Giuseppe Penone, Scrigno (2007), all images courtesy Gagosian Gallery

On view at Gagosian London is an exhibition of Giuseppe Penone’s large scale works from 2006-2008 as well as some more recent pieces. Entitled Circling, the exhibition includes 2 major works, Scrigno (Casket), 2007, and Sigillo (Seal), 2008, depicting the structure of trees, specifically: “the tree as a being that memorializes the feats of its existence” The display will remain on view through May 31, 2014.

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The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the collection of Leslie Wexner, who has shifted from being a major collector of a number of blue-chip 20th Century artists to exclusively focusing on the work of Pablo Picasso.  “My feeling was, and still is, that when you look at Picasso, you realize that he was the true founder of modern and contemporary art,” Wexner says. (more…)

Bill Viola is profiled in The Guardian this week, following the opening of his new long-term installation, Martyrs at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, featuring videos of people engulfed in frames or hung upside down.   “These people are left for dead and don’t expect to live,” Viola says. “That’s all I’ll say.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal looks at the recent movement of galleries into the Upper East Side, both by major players like Gagosian and smaller gallerists like Robert Blumenthal. “The Upper East Side is so unhip, it’s hip,” Blumenthal notes in the article. “Chelsea is a generation before me.” (more…)

Zhang Huan, Spring Poppy Field No. 34 (2014), via Pace Gallery London

One of the most influential and prolific contemporary artists from China, Zhang Huan has worked across a wide spectrum of practices including performance, installation, photography and sculpture, reflecting his personal history as well as the collective consciousness of the present society.  As a body artist, Huan has delivered performances in which he pushed the limits of physical and psychological endurance, echoing the issues such as war, social injustice and alienation while simultaneously commenting on concepts of spirituality and transcendence. Using his own body as his main tool along with different materials such as blood, meat, brushwood and live animals, he has given impressive and challenging performances in different art institutions around the world, provoking the viewers to contemplate on issues that are often ignored and avoided.

Zhang Huan, Spring Poppy Field No.14 (detail) (2014), via Pace Gallery London (more…)

Miroslaw Balka, We Still Need (2014), all images courtesy The Freud Museum

On view at The Freud Museum in London is a special exhibition from contemporary Polish sculptor and video artist Miroslaw Balka, featuring a series of installations referring to the period from 1938, when Sigmund Freud moved to London from Vienna to avoid Nazi persecution, until 1942, when four of his five sisters died in concentration camps. Densely layering Freud, Wagner and the Holocaust in equal measure, the measured and immersive installation will remain on view through May 25.

Miroslaw Balka, Above your head (2014), via White Cube

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A collection of 62 artworks, among them pieces by Van Gogh and Monet, have been donated to the National Gallery of Art from the estate of museum benefactor Paul Mellon, who passed away in 1999.  Of particular note is the Van Gogh piece Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves, created shortly after the artist cut off his ear, and suffered a break in his friendship with Paul Gauguin.  “It’s this very emotionally wrought period of time,” says curator Kimberly Jones. “I think this still life, of all the still lives, is the most Gauguin-like in terms of the pallete, the symbolism.  I can’t help but wonder, looking at this, if Paul Gauguin’s presence isn’t being very much felt in this painting.” (more…)

A major fire broke out yesterday at the Glasgow School of Art, reportedly caused by the explosion of a projector in the basement of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh building.  The school has reported that all occupants were evacuated safely with no casualties, but damage has been sustained to the building and the works of art inside, including works made in preparation for the school’s degree show.  “We didn’t think it was anything but we had to go out and then we saw smoke coming out and realised that it was really bad. It got to the point where flames were coming out of the top floor,” says student Hugh Thornhill.  “All that effort is gone, everyone’s work on that side of the building is ruined. Even if it didn’t catch fire it will be damaged extensively.” (more…)

Tunga, Na Lua (On the Moon) (2014) via Osman Can Yerebakan

Crystals, sponges, glass vessels and ceramics are among an array of materials on view at the current exhibition of new work by Tunga at Luhring Augustine’s Chelsea location. During a career spanning over four decades, Tunga has presented a body of multidisciplinary work, finding inspiration in poetry, physics and alchemy to create intricate, symbolic work that presents a visual challenge to the viewer.  Marking the artist’s fifth collaboration with the gallery, From ‘La Voie Humide’  underlines the artist’s strong interest in a multi-disciplinary approach to art, comprising a large selection of mediums and undertones running throughout the body of the exhibition.

Tunga, Untitled (2013) via Osman Can Yerebakan (more…)

Pierre Soulages is profiled in The New York Times this week, exploring the artist’s 60+ year career, and his position as one of the most successful artists in France, and his continuous output, even as he approaches his 95th birthday.  “I’ve decided to lose count of his age,” says dealer Dominique Lévy said. “I always feel he’s challenging me and pushing me and such a force of nature.” (more…)

The Morgan Library and Museum has completed digitization on its expansive collection of Rembrandt etchings, which will be available online beginning May 22nd.  “Completion of our Rembrandt project is another important milestone in the Morgan’s ongoing commitment to make its collections available to an ever wider audience,” says Director William M. Griswold. “We are extraordinarily pleased to be able to share them with scholars, students, and anyone interested in his art.” (more…)

The Met has made 400,000 public domain images available for free online, part of Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC), a new initiative to increase access to the images for non-commercial uses.  “Through this new, open-access policy, we join a growing number of museums that provide free access to images of art in the public domain,” says Director Thomas P. Campbell.  “I am delighted that digital technology can open the doors to this trove of images from our encyclopedic collection.”   (more…)

Peter Doig, Burger King (1984), all images courtesy Michael Werner Gallery

On view at Michael Werner Gallery in London is a show from Scottish painter Peter Doig that explores his earliest works, even ones from his student days at St. Martin’s College in London, when he was still finding his voice as a painter.  Included alongside some of the artist’s most iconic and important artworks from his first years of widespread success, the show is an intriguing study into Doig’s continually shifting and specific stylistic tendencies.

Peter Doig: Early Works (Installation View)

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The New Museum will launch NEW INC. its new incubator for Art, Design and Technology this summer, and has announced its first wave of technology and entrepreneurial advisors, among them Yancey Strickler (co-founder of Kickstarter), Aaron Koblin (artist and Creative Director at Google Creative Lab), and Lauren Cornell (New Museum Curator, Curator, 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects, and Museum as Hub projects).  The initiative will continue its search for members through the June 6th deadline.“We’re thrilled to have such a phenomenal group advising us,” says NEW INC.’s Lisa Phillips, co-founder of the program alongside Karen Wong. “They embody the kind of innovative thinking and entrepreneurial spirit we plan to foster in the program and, together with an expanded group of mentors, will be an invaluable resource to our community.”

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Kevin Sutherland, the Florida Pastor convicted of trying to sell fraudulent Damien Hirst paintings has been sentenced to six months in jail and five months of probation, the New York Times reports.  “Here he had a choice, and he made the wrong choice,” said Justice Bonnie G. Winter of State Supreme Court. “He could easily have rectified it in the right way.” (more…)

The Met has announced that it will undergo an immense renovation of its Modern Art wing, creating special showcase galleries and room for its expanding collection, especially following the windfall gift of Cubist and Modernist works from the collection of Leonard A. Lauder.  “Leonard’s collection is such a huge missing link between our very strong collections of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and our moderately strong holdings of early-20th-century,” says director Thomas P. Campbell, “that if we reconfigure the galleries, we have the potential to tell the chronological story.” (more…)

Damien Hirst has donated the gilded skeleton of a woolly mammoth, secured inside a steel and glass case, for auction in benefit of non-profit amfAR’s 21st Cinema Against AIDS gala.  “I wanted to play with these ideas of legend, history and science by gilding the skeleton and placing it within a monolithic gold tank,” Hirst said. “It’s such an absolute expression of mortality, but I’ve decorated it to the point where it’s become something else, I’ve pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful.” (more…)

The Brooklyn Museum has been given a $5 Million endownment towards its director position from the Leon Levy Foundation.  The gift formally makes Director Arnold L. Lehman the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum.  “I grew up in Brooklyn,” says gift namesake Shelby White, a founding trustee of the Leon Levy Foundation, “and I remember taking class trips to the museum to look at the Egyptian collection. I didn’t realize, until much later, that it was one of the greatest museums in the world.” (more…)

Nan Goldin, Veils (2011-14), all images courtesy Gagosian Gallery

On view at Gagosian Rome is a unique exhibition of works by American photographer Nan Goldin. Entitled Scopophilia, referring to the Greek word that means “love of looking,” or, more specifically, an erotic pleasure that comes from looking at images of the body, the works focus on themes of sex, violence, rapture, despair, and the blurring of gender.

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The New York Times summarizes the disputes in Miami stemming from a proposed move for MOCA North Miami to the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach.  The Museum Board has criticized the city for its failures to keep up the space around the museum, while the city accuses the institution of trying to take away the city’s art.  “The collection belongs to the city, and they are trying to steal it,” Mayor Lucie Tondreau says. (more…)

The Guggenheim Foundation has responded to the lawsuit filed by descendants of Peggy Guggenheim, calling the lawsuit “frivolous” and contradictory.  The original suit criticized the Foundation of using Peggy Guggenheim’s Venice home, donated to house her collection, as the site of numerous outside exhibitions, a charge the Foudation dismisses wholehandedly.  “They insist that no works other than Peggy Guggenheim’s be exhibited in the palazzo or the garden,” the statement says. “Yet between 1999 and 2013, they were instrumental in organising 14 exhibitions of works entirely foreign to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.” (more…)

Jack Shainman Gallery has opened its newest location, a three-floor, converted schoolhouse located in Hudson, NY.  “I just love the building so much—especially its bones,” says Shainman. “We were pleasantly naive when we first took the project on, otherwise, we’d never have done this.” (more…)

A Detroit Judge has issued a decision preventing city creditors from removing art from the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts for valuation outside the museum.  “The record fails to justify this extraordinary relief,” stated Judge Steven Rhodes after hearing arguments.

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Sherrie Levine, Bird Mask (2014) via Osman Can Yerebakan

Paula Cooper Gallery is currently presenting new works by one of the most iconic artists of The Pictures Generation, Sherrie Levine. The artist has been reinterpreting the set notions of ownership and authenticity in creative work for more than 30 years, while simultaenously commenting on the canonization process of art history.  Inspired by the pioneer Constructivist Aleksander Rodchenko’s three panel monochrome from 1921, Levine’s new exhibition, Red Yellow Blue, refers to the reduction of a painting to its most minimalistic forms and fundamental colors.  One of the most notable artists of a generation engaged with appropriation and representation of consumeristic and media-centric production, Levine’s works in the exhibition investigate the essence of art-making, and its creative limitations with reference to certain precedents. Regarding art history as a circular form instead of a linear one, Levine goes back to the roots of art production to redefine set concepts on issues such as death and mysticism throughout the works on view. (more…)