Sotheby’s is entering into a joint venture with a Chinese auction house, Beijing GeHua Art Co., to be able to conduct business in the country. Due to government restrictions on foreign business entities, the auction house has developed a partnership with a Chinese-owned firm and will be operating out of a freeport in Bejing at the Capital International Airport. Sotheby’s will own 80% of the new company although final approval by the Chinese government has not yet been given. (more…)

Experts believe that a painting purchased eight years ago at a golf club in Kent may be a lost JMW Turner painting. Specialists will present the research at a conference on Wednesday at The Dulwich Picture Gallery. They believe it is Turner’s “Fishing Boats in a Stiff Breeze” from 1805. An art fund investor saw it and bought it for £3,700; the new research puts the value at around £20 million. (more…)

Auction houses have reported new consignments for November sales. Two collectors, Steven A. Cohen and Douglas S. Cramer, will be consigning works for the November 14 auctions at Christies. Sotheby’s announced “a seminal group of masterworks that provide a panoramic view of Abstract Expressionism” for its November 13th sale, including Mark Rothko‘s No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue) from 1954 and a 1951 Jackson Pollock drip painting .

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The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, purchased a Rothko as part of its effort to bolster the Postwar component of the museum’s collection. The piece is a 1960 painting entitled “No. 210/No. 211 (Orange).” The work has rarely been exhibited and has been in a private European collection for roughly 50 years.  (more…)

An Alberto Giacometti sculpture, once part of an installation at Phillip Johnson’s Glass House, was considered lost and has been “hiding almost in plain sight for years”. Via much research and correspondence, the show’s curator, Jordan Stein, discovered it had actually been at the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation in Paris all these years, unrestored. On Saturday, the building’s owner, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, will be honoring the 1947 sculpture, “Night”, by holding its spot and using the story of its disappearance as the inspiration for a series of temporary exhibitions in its reopening to the public.  (more…)

Germany surprises the art community with its announcement of 4 artists selected to represent the country in the next Venice Biennale: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Indian photographer Dayanita Singh, German film director/writer/producer Romuald Karmakar and South African photographer Santu Mofokeng. The curator, Susanne Gaensheimer, said that all of the artists work in Germany’s art scene and that Germany sees itself as “an active participant in a complex, worldwide constellation”. (more…)

Jeffrey Gundlach, Santa Monica art collector and Wall Street tycoon, returned home from a trip to New York to find $10 million in artwork missing. Jasper Johns’ “Green Target”, along with works by Piet Mondrian, Richard Diebenkorn, Franz Kline, Joseph Cornell, Philip Guston and others were taken. No word yet on whether there was a security video, as the investigation is underway.

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Trevor Paglen discussed his latest project, The Last Pictures, with filmmaker Werner Herzog on the Bryant Park terrace last night. The project, an ultra archival disc that has been micro-etched with 100 photographs and encased in gold, was commissioned and presented by Creative Time. Poet Tracy K. Smith introduced the dialogue with a reading of her work, and Creative Time Chief Curator, Nato Thompson, made introductory remarks.

Image: Werner Herzog at The Last Pictures event presented by Creative Time, photo by Art Observed

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Teresita Fernández – Night Writing (Installation View), Lehmann Maupin Gallery

Teresita Fernández has often explored the natural elements as a framework of perception in her installations, allowing natural phenomena to act as a method of transformation and translation.  For Night Writing, her fifth solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin, the artist has continued in this vein, creating a number of works that examine our imposition of meaning on the night sky.

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The Stedelijk Museum will reopen completely on Sunday, Sept 23rd after an eight-year renovation. The museum has renovated the original building and constructed a bathtub-shaped extension. The new structure will house temporary exhibitions, with a wall of windows that looks onto Museumplein. The museum had encountered structural problems with the new building, designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects. Beyond Imagination, an exhibition of emerging Amsterdam artists’ work, will inaugurate the space. It runs from Sept 23rd – Nov 11th. (more…)

Artist Jeff Koons; Thomas P. Campbell, the ninth director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and architect Richard Meier have been chosen by New York State to oversee the selection of designs for a new Tapan Zee bridge. The Tappan Zee bridge crosses the Hudson between Rockland and Westchester Counties. The three will provide aesthetic input to a selection committee, which will make the final recommendation to the State Thruway Authority. A design selection is scheduled to be made by the end of the year. (more…)

The Jing’An International Sculpture Project Biennial opens on today in a public park in Shanghai. It will include pieces by Wim Delvoye, Subodh Gupta, Jaume Plensa and others. Many of the sculptures will be purchased by the city and will be on permanent display. It is being organized by Huang Du, who curated the Chinese pavilions at the 2003 Venice Biennale and the 2004 São Paulo Biennial. (more…)

Christie’s will auction 63 artworks from the collection of Rudolph and Hannelore Schulhof in their November sale. The Schulhofs’ home on Long Island has held their approximately 350-piece collection of important 20th century art since the 1950s. Hannelore Schulhof, a widow, died in February, and since then the estate has been arranging for a portion of the collection to go to various museums and will keep part of the collection in the home as well. The estate will host a viewing of the works up for auction in the North Shore home this weekend. (more…)

The Louvre Museum will open the “most radical architectural intervention since the [I.M. Pei] pyramid in 1989″. After 10 years and $125 million, the new Islamic art galleries are set to open this Saturday. The gold undulating “flying carpet” or “luminous veil” roof is a 150-ton structure that was fabricated by using almost 9,000 steel tubes and designed by Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti. Donors to the project include private corporations, the government of France, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, and other Arab donors and nations. The new galleries will house Islamic art from the 7th to the 19th centuries.

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A 1981 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting is expected to set a record for the artist’s work at the Christie’s New York auction on Nov. 14th. The privately-held painting of a fisherman with his catch has been exhibited in every major retrospective. The work will be publicly exhibited in London, Paris and New York prior to the sale. Although the presale estimate is $20 million, Christie’s expects the final price to exceed that due to a strong market for Basquiat. (more…)

Tim Noble and Sue Webster – Deadalive (2012), Saatchi Gallery

Over the past several years, the artists’ studio, RS&A, has commissioned 16 recognized artists to create their own chess sets and boards, allowing them to explore and reconfigure the image of the classic game.  Including sets by Maurizio Cattelan, Tracey Emin, Tom Friedman, Damien Hirst, Barbara Kruger, Yayoi Kusama and Paul McCarthy, the full collection is currently on view at Saatchi Gallery in London.

Yayaoi Kusama – Pumpkin Chess (2003), Saatchi Gallery

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French artist JR today launched his Inside Out project in Hong Kong, on elevated footbridge above Connaught Road, in collaboration with Galerie Perrotin and the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and Macau. (more…)

Image: Expo Chicago via The Chicagoist

Expo Chicago opens with a VIP vernissage tomorrow evening to benefit the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Many blue-chip New York galleries are participating this inaugural year, including big names like Matthew Marks, The Pace Gallery, Luhring Augustine and David Zwirner, as well as other international galleries like Yvon Lambert. In the Exposure section, younger galleries like DODGE gallery and Kate Werble will be exhibiting.

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Sarah Pickstone is the first woman in 23 years to win the John Moores Painting Prize, BBC reports. Britian’s most prestigious painting prize, it has been awarded in the past to artists David Hockney, Richard Hamilton and Peter Doig. Pickstone’s Stevie Smith and The Willow was chosen from more than 3,000 entries. (more…)

Jackson Pollock’s Red, Black & Silver has been pulled from Phillips de Pury & Company‘s Sept. 20th auction, because of a Vanity Fair profile on the painting’s controversial history. Supposedly Pollock’s last painting ever made, the work was owned by the late Ruth Kligman, Pollock’s mistress. She died in 2010, and it was never authenticated by Lee Krasner or the Pollock-Krasner Authentication Board, who could not corroborate the information given about the work. The executor of Kligman’s estate, Davey Frankel, stated: “Following the article in Vanity Fair, the [Kligman] Trust was approached by parties interested in possibilities for further study of the painting, and felt it in the interest of Ruth and Red, Black & Silver to investigate these options before taking the painting to auction.”  The piece is still consigned to Phillips for a future sale. (more…)

Eric Yahnker, Finger (Bush’s Country Style Baked Beans), 2012 via The Hole, New York

LA-based artist Eric Yahnker’s first solo exhibition in New York City, entitled Virgin Birth ‘n’ Turf, opened earlier this month at The Hole.  An irreverent and and visceral exploration of the current socio-political climate, Virgin Birth ‘n’ Turf “provides a mad lab where “I get to swab the inner-cheek and place under a microscope a petri dish of the contemporary American experience in the shadow of another blisteringly contentious Presidential election, analyzing the gray matter and microorganisms which make us tick as well as the flesh-eating bacteria which plague us.”, according to the artist.

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MoMA to exhibit Edvard Munch‘s 1895 version of The Scream on a 6-month loan from its new owner. The painting was recently sold at auction to an anonymous buyer, achieving the highest price ever paid at auction earlier this year ($120 million). The painting is the only one of four versions of The Scream that is privately held and has never been exhibited publicly in New York. It is the most colorful one of the series and is seen as a precursor to 20th century Expressionism. Although collector Leon Black is purported to be the present owner, neither Mr. Black, Sotheby’s nor MoMA confirmed as such. It will be on view from October 24 – April 29th.

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Tate Modern announces that its Damien Hirst retrospective was its most popular exhibition on record, with almost half a million visitors. The show, which closed this month, has proven to be more popular than blockbusters such as Hopper, Gauguin or Rothko.

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The Telegraph reports that collector David Roberts plans to open a 12,000 sq ft arts center to house his collection in London’s Camden Town. Roberts estimates the value of his collection of about 2,000 works at around £36 million, with works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Matthew Day Jackson and Thomas Houseago. Vincent Honoré will serve as curator; he previously worked for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and Tate Modern.  (more…)