The Financial Times charts the ambitious efforts and long time frame for bringing an artist’s Catalog Raisonné to fruition, the effects this effort can often have on an artist’s market, and the resulting disputes over authenticity of works that may occur as a result.  “The authentication of individual works clearly belongs in the purview of the individual author or foundation,” says Deborah Aaronson, Phaidon’s group publisher, who just published the final volume in Andy Warhol’s Catalog Raisonné. “Authentication is clearly a huge issue with Warhol, so it’s not our policy to get caught up with those things.” (more…)

More than 40,000 works from the Smithsonian’s Asian Art Collection have been digitized, and will be placed online for public use by New Year’s Day.  “The depth of the data we’re releasing illuminates each object’s unique history, from its original creator to how it arrived at the Smithsonian,” Courtney O’Callaghan, the director of digital media and technology, says.  (more…)

Hans Ulrich Obrist has published an essay in The Guardian this week, discussing the current state of curatorial practice, and the importance he sees for curators in contemporary arts.  “When I became a curator,” he writes, “I wanted to be helpful to artists. I think of my work as that of a catalyst – and sparring partner.” (more…)

British artist Damien Hirst has announced that he will release a complete catalog documenting over 1,400 “spot paintings” that the artist has done over the past 27 years.  The artist’s highly controversial series, consisting of rows of multi-colored dots and usually painted by his assistants, has occasionally irked collectors and followers, despite claims that “every single spot painting contains my eye, my hand and my heart”.  He says. (more…)