Longtime auction market veteran Edward Dolman is returning from a three year stint at the Qatar Museums Authority to head Phillips, the perennial third-place auction house, and to challenge the long-running dominance of Sotheby’s and Christie’s.  “It’s certainly been tried before,” he said in a telephone interview with the New York Times. “I’ve always thought it would be good for everyone to offer clients more options, especially with the significant growth in the number of collectors there are now from all over the world.”    (more…)

The Silicon Valley Contemporary Art Fair opens this week, marking the first major art fair in the region, and the first concerted effort by the broader art market to cater to the new wealthy class of the U.S. tech sector.  The fair features over 1,000 on sale from over 300 artist, valued at over $100 million, and will feature a program of tech and performance centered works from artists like Marina Abramovic. (more…)

Richard Serra has unveiled a massive new public installation in Qatar, funded by the Qatari Museums Authority.   Stretching across the desert, the metal plates of East-West/West-East are all of identical height, and all match the height of the gypsum plateaus that sit to either side of the piece.  The project coincides with Serra’s first solo exhibition in the Middle East at Al RIWAQ DOHA Exhibition Space and QMA Gallery at Katara. (more…)

Hauser and Wirth has opened its newest gallery this spring in an unexpected location, an 18th-century farmhouse in Somerset, England.  Just outside the town of Bruton, the gallery space underlines the gallerists continued commitment to museum-quality spaces, similar to its renovated space on 18^th Street in New York. (more…)

The dispute between Third Point and Sotheby’s has taken a new turn, as the fund launches Value Sotheby’s, a website dedicated to stating the case against the current management at the auction house.  “Despite management touting a “record year” in 2013, Sotheby’s company health is not what the Company would lead you to believe,” the site notes, before citing figures from the embattled company’s past year. (more…)

As the art market continues to see record highs at auctions each season, many collectors are digging deeper into the history books to find historically significant artists that may command a high price at auction. “Whether the artists are old, dead or overlooked, people are turning over all the stones,” says Wendy Cromwell of Cromwell Art LLC and president of the Association of Professional Art Advisors. “It’s a function of a global market. Dealers have to have new material all the time.” (more…)

The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami has filed suit against North Miami for breach of contract, claiming that the city has allegedly ceased funding and maintenance to the museum as it pursues a merger with the Bass Museum in Miami Beach.   “The city’s neglect has put the very existence of our institution at risk,” says MOCA NoMi trustee Irma Braman. “And our current building has been an impediment to our services and mission for too long. We are dedicated to serving our public and we hope the city will move forward with us in a collegial and productive conversation so that MOCA can maintain a vibrant presence in North Miami and throughout the region.” (more…)

Corresponding with the opening of Mike Kelley’s retrospective at MOCA in Los Angeles, Opening Ceremony has released a series of t-shirts featuring artwork from Kelley’s works.  Graphics from The Poltergeist, Monkey Island, and other early projects will adorn shirts and bags, now on sale at the MOCA Store and at the Opening Ceremony locations. (more…)

Dan Graham, Slice (2013), via Art Observed

It’s been some time since Marian Goodman has hosted solo exhibitions in New York by Dan Graham, Giuseppe Penone, Danh Vo or Jeff Wall, and the gallery seems to have noticed, opening a four-artist show with a considerable amount of new work from each of the aforementioned, offering a welcome opportunity to catch up on the recent work of these significant artists.

Jeff Wall, Monologue (2013), via Art Observed (more…)

Oscar Murillo, Distribution Center (Installation View), via Art Observed

The newly opened Los Angeles Gallery The Mistake Room is inaugurating its downtown space with Oscar Murillo’s Distribution Center, a show of recent works by the artist.  Murillo, who is only 28, is perhaps best known for his large-scale paintings, if not for his young age and recent rise to the upper echelons of the art market. Here, his signature style is quickly noted, with canvases bordering on sculptural assemblage, debris and ephemera from his studio and travels are directly transplanted on to the canvas. Even in their installation, very few works happen to hang directly on the wall. Instead, they litter the floor and table surfaces like large, mis-matched carpet tiles, creating a kind of multi-layered horizontal work across the length of the room.

Oscar Murillo, Untitled (2014), via Art Observed (more…)

The Museum of Modern Art has officially filed its $1.6 million plan to demolish the former home of the American Folk Art Museum to expand its midtown campus.  The announcement comes almost a year after the Museum announced its initial plans to raze the building, after purchasing the building in 2011 for $31.2 million. (more…)

An agreement between Cornelius Gurlitt and the German government was announced on Monday, which gives state-appointed investigators one year to analyze the works seized from Mr. Gurlitt’s home.  The deal bypasses the German statute of limitations for stolen property (30 years), and shows the government’s increased willingness to deal with claims over works looted during the Nazi era.  “We are dealing with a top-class team of experts, and given Mr. Gurlitt’s advanced age and frail health, it can be expected that they should be able to complete their work within this time frame,” says spokesman Stephan Holzinger. (more…)

More information is being released on the upcoming Damien Hirst biography, the Art Newspaper reports.  The book, which will see release next year, will include a look at Hirst’s early work curating the now famed show Freeze in London’s docklands, and the Sensation show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. (more…)

The Guardian has published an imaginative profile on Marcel Duchamp, noting some of the artist’s quirks and passions, including his avid chess-playing, his daring transportation of his art materials out of Nazi Germany posing as a cheese vendor, and his takes on quickly produced artworks: “Quick art, that’s been the characteristic of the whole century from the cubists on, ” he once said.  “The speed that’s being used in space, in communications, is also being used in art. But things of great importance in art have always to be slowly produced.” (more…)

Damien Loeb, Tycho (2013), via Acquavella

Acquavella is currently showing a rare exhibition of new works by painter Damien Loeb,  featuring a series of paintings and sketches created over the past year, and focusing on Planet Earth’s unique position in the solar system.  Titled SOL-D, the series of oil paintings and sketches take their inspiration from a series of photographs Loeb made over the past decade, digital images captured on airplane flights, stargazing, and satellite images that document the celestial atmospheres of Earth and beyond. (more…)

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has named Tom Finkelpearl, current executive director of the Queens Museum, as the city’s cultural-affairs commissioner.  “He’s a visionary museum director,” says Robin Cembalest of ARTnews magazine. “You need an advocate to come out to explain how art can help people, create communities. He totally fits.” (more…)

Artist Bridget Riley has revealed a special painting commission for the Imperial College Healthcare Charity Art Collection, painting the 10th floor hallways of the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital building in London with her signature parallel lines and bright colors.   “It reminds patients that theirs is a transitory state,” Riley says. “That they are there to recover and rejoin life – that life goes on, and life is outside, and they feel reassured.” (more…)

Haim Steinbach, basics (1986), All Images Courtesy Serpentine Gallery

The Serpentine Gallery in London is currently presenting once again the world is flat., an exhibition celebrating Haim Steinbach’s forty-year career as a multimedia artist. Born in Israel and living in New York, Steinbach has presented a distinctive artistic practice by redefining what ‘collecting’ is, arranging familiar daily objects in his own methods while attributing further content and ground, allow the artist to invite viewers into extended readings on what is visible, but also on what lies beneath the surface of the work. (more…)

Sotheby’s saw impressive results this weekend at its Modern and Contemporary Asian Art auction in Hong Kong, with total sales topping $86 million.  World Record prices were achieved for 8 artists up for bidding that night, including a $12.1 price tag for Zhang Xiaogang’s Bloodline: Big Family No. 3. (more…)

Artist Xu Zhen is profiled on Nowness this week, following the artist’s commission at the Armory Show last month.  Giving a rare tour of his studio, Xu offers a perspective on his working style and his company, MadeIn, which produces the artist’s work as part of a broader creative project.  “I’m not confined to working in any specific medium,” Xu says. “I think concept is more important.” (more…)

The Park Avenue Armory will extend its annual residency program this year, dedicating 10 rooms on its second floor to a group of artists including New Yorker writer Sasha Frere-Jones, percussionist Ulysses Owens, Jr., dancers  Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey, and artist/choreographer Jason Akira Somma, among others.  “We are thrilled to be able to expand our program and to dedicate our entire second floor to our Artist-in- Residence program, allowing artists working in such a rich variety of genres, and at different points in their career, to explore and present new ideas,” says President and Executive Producer Rebecca Robertson.  (more…)

The New York Times has published an expansive gallery guide for the spring art season, profiling a selection of new shows, young galleries and interesting works across Brooklyn, Chelsea, Soho and both the Upper and Lower East Side.  Among the editors picks are Clearing Gallery in Bushwick, Participant Inc. downtown, and Franklin Parrasch uptown. (more…)

He Xiangyu, Wisdom Tower (2012-2013), all images courtesy White Cube Bermondsey

At White Cube Berdmonsey’s North Galleries is the first UK exhibition of work by Chinese artist He Xiangyu, composed of installations and multimedia sculptures meant to express cultural and social concerns while maintaining an ongoing interest in the body and its place in exchanges between the two.

(more…)

Claes Oldenburg, Model for a Mahogany Plug, Scale B (1969), via Art Observed

On view through April 12 at Hauser and Wirth Gallery’s 18^th Street location is a selection of works collected by Reinhardt Onnasch, one of the first German art dealers to open a gallery in New York after World War II, and a skilled curator who helped to launch the career of a number of New York’s most definitive post-war artists. Re-view: Onnasch Collection provides a glimpse into the work done by this collector and enthusiast, reflecting overlapping art movements that bridged the American and German art worlds of the time.

(more…)