the region will be of tremendous importance as we continue to develop our client base and introduce more Asian artists to the gallery program.” (more…)

Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art has announced plans for a second museum, UCCA Dune, in Hebei Province’s Beidaihe District, Art Newspaper reports. “The space is nearly Guggenheimian in its specificity. It would also work spectacularly for a one artist show,” says director Philip Tinari.  (more…)

A major fire broke at the National Museum of Brazil has claimed an estimated 90% of the museum’s collection, the Guardian reports. Protests over the fire have blamed austerity measures and budget cuts to fund the Olympic Games and World Cup for depleting government funds to fireproof and protect the museum. “Look at the irony. The money is now there, but we ran out of time,” the museum’s director, Alexander Kellner, told reporters at the scene. (more…)

Richard Hamilton has announced that he is leaving his post as the director of the Tate Americas Foundation, Art News reports. He is now planning “a consultancy to help develop philanthropic strategies for private individuals, foundations, and nonprofit institutions.” (more…)