Harlem’s Studio Museum has announced plans for a new, $122 million building, designed by David Adjaye, on West 125th Street.  “We have outgrown the space,” says Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden. “Our program and our audience require us to answer those demands.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper sits down with Guggenheim Director Richard Armstrong to discuss a range of issues with the Guggenheim’s ongoing expansion plans in Finland and Abu Dhabi, including pressures to improve labor conditions through the sub-contractors working on the project.  “These are all questions that come under sovereignty; I feel unequipped to answer them,” Armstrong says.  “I can state our position: we are in constant dialogue with TDIC and other intergovernmental agencies. It really is top of my mind.” (more…)

The Guardian takes another look at Grayson Perry’s recently completed home design in Essex, the fittingly-titled A House for Essex, which he calls a monument to “thwarted female intelligence,” and executed as a sacred communion with an imagined Essex woman named Julie May Cope. (more…)

With Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Center for Contemporary Art set to open on June 12th in Moscow, the museum has released a video offering a preview of both its impressive architecture and its world-class collection, including a colorful mural unearthed during renovations of the site, previously a Soviet-era restaurant.   (more…)

Outside the New Whitney Museum, via Art Observed

When the Whitney’s migration downtown was first announced, the anxiety and anticipation over its move away from the Breuer building on 75th and Madison was palpable, to say the least.  But as the initial reviews of the space begin to trickle in, the move downtown seems to have made all of the difference for one of the bastions of American fine arts.  Sure enough, the museum, which opens its Renzo Piano-designed doors to the public on May 1st, has created the conditions for something truly incredible in the Meatpacking District, an effortless, flowing viewing experience that manages to tie the museum’s impressive holdings together with the skylines and scenic views of its iconic hometown.

John Storr, via Art Observed (more…)

The New York Times profiles Prada Foundation’s new Milan arts complex, designed by Rem Koolhaas and serving as the arts foundation’s permanent location.  “After more than 20 years of staging exhibitions around the world, my husband said he thought it was about time we do something permanent in Milan,” Miuccia Prada says. (more…)

Thomas Demand, Backyard (2014), via Matthew Marks

The artifice that drives Thomas Demand’s practice is simple, but the results are impressively commanding.  Utilizing carefully cut and assembled cardboard pieces to create familiar images, scenes and spaces, the artist’s work carries an evocatively nostalgic aura, while emphasizing his own craft in the construction of the scene itself. (more…)

The New York Times reports that Hauser and Wirth is building a new, multi-story exhibition space on 22nd Street between 10th and 11th Ave, which the gallery will move to following the expiration of its 18th Street lease in 2017.  The building, designed by Annabelle Selldorf, will open in 2018. (more…)

Smithsonian outpost The Freer Gallery of Art in New York will close next January for renovations, a major project that will add additional lighting and updated technological capabilities for the museum.  “Some of it will be very subtle, but we are trying to take it back to the way it opened in 1923,” says Katie Ziglar, director of external affairs. (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…)

The Wall Street Journal profiles the ongoing collaboration between Rem Koolhaas and Dasha Zhukova to create the new home for Zhukova’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow’s Gorky Park.  “The building is basically a found object,” Koolhaas says. “We are embracing it as it is.” (more…)

The Fondazione Prada has unveileved a new design for its space in Milan, designed by Rem Koolhaas’s architecture firm, OMA.  This will be the second space for the Fondazione, which will continue to operate out of its location in Venice as well. (more…)

As the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami prepares its launch party tomorrow night at its temporary site in Miami’s Design District, the museum has released its plans for a 37,500-square-foot, privately funded permanent home in the area.  The museum is funded by car dealership billionaires Irma and Norman Braman.  “We love this museum, and we felt it was the right time, and the right place, and with the right museum,” says Ms. Braman, who also serves as co-chairwoman of the city’s museum’s board. (more…)

An article in The Economist charts the ongoing progress of The Louvre Abu Dubai, part of the Saadiyat Island Cultural District being built on a sandbar off the course of the U.A.E. city.  “It will be a museum of and for the world,” says Rita Aoun-Abdo, head of the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority. (more…)

Mass MOCA has announced a series of important collaborations with James Turrell, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Laurie Anderson and Jenny Holzer, among others, each of which will be included in the museum’s newly constructed exhibition spaces, which will be completed in 2017.  “We’re teaming up with people who have great bodies of artworks that we are hosting,” says Director Joseph C. Thompson. (more…)

The Frick Museum’s proposed expansion plan has met with a new challenge by opposing forces, this time from a group called Unite to Save the Frick which is citing a 1973 agreement by the museum not to alter a garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Russell Page.  This same garden would be demolished in the new expansion, giving the protesting party a stronger case.  “It would have to be taken very, very seriously, because there is no qualitative need for this expansion,” said Roberta Brandes Gratz, a former panel member with the Landmarks Preservation Commission. “This is not really necessary for exhibition purposes. Given that, the permanence issue will be more important.” (more…)

The Oslo city council in Norway has approved a proposal for a new Munch Museum design on the city waterfront, created by firm Herreros.  The process in building the museum has moved slowly over the past years, with a number of critics challenging the tilting, “Lambda” design.  A vote on zoning is due to take place in November. (more…)

Frank Gehry is reportedly in talks with Philip Vergne and the rest of the MOCA board regarding a potential renovation of the Geffen Contemporary branch in downtown Los Angeles.  “It is a priority and a necessity to make the Geffen a true public space and to use the plaza and the canopy as a civic, urban and spontaneous gathering place for our visitors and for the citizens of downtown. It should be a town square,” Vergne says. (more…)

The New York Times profiles the work of Bernard Arnault in building the Museum for the Fondation Luis Vuitton’s expansive art collection, a massive structure in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne.  “We don’t speak of numbers when we speak of a dream,” he says when asked about the final cost of the building. “Let’s just say it is a very expensive sculpture.” (more…)

Tomma Abts, Feke (2013), via Art Observed

Currently on view at David Zwirner’s 519 19th Street Space in New York, Tomma Abts is presenting a body of new paintings and drawings, a new entry in her ongoing practice involving flux, change and construction over the course of the compositional process.  Under formal analysis, Abts’s work is rooted in the history of 20th Century abstraction, colorful shapes and lines converging in a studious and well-executed canvas that exploits its own relations to its surrounding space as much as the picture plane itself, but upon closer inspection, the works on view here often offer a much deeper narrative.   (more…)

Charles Harlan, Pallets (2013)

Seeking to understand the various materials and objects utilized in contemporary art To do as one would is on view at David Zwirner’s 19th street location this month. The exhibition, brought together by three staff members at the gallery, uses the full space provided to host a selection of works aiming to investigate the broad understanding of alternative materials as applied to various bodies of thought and execution. (more…)

Exhibition View at Kamel Mennour, via Andrea Nguyen for Art Observed

At first glance, the works of James Lee Byars and Anish Kapoor are vastly divergent in their presentations and practices, particular when compared side by side at Kamel Mennour’s fascinating show of works by the two artists.  Kapoor’s works vacillate between the elegantly transient illusions of his glass and aluminum sculptures and the rugged, roughshod clusters of cement he puts forward as a counterpoint. By comparison, Byars’s work is a decidedly more minimal affair: simple elements covered over in gold leaf or minimalist marble pieces. (more…)

LACMA is reportedly in talks regarding the potential construction of a massive tower project by the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax Avenue.  The new space would act as host for LACMA galleries, particularly a new architecture and design wing and would tentatively host space for architect Frank Gehry’s archives. (more…)

After several years of petitioning, Jeff Koons has been granted approval to gut a pair of houses the artist purchased at 11 and 13 E. 67th St, and to combine them into a colossal mansion.  “It must be nice to not only be an artist but to be your own Medici,” comments one local renter. (more…)