The impressive wealth of Qatar, the small Persian Gulf nation, is fundamentally affecting the current art market, the New York Times reports.  Collectors from the oil-rich state have spent astronomical sums on works in the past years, including $70 million for a Mark Rothko canvas, and $20 million for a Damien Hirst pill case.  At the center of this buying glut is Sheika al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the head of the Qatar Museums Authority and sister to the nation’s emir. “They’re the most important buyers of art in the market today,” said Patricia G. Hambrecht of Phillips. “The amount of money being spent is mind-boggling.” (more…)

Jeffrey Deitch, via LA Weekly

MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch may step down from his position at the Los Angeles institution, the LA Weekly reports.  Sources close to the museum have released information that Deitch will announce his departure on Wednesday, and that he is currently shopping for apartments in New York City. (more…)

Babyshambles, a British band led by Pete Doherty, have revealed the artwork for their new album ‘Sequel To The Prequel’ designed by Damien Hirst. The image uses a photograph by the infamous rock photographer Pennie Smith, who shot iconic photographs of The Clash and The Slits, among others. The album, which is the Babyshambles’ third studio album, will be released on  September 2, 2013.

Read more at NME

Ronnie Cutrone, Photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, (1998), via Huffington Post

Artist Ronnie Cutrone passed away this past Sunday, at the age of 65. Perhaps best known for his time as pop artist Andy Warhol’s assistant from 1972 to 1982, Cutrone had been a regular at Warhol’s Factory since 1965, when he was still in high school. At the age of 15, Cutrone became a go-go dancer with the Velvet Underground as part of the band’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable show, and befriended many of the artists associated with the West Village arts scene of the 70s and 80s, including Lou Reed and Jim Morrison.

Ronnie Cutrone, Quick Change Artist (2004), via Galerie Gmurzynska, Art Basel Miami 2011

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The Russian government has refused to reunite the collections Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin, which has stood as a point of contention between the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg over the past months. Both institutions currently own parts of the collection, which was divided in half after Stalin shuttered the Museum of New Western Art in 1948.  Former director of the Pushkin Museum Irina Antonova spoke out on the decision last week on Moscow television, stating a hope that the works would be reunited.  “I believe that in the end common sense must triumph,” she said. “We will have a state that will understand what it is to have the kind of museum that we don’t have in Moscow, a top museum of world art in the capital.” (more…)

British artists Gilbert and George have been announced as the next commission for the High Line’s popular Billboard exhibition series.  Opening September 3rd, the artists will exhibit a version of their 1984 piece Waking, featuring the pair surrounded by attractive young men.  “With all the talk today about urban life and gay marriage,” Said High Line Art director Cecelia Alemani, “it seems even more appropriate now.” (more…)

Gerhard Richter, Abdu (2009),  © Gerhard Richter 2013

Currently on display at Gagosian Gallery’s London space on Davies Street are a series of 4 tapestries, created in 2009 by prominent artist Gerhard Richter, entitled Abdu, Iblan, Musa and Yusuf.  Combining the artist’s signature style with bold new aesthetic forms, the works are based on the artist’s 1990 work, Abstract Painting (724-4).

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The Museum of Modern Art has announced an expansive retrospective for artist Sigmar Polke, set to open on April 19th, 2014.  Pulling from the artist’s broad explorations in painting, film and performance, the exhibition will feature some of Polke’s largest paintings and digitally rendered works, requiring their exhibition on the second floor of the museum, which is generally reserved for special exhibitions.  “Some of the paintings are so big, they can only fit on the second floor,” says MoMA Associate Director Kathy Halbreich. “This is one of the largest shows MoMA has ever done.” (more…)

Long Island art dealer Glafira Rosales was arraigned this week in court, pleading “not guilty” to charges of selling over sixty fraudulent art works claimed to be by post-war masters Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, among others.  The prosecution also accused Rosales of hiding the proceeds (over $12.5 million in undeclared incomes) of the sales in foreign sales accounts. (more…)

CODA, Party Wall (Installation View), via MoMA PS1

The Young Architects Program, presented jointly by MoMA and MoMA PS1, challenges young professionals and recent graduates alike in its annual competition to design an installation for MoMA PS1’s courtyard. Each year, the winning design is fabricated and opened to the public during the summer months. The jury takes environmental sustainability heavily into account when choosing the design, which is an especially relevant criterion considering that EXPO 1, the ecology and politics-focused three-venue event, is currently on view at PS1. This year’s winning entry, Party Wall by the Ithaca-based firm CODA, features a semi-permeable skin made from skateboard manufacturing by-products mounted upon a frame of steel beams.

CODA, Party Wall Rendering, via MoMA PS1 (more…)

Detroit’s bankruptcy filing this week has once again placed the future of the Detroit Institute of Arts collection in question, with creditors sizing up the museum’s collection of works by Caravaggio, van Gogh and more.  Despite arguments for the preservation of the collection, emergency manager Kevyn D. Orr’s spokesman, Bill Nowling claims:  “We cannot negotiate in good faith with our creditors by taking assets off the table. And all of our creditors have asked about the worth of the D.I.A. And we’ve told them that they’re welcome to find out.” (more…)

A number of works from the collection of the late Jan Krugier will go on sale this fall at Christie’s in Manhattan.  The sale, estimated to bring in about $160 million, includes a 1911 landscape by Kandinsky, estimated to bring somewhere between $20 million and $25 million.  “This painting represents a world he loved, one that falls between the figurative into the abstract,” said Conor Jordan, deputy chairman of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Department. (more…)

Diana Widmaier-Picasso, granddaughter of Pablo Picasso by his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, is currently undertaking an ambitious project: a catalogue raisonné of her grandfather’s sculptures.  Widmaier-Picasso’s ambitious project looks to consolidate the artist’s output in the form, thereby increasing his work’s value in the marketplace.  “Picasso is the greatest sculptor of the 20th century,” Carmen Gimenez of the Guggenheim Museum said. “He practically reinvented modern sculpture. But as soon as you begin working with his sculptures, you realize you need to learn more.” (more…)

A number of U.S. Museums are exploring new approaches to exhibiting works while in storage, the LA Times reports.  Museums like LACMA and the Broad Museum have attempted to place larger portions of their collections in “visible storage,” where interested visitors can view them.  “There is this public assumption that museums are hoarding objects in dark rooms, and by the way that isn’t totally wrong,” says LACMA Director Michael Govan. “What we’re saying is that those objects are worthy for viewing and studying if not always for exhibitions. So you’re not contemplating a masterpiece, but maybe you’ll find value in comparing and contrasting different examples of vases.”

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Thomas Hirschhorn, Gramsci Monument (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

“Everyone is an intellectual.”  These words by Italian anarchist/Marxist Antonio Gramsci adorn the walls of Gramsci Monument, the fourth and final entry into Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn’s monumental installation series to his favorite thinkers and writers, currently open in the Forest Houses housing project in the South Bronx.  Opening the platform to cultural dialogues, political research and community art efforts, Gramsci Monument continues Hirschhorn’s efforts at destabilizing the spatial encounters of a work of art, broadening its scope to a space where all participants are welcome to create their own meaning. (more…)

Renzo Piano, Model for New Whitney Museum (Installation View), via Alex Cosio for Art Observed

The Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, in collaboration with Fondazione Renzo Piano, is currently exhibiting a retrospective of work produced by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, the architecture firm conceived and headed by Pritzker Prize laureate Renzo Piano. Piano, who was born into a family of contractors in Genoa, has emphasized the importance of hands-on experimentation as well as technological innovation throughout his career.  Particularly of note are Piano’s models and sketches regarding the design and construction of the Whitney Museum’s future home, tucked between the High Line and Hudson River in the Meatpacking District. (more…)

James Turrell, Roden Crater (Sunset) (2009), via Kayne Griffin Corcoran

With concurrent shows opening at LACMA, the Guggenheim, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, James Turrell is certainly in the spotlight this summer. The Kayne Corcoran Griffin gallery is also joining in on the artist’s ubiquity, filling its new space on south La Brea with an exhibition focused on the Roden Crater project. Aptly named Sooner Than Later, Roden Crater, the show examines Turrell’s unfinished transformation of the crater into a sight-specific masterwork that has been in development since 1974. (more…)

Dinner view, all photos by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

The Parrish Art Museum held their annual Midsummer Party this past Saturday, an essential event in the Hamptons social calendar, welcoming benefactors and guests to the museum’s newly completed home.

Guests inside the museum (more…)

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dustheads (1982), via Christie’s

This week, Sotheby’s and Christie’s released their sales reports for the first half of 2013, with both sides announcing record sales figures. Christie’s has achieved a global sales total of £2.4 billion, including buyers’ premiums, a 9% increase on last year’s figure. The total includes the private sales of £465.2 million, an increasingly popular segment of the sales market, which saw a 13% growth from last year. The report also marks the third year in a row that the auction house has set new records for the period in both company and art market history.

Pablo Picasso, Étreinte (1971), via Sotheby’s

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The Washington Post has published an extensive look at the failure of the Hirshhorn “bubble” project, which saw the departure of several museum board members, and a readdress of the museum’s core mission.  Slated to cost between $12.5 million and $15.5 million, the bubble would have also operated at a loss of $2.8 million annually, which added to the increasingly poor morale around the project.  The museum is currently in recovery mode, with sponsors, donors and staff taking a moment to gather themselves.  “We’ve hit a rough patch, but they say they want it to succeed and move on,” Smithsonian Undersecretary Richard Kurin says. (more…)

Belgian-born Carsten Höller has announced a major site-specific installation for his first major exhibition in Spain, at the soon-to-open, €62 million Botín Centre in Northern Spain.  Designed by Renzo Piano, the new museum will house the visual arts program of the Bótin Foundation, and Höller’s installation will seek to mirror its mission as “a laboratory to investigate how art influences emotion and creativity”. (more…)

The Jibaozhai museum in the northern Chinese region of Hebei has been shut down after authorities determined that nearly all of the works in its collection were fake.  Counterfeiting has been a major issue for China in the past, and government agencies are working to crack down on these violations.  “Jibaozhai has no qualification to be a museum as its collections are fake and it hasn’t reported to my department for approval,” says an official from the Hebei cultural heritage bureau. (more…)

Artist Thomas Hirschhorn, in New York for the opening of his Gramsci Monument at Forest Houses in the Bronx, appeared last week at Artists Space in Manhattan, for a discussion with art historians Hal Foster and Lisa Lee on his practice, writing and the necessity of documentation. “The act of writing is a good way of taking it seriously, to be clear with the work, and also to be clear with intention.  The act of writing is most important for the artistic will.”  He says. (more…)

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is leading a push to bring the Marfa Dialogues, a series of discussions and art events combining the arts and sciences in the small Texas arts community, to New York City, with the help of Cooper Union, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Columbia University.  The first edition of Marfa Dialogues/NY will focus on climate change and the environment.  “When a number of different organizations align on a topic, it elevates the visibility,” says director of the Rauschenberg Foundation Christy MacLear. (more…)