The Snarkitecture Studio has unveiled a massive ball pit installed inside of Washington D.C.’s National Building Museum, part of a 10,000 square foot work titled The Beach.  The work will remain open to the public through September 7th. (more…)

Galeria Franco Noero, via Art Observed

The doors are open on Frieze New York, marking the early days of the summer art season with a major art event up the East River on Randall’s Island.  Returning for its fourth year, the fair has come into its own as a dedicated staple in the New York Art Calendar, and its presentation this year seems to echo it, with a stripped back tent design that seemed to stretch out much longer than in previous years, but distilled the experience down to only three rows of booths, with the occasional inlet allowing for an enjoyable wander through the space.  The VIP opening launched Wednesday morning for a quiet preview where a number of major collectors and celebrities strolled the aisles, among them Neil Patrick Harris, Mike Meyers, Uma Thurman, Leonardo DiCaprio and Richard Gere and François Pinault. (more…)

Antony Gormley has unveiled a new sculptural installation in Florence, featuring more than 100 of the artist’s sculptures arranged in various patterns and lines around the historic Forte di Belvedere.  “They reflect the shadow side of any idea of human progress, confronting the viewer with an image redolent of the conflict of the past century,” Gormley says. (more…)

Part of the celebrations surrounding the opening of the Whitney Museum this week, the Empire State building will display colored lighting schemes centered around famous works from the museum collection.  The lighting, which goes live Saturday, is designed by acclaimed designer Mark Brickman.  “We’re dealing with Andy Warhol and Elizabeth Murray and Rothko,” Brickman says of the challenge. “Giants.” (more…)

Daniel Arsham at Galerie Perrotin, via Art Basel

Following a hectic weekend of events and openings, today caps the final day of Art Basel Hong Kong, bringing strong sales and attendance at the sixth edition of the massive Asian market event. (more…)

Creative Time has announced a new project set to open this coming may, Drifting in Daylight, which will install a series of works through the winding pathways of Central Park in New York.  “The six-weekend show will tempt visitors to transcend their busy lives, losing themselves along a playful trail of sensory experiences,” the project website says. (more…)

The Texas Department of Transportation has reached a decision to classify the Prada Marfa installation by Elmgreen and Dragset as a museum, thus saving it from a possible removal.  “TxDOT appreciates and values the cultural significance of Prada Marfa, and we are happy to have found a win-win solution that keeps it in its current location,” said department deputy executive John Barton. (more…)

The Financial Times profiles the long-awaited opening of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, the Frank Gehry-designed museum housing the renowned design house’s immense art collection.  The article includes a number of notes from LVMH head Bernard Arnault on the Fondation’s approach to collection.  “When we buy something it has to meet two conditions,” he says. “One is that I have to like it, the other is that Suzanne Page (the Fondation curator) should consider it something worth exhibiting in the Fondation Louis Vuitton.  The Fondation’s collection focuses on the link between contemporary artists and the second part of the last century. So you see the evolution.” (more…)

Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale, Rome’s contemporary and modern art museum, is planning a new extension of the institution, which will feature works exclusively on loan from its next door neighbor, the Gagosian Gallery.  The museum is also planning an outdoor exhibition space that will feature sculptures by artists like Jeff Koons and Franz West. (more…)

Danh Vo, We The People (2010-2014) at Brooklyn Bridge Park

This summer, Vietnamese artist Danh Vo is paying his homage to the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of American legacy with a group of installations on view at City Hall Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park.  From May 17th to December 5th, the public will be able to see We The People, a life-sized replica of the Statue of Liberty separated into 250 copper parts that Vo created using the same processes used on the original statue. (more…)

The dispute surrounding Aby Rosen’s display of a Damien Hirst sculpture on the grounds of his Old Westbury, home in Long Island, has reached a resolution, with Rosen agreeing to position the statue in a place that will prevent neighbors from seeing its partially exposed skeleton.  Rosen will also employ a landscaping scheme to further shield the statue from view outside his estate.  “They were very cooperative,” says Mayor Fred J. Carillo. (more…)

The “Art Everywhere US” project, which will cover billboards, bus stops and other public spaces with art, is set to get underway this August, with 58 works to go on display after a public vote.  Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks was the leading vote-getter, and will join works by Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman, among others.  The project begins August 4th in Times Square, when digital billboards will display all the works. (more…)

As Jeff Koons prepares to open his major retrospective at the Whitney next month, the artist will also be installing Split-Rocker, his cartoonish, monumental flower sculpture at Rockefeller Center on June 25th, two days before the show opens.  “We couldn’t do any topiary at the Whitney, because there wasn’t any space,” Koons told the New York Times. (more…)

Vladimir Umanets, the 2012 vandal of Mark Rothko’s mural Black on Maroon, has published an editorial in The Guardian, expressing regret for his actions but remaining committed to the principles of his conceptual practice Yellowism.  “It doesn’t matter how important one believes one’s ideas to be, nor how genuine one’s intentions are,” he writes.  “It is unacceptable to deface someone’s property without permission. What I did was selfish. My act has hurt many art enthusiasts and I deeply regret it.” (more…)

An intrepid thief made off with a piece of a Danh Vo sculpture Thursday, stealing the work from City Hall Park in New York while the work was being installed.  “We can confirm that a small part of the artwork disappeared from the park during installation, and a police investigation is underway,” a representative from the Public Art Fund noted. (more…)

Railway operator Amtrak has announced a public art commission with artist Katharina Grosse, designed to combat urban blight along the company’s rail lines.  The Psychylustro project has seen a group workers painting buildings in Northern Philadelphia with an enormous spray gun, shooting streams of house paint on a series of buildings.“It’s a very different understanding of where a painting sits,” Grosse says. “You just get a glimpse of something rather large, it’s just touching the warehouse there on that little edge. The painting itself is far bigger, it’s maybe in the sky but there is no surface where it can land.” (more…)

The High Line will open its third and final section of park this fall, which will prominently feature sculptural work by Adrian Vilar Rojas, designed to deteriorate and shift over time, in parallel with the industrial spaces surrounding the work.  “If you stop to think about it,” the artist says, “it’s the most contradictory thing: You’re in relaxed, dreamy space, and then all around you is like a battle zone. People are taking pictures of construction sites.” (more…)

A trio of sculptures by Jake and Dinos Chapman are set to be installed at Hampstead Heath in London.  The rudimentary sculptures of a group of dinosaurs, titled The good the bad and the ugly, were previously installed at the Gherkin building.  Installed next month, they will constitute the largest piece of public art the park has seen since 2005, when Giancario Neri’s The Writer was placed on view.   (more…)

Richard Serra has unveiled a massive new public installation in Qatar, funded by the Qatari Museums Authority.   Stretching across the desert, the metal plates of East-West/West-East are all of identical height, and all match the height of the gypsum plateaus that sit to either side of the piece.  The project coincides with Serra’s first solo exhibition in the Middle East at Al RIWAQ DOHA Exhibition Space and QMA Gallery at Katara. (more…)

In collaboration with the City of New York, Fabergé is launching a large-scale egg hunt this Easter season, placing 22 artist-designed eggs  around the city, for participants to track down.  The selection of eggs are specially designed by artists Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel, and Bruce Weber, among others. (more…)

The newest commission for the Sculpture Committee of the Fund for Park Avenue are now on view for the 2014 season, a series of swirling, ambitious sculptures by Alice Aycock.  “The notion is that there is this big wind that moves up and down the avenue, and that it makes the forms or blows the forms and leaves it in its wake,” said the artist. (more…)

Matthew Barney, River of Fundament (still) (2014), Courtesy BAM credit: Hugo Glendinning

Matthew Barney’s newest film, River of Fundament, is a spectacle, to say the least.  Clocking in at just under 6-hours, the film is in turns a surreal voyage through the Egyptian afterlife, the American automotive industry, and the respective encounters of Barney and composer Jonathan Bepler’s with their various subjects, all turned inwards on the film’s own internal logic and unleashed in jarring blasts of viscera, atonal operatics and monumental, ritualistic performance happenings taking part in Detroit, Los Angeles and New York.

Matthew Barney, River of Fundament (still) (2014), Courtesy BAM credit: Hugo Glendinning (more…)

Art Basel Miami Beach has announced the contents of this year’s “Public” section in Collins Park, under the title Social Animals.  Including work by artists Olaf Breuning, Jeppe Hein, Thomas Houseago, Alicja Kwade, Richard Long, and many more, this year’s edition of the show explores the concept of art objects themselves as a community.   (more…)

The Village Voice has published a rare interview with Banksy, discussing the artist’s ongoing show of street art in New York City, and his views towards his craft.  “There is absolutely no reason for doing this show at all. I know street art can feel increasingly like the marketing wing of an art career, so I wanted to make some art without the price tag attached. There’s no gallery show or book or film. It’s pointless. Which hopefully means something.”  The artist says. (more…)