David Bowie, Original Photography for the Earthling Album Cover (1997), via Victoria and Albert Museum

Perhaps one of the most widely talked about (and best attended) exhibitions this summer, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is currently showing a comprehensive exhibition of materials from the David Bowie Archive, marking the first time a museum has had access to this collection.  As holders of the national collection of live performance material in the UK, this opportunity is a chance for the museum to showcase one of the UK’s most important artists.  Compiling costumes, programs, documents, instruments and even a film specially made for the exhibition (including exclusive interviews with  Jeremy Deller, Daphne Guiness, and Thurston Moore), the exhibition is an exhaustive look at the work of one of the UK’s greatest rock stars and artists.

David Bowie Is (Installation View), via Victoria and Albert Museum (more…)

After the monumental damages to New York’s art world caused last year by Superstorm Sandy, which some estimate between $200 and $300 million, Art Insurance firms are feeling the pressure to adjust their policies.  Many firms are subtly adjusting their underwriting agreements, taking into account newly redrawn flood maps and the risks of subterranean storage as part of policy coverage as factors in the coverage of high-value artworks.  “Sandy was a wake-up call,” says Christiane Fischer, president and CEO of AXA Art Insurance. “People are much more aware of how much New York is in the path of hurricanes.”  (more…)

A 1903 portrait painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, stolen from a Tokyo home last decade, was reportedly sold at Sotheby’s this past February, Japan Times reports.  The portrait, titled Madame Valtat, had disappeared from its original owner’s home along with works by Marc Chagall and Ikuo Hirayama in 2000.  Sotheby’s has stated that the work had been legally acquired by the seller, and that it will continue to investigate the sale, but the case may prove difficult to fully resolve, as the auction house keeps the names of its sellers confidential. (more…)

Taking a cue from the community sponsored agriculture programs, a number of U.S. cities are embracing a similar approach to contemporary art, enabling residents to purchase shares in contemporary artists as a way to encourage arts patronage.  “I think it has worked in part because lots of places are already familiar with farm C.S.A.’s,” said Dennis Scholl, who oversees the national arts program for the Knight Foundation, an early supporter. “Here, instead of getting a basket of carrots or zucchini, you get a basket of artworks.”  (more…)

This September, Dominique Lévy will open her new gallery at 909 Madison Street with a performance of artist Yves Klein’s sole sound composition, Monotone-Silence.  Consisting, appropriately, of a single chord played for twenty minutes, followed by twenty minutes of silence, the piece has only been performed once before, for its 1960 premiere. “Yves Klein is such a pillar, and yet he’s not well enough known here.” Lévy said. (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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The Detroit Free Press reports that city emergency manager Kevyn Orr has contracted Christie’s to appraise a portion of the Detroit Institute of Arts‘ city-owned collection.  While some have taken this as a further step in the potential selloff of much of the DIA’s collection, Orr himself spoke out on the contrary: “There has never been, nor is there now, any plan to sell art. This valuation, as well as the valuation of other City assets, is an integral part of the restructuring process. It is a step the city must take to reach resolutions with its creditors and secure a viable, strong future for Detroit and its residents.” (more…)

The New Yorker has published a story on the relationship between Bill Arnett, a white art dealer and archivist of black vernacular art, and Thornton Dial, an 84-year old, self-trained black artist who has had  his highly praised work included in major exhibitions and events, including the 2000 Whitney Biennial.  Facing Dial’s facile categorization as an “outsider artist,” Arnett is currently pushing for mainstream acceptance, not only of his work, but of 20th century African-American Art in general.  “I’m trying to create some documents to leave behind, so that when the system changes, just a little bit, somebody would say, ‘Wow, you mean we had this going on in America in the twentieth century?’  That’s all.” (more…)

The Unicorn in Captivity (1495-1505), Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The word Manhattan conjures images of glass and concrete skyscrapers, bustling streets, and the sounds of honking cars, but a trip to the Cloisters, the evocatively monastic outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, located on the Hudson river vallery, truly transports visitors away from the urban metropolis.  Visitors enter a space of leafy pathways, stone arches, stained glass, hushed hallways, and intricate courtyards. seemingly more at home in the serene South of France than cacophonous Manhattan.

Unicorn Aquamanile from Germany (1425–50), via The Metropolitan Museum of Art (more…)

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013, Designed by Sou Fujimoto, © Sou Fujimoto Architects, Image © 2013 Iwan Baan

Each year, the Serpentine Gallery commissions an outstanding architect who has yet to build on British soil to design a Pavilion in the yards of the gallery in Hyde Park. This year’s pavilion, an impressive cloud of white steel built upon a three-dimensional grid, was conceived by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. (more…)

In the buildup to his upcoming show at the Scottish National Galleries, Peter Doig recently sat down with The Telegraph to discuss his work, his high prices at auction, and the multifaceted appearance of much of his work.  “You try to create scenarios and atmospheres in your paintings,” Doig says. “I don’t set out to be deliberately sinister, but I always wanted to make paintings that told stories and suggested things.” (more…)

Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the first planned location for a traveling retrospective of the work of Jeff Koons, has announced that it will no longer be hosting the show.  The news comes in the wake of Director Jeffrey Deitch’s resignation from his position.  The exhibition will now open in New York at The Whitney Museum in June of next year. “It was decided by MOCA and the Whitney that it would be better for an exhibition as complex and ambitious at this one to be developed over a longer period of time,” said Whitney spokesman Stephen Soba. “And that the show should open in June in New York.”  (more…)

Gilbert & George, We Are (1985), courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

On view at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in both of its Salzburg locations (Villa Kast and Halle) is “30 Years,” an exhibition of works intended to be both “retrospective and prospective” of the gallery’s own history and future.  Presenting a series of works by artists who have passed through the lens of Ropac’s thorough gallery practice, the show is at turns a celebration and forecast of what’s to come for the expanding gallery brand.

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The recent exhibition of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci at Hollyroodhouse in Edinburgh has underlined the works’ ownership by the Royal Family, keeping them out of public ownership and exhibition in some of Britain’s largest museums.  Despite the availability of the works for viewing at the current time, The Guardian points out that the current ownership status of the works occasionally places them into competition with larger retrospectives, with the broader public often missing out. (more…)

Robert Irwin, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue³ III, all images courtesy Pace London

Currently, Pace London‘s 6 Burlington Gardens location is presenting the gallery’s first exhibition of works by American artist Robert Irwin. The new work springs from the artist’s pioneering practice during the West Coast’s monumental Light and Space movement.  Born in 1928, Irwin has been exploring the concepts of perception and space for over sixty years. Beginning as a painter, he was a foundational member of the Light and Space movement in the 1960s, helping to develop a concept of art as a response to specific life experiences in equal measure with the work’s surrounding environmental conditions.

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Ken Price, Big Load (1988), via The Met

Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective, currently on view at the Met, marks the first major exhibition of work the late Ken Price in New York. Throughout his career, the Los Angeles-based Price, who passed away last year at the age of 77, challenged the traditional limitations of clay as a sculpting medium, rejecting the narrow-mindedness that often pigeonholed the medium as a lesser form.  Through his whimsical, elaborate forms, Price returned emphasis to clay, answering its detractors with a resoundingly intriguing body of work.

Ken Price, Balls Congo (2003), via Architectural Digest (more…)

A group of artists, led by Jules de Balincourt, are taking active measures to prevent the ongoing cycle of gentrification from driving them from their studio spaces in the North Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick.  The rising rents in the swiftly gentrifying neighborhood has some artists pushing to take a stand before they are priced out.  “Ten years ago, artists were paying $1 a square foot. Now, in some cases, it’s as much as $4,” says artist William Powhida. “We’re seeing floors subdivided into smaller and smaller spaces, and landlords are charging more and more money. It certainly prices out a number of artists.” (more…)

Since 1983, New York City has constructed or installed public art works at 300 sites throughout the five boroughs under the Percent for Art program. This year, will celebrate its 30 year commitment with the introduction of a mobile app that catalogs these constructions, allowing interested viewers and visitors to the city to find works constructed under this program on an interactive map of the city.  The app will continue to update itself with new installations as well, making it a vital tool for keeping track of current public art installations. (more…)

A woman who openly criticized painter Eric Fischl at the Art Southampton art fair this past weekend later received a call from the artist himself, apparently incensed that she did not care for his work.  Isabel Barnard-Biderman, a former gallery owner, had left her phone number in hopes of getting a signed copy of Fischl’s book, Bad Boy, and instead received a call from the artist. “I went home and the phone rings and it’s Eric saying, ‘What do you mean you don’t like my paintings?’ ”Bernard-Biderman said. “I don’t really know him. He said, ‘Maybe when you come back you’re going to like them.’”  (more…)

Edward Hopper, Study for Nighthawks, (1941 or 1942), via The Whitney

An Edward Hopper painting inevitably leads the viewer to contemplation of the meaning and purpose of the simple and mundane moments that make up the majority of our lives. His scenes depict the usual, the all-too-familiar, and even the occasional melancholy moments of existence.  Empty gas stations, coffee shops, movie theaters, and bedrooms communicate the paradoxical isolation of American society;  while many of the inhabitants are depicted in social settings, in crowds or social establishments, they convey overwhelming feelings of remorse, isolation and resignation. Through his brushstrokes and pencil marks, Hopper provides a commentary on the American life of mid-20^th century, a commentary that is in many cases still applicable to the America of today.

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, (1942), via The Whitney (more…)

Barry Bergdoll, MoMA’s Architectural Curator for the past six years, has announced that he will be leaving the position to return to Columbia University as chair of the Art History Department.  “The university has now requested that I return to teach full time,” Mr. Bergdoll said in a letter to journalists. “It is for me a great honor that I feel also recognizes the scholarly work that I have continued to pursue most recently in exhibitions and publications here at MoMA.” (more…)

The Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome has announced critic and curator Hou Hanrou as its new artistitc director.  The Chinese-born Hanrou will take up the position in September, assuming responsibility for the museum’s diverse blend of programming during a time when the museum is struggling to keep its head above water in a difficult European economy. (more…)

Artist Jonathan Yeo’s portrait of Damien Hirst, depicting the artist sitting in one of his own formaldehyde cubes, will go on view this fall at the National Portrait Gallery in London.  The work is part of a show of Yeo’s recent paintings, including portraits of other artists and British political figures.  “Even when we realize it’s a chemical dry suit, which he uses to make his formaldehyde works, it’s not entirely clear if he is making something or whether he is being pickled in one of his own tanks. This power balance is something of which we were both conscious through the creation of the portrait.” Yeo says of the work. (more…)

An EU-funded project that would transform the Piazza Giuseppe Verdi in La Spezi, Italy into a mirrored installation by artist Daniel Buren is currently on hold, following the vocal protests of a group of citizens led by critic Vittorio Sgarbi.  The debates rise from the prospective removal of ten pine trees to make room for seventy-five new orange trees in the space, and effectively stalled the project, which had previously been green-lighted by the local government. (more…)