At the entrance to the Biennale’s Central Pavilion, via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

The Central Pavilion in Venice’s Giardini is the second site for All the World’s Futures, the main curatorial project around which the Biennale centers itself.  Featuring another series of artists spread out inside the exhibition space’s remarkable white facade, the exhibition continues its investigation of debris and late capitalism through a more playful, yet equally critical set of works from its counterpart at the Arsenale. (more…)

Richard Prince has published a reflection on the state of the art auction market his website this month, noting the dissonance between his work and the astronomical sums paid on the secondary market for them, as well as his own feeling of disconnection from the works as they sell.  “The auctions might think they have something to do with what I make, but they don’t,” he says. “What they have is what they’ve always had… themselves.” (more…)

A federal bankruptcy court judge has ruled that the Detroit Institute of Arts cannot be forced to undergo a full valuation of its collection, following pressure from city creditors for a second estimate.  The collection, valued between $452 million and $866 million, seems to have some space to maneuver moving forward, especially given judge Steven W. Rhodes’s statement that he took quite seriously the opinion of Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s when he said that the “art collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts is held by the City of Detroit in charitable trust for the people of Michigan, and no piece in the collection may thus be sold, conveyed, or transferred to satisfy city debts or obligations.”

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