A series of six new public commissions spearheaded by Norman Rosenthal, former head of exhibitions at the Royal Academy, have been announced for Embassy Gardens, the site of the new U.S. Embassy in London.  “Each show is a germ of an idea that could become a museum exhibition,” Rosenthal says. “They are all shows I have dreamt of doing.” (more…)

New York’s popular Performa biennial has announced the commissions for this year’s edition of the festival, including new works by Jake and Dinos Chapman, Subodh Gupta, Marianne Vitale, Raqs Media Collective, Ryan McNamara, and Pawel Althamer, among many others.  Centered around a loose theme of “citizenship,” the festival will also feature a special segment on black performance at the Studio Museum in Harlem, as well as the Grey Art Gallery at NYU.  “We have a thrilling line-up of new work this year,” said Director and Curator, RoseLee Goldberg, “showing that more and more visual artists consider performance an important medium for expressing their ideas, and that cultural institutions now appreciate performance for its communicability to a broad public and as essential to their programs.”  (more…)

The Art Dubai fair has announced its commissioned projects for 2013, including works by Mary Evans, Mohammed Kazem and Fatima Al-Qadiri.  The works range in scope and size, from a festival wide radio project to a video gallery installed within a narrow stairwell, and reflect the blend of Arabic and global artworks on view at the fair.          (more…)