The 2015 Artindex France report, annually released by Art Newspaper sister publication Journal des Arts has been released this week, with Berlin-based, French-Albanian artist Anri Sala topping the list, followed by François Morellet and Christian Boltanski, respectively.  The survey bases its findings on the number of solo exhibitions worldwide, compounded by each venue’s level of recognition and prominence. (more…)

Yayoi Kusama has earned the hyperbolic title of the “world’s most popular artist” following the release of Art Newspaper’s annual survey.  “Kusama is the only one of our artists who sells on every continent.  “She’s very rare in that she has this kind of credibility within the art world establishment, but she also has a very broad popular appeal,” says Glenn Scott Wright, co-director of Victoria Miro. (more…)

A survey by Art Newspaper shows that almost one third of US Museum solo shows go to artists represented by just one of the top five galleries worldwide: Marian Goodman, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner, or Pace.  “Curators are abdicating and delegating their responsibilities to more adventurous gallerists who, aside from the profit motive and in some respects because of it, seem in many cases to be bolder and more curious than their institutional counterparts,” says Robert Storr, the dean of the Yale University School of Art. (more…)

The annual figures by Artprice have placed 2014 as another record year in the art market, with $15.2 billion in works sold at auction in the past year, including a record 1,679 sales worth $1 million or more.  “More museums were created between 2000 and 2005 than during the entire 19th and 20th centuries,” says Wang Jie, president of Artprice.com and Artron group.  “A museum needs a minimum of 3,000 to 4,000 quality works to be credible… (and) is not meant to get rid of its acquisitions.” (more…)

Mary Weatherford, La Noche (2014), via Art Observed

The Museum of Modern Art’s highly anticipated exhibition of contemporary painting, curated by Laura Hoptman, presents a cursory survey of current trends in this ever-evolving medium. Taking the concept of nonlinear time as its conceptual crux, The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World attempts to parse the impact that the daily experience of digital media has had on painting specifically, and on visual culture more broadly.  (more…)

A new study released by the National Endowment for the Arts notes that attendance of art events has been on a steady decline over the past two decades, with only 33.4% of US adults attending some sort of cultural event during a calendar year. (more…)

New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs is launching a new study, targeting the city’s museums and performing arts groups to understand and quantify each institution’s demographic makeup.  The project is aimed at improving access and broad cultural affinity to the City’s cultural offerings.  “For the long-term vitality and relevancy of cultural institutions, it makes sense to have the staffs reflect that,” says Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl. (more…)

Kader Attia, Repair, Culture’s Agency (2014), via Art Observed

In light of its subject matter, the New Museum wastes no time in describing the challenges ahead of Here and Elsewhere, its current exhibition focusing on contemporary Arabic and Middle Eastern art.  Taking its title from the 1976 Jean-Luc Godard documentary of the same name, the museum effectively poses the same questions that plagued Godard’s quasi-documentary on the Palestinian army.  Faced with an inability to complete his statement on the complex social issues and the subsequent defeat of Palestine in the Six Days War, Godard instead sought a middle ground between the embattled nation and his French homeland.  The film is spiked with cinema verité segments, abstract performance and experimental camerawork that ultimately places a considerable distance between the film and any sense of cohesive, authoritative statement. (more…)

A new article by curator Sam Smiles in The Guardian this week studies the perceptions of late-life creativity in famous painters and artists, particularly in contrasts of value between the 19th and 20th century, and cites a number of critics who have noted most master artist’s work comes after their 50th year.  The article comes with concurrent run of three exhibitions exploring late work by Matisse, Turner and Rembrandt in London. (more…)

The New York Times has published another survey on the contemporary auction market, focusing on the gradual concentration of collectors at the highest tiers of art collecting towards blue-chip artists and trusted names, making competition for these works all the more fierce, and the prices that much higher.  “The sleepy days of collecting are over,” says Amy Cappellazzo of the New York-based Partners agency. “The wealthiest of the wealthy now view art as an alternative currency. It’s become a very big business.” (more…)

Vanity Fair Magazine has unveiled an expansive survey of the world’s greatest living artists, with Gerhard Richter topping the list, and followed by Jasper Johns and Richard Serra.  The voting panel included a number of recognized artists, including Marina Abramović, Carl Andre, John Baldessari, and Fernando Botero. (more…)

Tourists visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York spent over $401 million at the museum this spring and summer, the museum’s annual visitor survey reports.  With 77% of visitors coming from outside the city’s five boroughs, the museum continues to stand as a major tourism draw, and marks a slight increase in visitor spending from last year’s tally of $398 million. (more…)

Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893), Courtesy Munch Museet

Edvard Munch is enjoying somewhat of a timely spotlight, having just has his iconic 1895 pastel The Scream set the global auction record at almost $120 million last May, just one year short of what would be the 150th year since his birth.  This correlation is not lost on the Norwegian city of Oslo, where Munch grew up, and 2013 has been dedicated to the pioneering abstractionist, with a pair of landmark shows compiling almost 300 works from Munch’s groundbreaking career in Oslo, Paris, and Berlin.

Edvard Munch, Workers on Their Way Home (1913-1914), Courtesy Munch Museet (more…)

Haroon Mirza, Frame for a Painting (2013), Courtesy Museum of Modern Art

As is to be expected, MoMA’s first survey into the field of sound art starts with a certain degree of theatricality: 1,500 individually micro-tuned speakers sit on the wall on the way into the exhibition space, filling the space with a sharp white hiss.  Shifting slightly with each change of position, Tristan Perich’s Microtonal Wall welcomes a lingering meditation, as viewers pace back and forth, moving their heads up and down close to the speakers or far away, the variance in intensity opening the space around it to any number of perceptual opportunities.

Richard Garet, Before Me, (2012), Courtesy the artist and Julian Navarro Projects, New York (more…)

For the first time in 25 years, MoMA’s PS1 campus will play host to a full-building retrospective, focusing on the work of the late Mike Kelley this October.  The retrospective first debuted at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam last year, featuring over 200 works from Kelley’s body of work. (more…)

Signaling a potential sea-change in the landscape of contemporary sound art, a number of major museums are dedicating space in their fall schedule to the medium, including a major survey of the field at the MoMA, opening this Saturday.   “For the public, sound art it still a fairly new and also a very, very accessible medium,” says curator Tom Eccles, who has commissioned a new work by sound artist Susan Philipsz in New York. “On a very basic, basic level, sound is one of our first experiences — in the uterus, in fact.”
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Details are emerging about a major exhibition of work by Damien Hirst, billed as the largest exhibition of work by the artist yet to be assembled, slated to open later this year in Doha, Qatar.  The show, titled Relics, will cull work from the full range of the artist’s work, and will include a number of the artist’s diamond-encrusted work. (more…)

With the Syrian civil war raging around them, a group of artists have smuggled their works out of the country for a survey exhibition in London, risking life and limb to get their works abroad for a show at P21 Gallery in Euston, opening this week.  “I travelled to Lebanon and Jordan twice to take work smuggled over the border,” said Fadi Haddad of support group Mosaic Syria. “The artists are worried that they could be traced if the work is stopped at a checkpoint. Some haven’t signed their work. The security police wouldn’t understand their message but they’d still see it as a danger. One artist went to Lebanon to remake her work just to avoid trouble from the authorities.”   (more…)

Looking forward to 2016, the Manifesta Arts Festival has announced the location of its 11th edition, taking place in the Swiss city of Zurich. “The Manifesta board appreciated the openness expressed in the Zurich Bid and the willingness to invite Manifesta to take a critical position. With full awareness that initiating a Manifesta Biennial involves unpredictable outcomes Zurich embraces the critical discourse including the opportunities and risks that it entails. That is why we are thrilled to be going to Zurich for Manifesta 11.”  Says Manifesta Director Hedwig Fijen. (more…)

The Royal Academy of the Arts is preparing for a major exhibition of works from the Australian continent, opening in September.  Featuring some of the country’s most iconic works, the show is already generating a great deal of interest in both the UK and Australia.  “I think it’s true to say that there has never been an exhibition like this before,” said Kathleen Soriano, the show’s curator. “This survey is long, long overdue. We should know more of these important figures as part of our broader art historical canon, not least because so much of it relates directly back to this country but even more so because there are some tremendous artists we really should be aware of and should be able to enjoy.” (more…)

The Museum of Modern Art has announced a major survey of the contemporary practice of sound art, the first of its kind for the museum.  Running from August 10th to November 3rd, Soundings: A Contemporary Score will examine intersections of space, sound, and theory.  “Sound has come into the limelight. It’s getting recognized as a frontier. There are more tools that are easier and less expensive to use these days,” says associate curator Barbara London. “And because of these tools there is more artistic freedom.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper has published its annual survey of museum attendance for 2012, highlighting the best attended shows and museums of the past year.  While the top names on the list stayed relatively unchanged from past years (The Louvre still remains the world’s best attended museum, with The Met close behind), the recently opened Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas surged onto the list, and MOCA in Los Angeles also noted a dip in the face of board defections and budgetary concerns.  Also of note is the top exhibition of last year, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum’s Old Masters show, which drew more than 10,000 visitors a day to see Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. (more…)