The Whitney Museum has set the opening date for its new, Renzo Piano-designed building in the Meatpacking District location on May 1st of next year. The news came this week during the Museum’s annual gala benefit. (more…)
A recent article in Financial Times by writer Bendor Grosvenor takes a discerning look at the specter of price speculation in the contemporary market, and notes some of the more manipulative practices in guarantor purchases. “To liven things up, they are allowed to bid the work up during the sale too. But if they happen to buy it, their presale negotiation (again, undisclosed) means they will not pay anything like the “price” reported by the auction house, and nor will the new ‘value’ of the work be representative,” says Grosvenor. “Almost half of the lots in Christie’s sale last week were guaranteed.” (more…)
A recent article by the New York Times cites the newest trend among today’s ultra-rich art collectors is the founding of their own boutique museums to house their collection, tracing the trend back to François Pinault’s purchase of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2006. Other museums covered include Bernard Arnault’s Fondation Luis Vuitton, and Eli Broad’s Los Angeles museum currently under construction. (more…)
Thomas Houseago, Moun Room (Installation View), via Ellen Burke for Art Observed
Thomas Houseago is known for his large-scale sculpture work, immense, roughshod works that use cheap materials and a relatively unstable construction process to create immediately impressive, visually stimulating objects that often play on the dissonance between subject and depiction. Pulling the viewer into the artist’s unique sculptural vision, the works unfold over the course of their creation, physical demands and limitations aiding in the work’s construction. (more…)
London-based artist Jonty Hurwitz has unveiled a series of 3-D printed sculptures so small that they can not be seen with the naked human eye, works that are so small they can be placed inside the eye of a needle. “The challenge is that these works exist beyond the limits of our perceptual capabilities, and as a consequence beyond the realms of what we can visualize,” Hurwitz says. “The thickness of a single hair is something that every person has pondered at some point in their childhood.” (more…)
The inaugural Los Angeles edition of Paris’s FIAC art fair has been pushed back to 2016 in an effort to give galleries more time to prepare for the event. “FIAC has listened to the recommendations of its participants to modify the launch of its Los Angeles endeavor to provide both organizers and galleries sufficient time for optimal preparation,” the organization said in a statement. (more…)
Mass MOCA has announced a series of important collaborations with James Turrell, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Laurie Anderson and Jenny Holzer, among others, each of which will be included in the museum’s newly constructed exhibition spaces, which will be completed in 2017. “We’re teaming up with people who have great bodies of artworks that we are hosting,” says Director Joseph C. Thompson. (more…)
Manifesta 11, held in Zurich in 2016, has announced Christian Jankowski its lead curator, the first time an artist has been invited to fill the role. “Jankowski will investigate the whole array of art’s authorship, its production and its reflection on Zurich’s professional landscape,” says Director Hedwig Fijen. “In doing so, Manifesta 11’s Chief Curator approaches the complex identities of the city in an unexpected way, reaching out to audiences beyond the inner circle of contemporary art biennials.” (more…)
Sam Durant, Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington D.C. (2005), via LACMA
After its entry to LACMA’s permanent collection in 2013, Sam Durant’s Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington D.C. is on view for the first time at its permanent home. Durant has always been strongly tied to the historical and social dynamics in America, and the artist’s ongoing work with the flux of history and spatial politics perhaps reached an apex with this installation. (more…)
Mick Peter, all photos via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed
The newly re-opened SculptureCenter in Long Island City has earned a reputation for forward-thinking exhibitions and thematic concerns, opening new dialogues between the constructed, three-dimensional object and its related artistic formats. It’s perhaps highly fitting then, that the exhibition space’s newest show, and its first since its impressive renovation, would focus specifically on these links of space and form. (more…)
Richard Serra, Dead Load (2014), via Art Observed
Richard Serra has had a strong showing in the past months. The 74-year old artist closed out a pair of wildly praised exhibitions at Gagosian New York late last year, and followed it up with a lifetime achievement award this year from Americans for the Arts. The New York-based artist is bringing a series of new works to Gagosian’s London locations on Davies Street and Britannia Street, offering a concise look at the artist’s current aesthetic interests. (more…)
The ongoing dispute between the city of North Miami and MOCANoMi has finally been resolved, with the museum giving a small percentage of its permanent collection to the departed board members, who have since founded a new museum called the Institute of Contemporary Art. “Our focus is that MOCA shall remain an internationally recognized force in contemporary art while continuing to have a profound impact in our community,” says Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime. (more…)
El Anatsui, Yet Another Place (2014)
Building himself a uniquely personal technique in which he reforms cast-away materials such as bottle caps and copper wire, El Anatsui has been orchestrating works that go against the definitions of any singular medium and dimension. Standing between a vague figuration and an expressive abstraction of bright colors, the artist’s constructions from discarded materials resist to classification in any one form as sculpture, installation or painting. (more…)
Frank Stella, Concentric Square (1966), via Phillips
The Phillips Contemporary Evening Sale concluded Thursday evening, capping off the fall auction season with a staid, relatively stable performance. While the sale lacked some of the flair and fireworks of the proceeding evening at Christie’s, a number of notable sales defined the evening, as the auction house achieved a final tally of $52 million, with 8 of the 47 lots on offer failing to sell. (more…)
Mickalene Thomas is on Nowness this week, talking about her recent film profiling the life of her late moth, Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman. “It allowed me to look at her not only as a subject—as my muse—but as a person. I really tried to understand her world, her own sexuality and femininity and beauty,” Thomas says. (more…)
The New Museum has announced the list of artists for its 2015 Triennial, Surround Audience, which will be curated by Lauren Cornell and artist Ryan Trecartin. The exhibition will include work by DIS, Casey Jane Ellison (who will be filming her web series Touching the Art at the museum), and Ed Atkins, among others. According to the press release, Surround Audience “explores how artists are currently depicting subjectivity, unpacking complex systems of power, and claiming sites of artistic agency.” (more…)
An article in Forbes traces the conclusion of the modern and contemporary art auctions over the past two weeks, and places the overall sales during the two series of sales at an unprecedented $1.78 billion. “We’ve seen a trend over the last few years where clients are going into hard assets, from real estate to art, which is a neutral currency,” says Citi Bank head of art advisory and finance, Suzanne Gyorgy. “We continue to see U.S. collectors discretely buying at a high level.” (more…)
Tracey Emin, Good Body (2014), all images courtesy White Cube Bermondsey
On view at White Cube Bermondsey, London is a new exhibition by English artist (and YBA member) Tracey Emin. Entitled The Last Great Adventure is You, the show will be her first at White Cube in five years, and will remain on view through November 16th.
Andy Warhol, Triple Elvis [Ferus Type] (1963), via Christie’s
The market has a new world auction record after Christie’s monumental sale last night in New York, an $852.9 million benchmark that saw 92% of the works find buyers, and 69 of the 75 works on sale exceed $1 million in its final sales total. Capitalizing on a remarkably strong selection of works and an eager buying pool, the auction saw a number of impressive figures reached, as well as several artist records fall. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal writes on the Chinatown gallery operated by young curator and art dealer Amy Li out of her father’s He Zhen Snap Button Co. Shop “There are so many assumptions attached to the word ‘gallery,’” Li says. “This is just a space where I work as a curator and art dealer. I didn’t know anyone who could introduce me to a job opening. That’s why I continue to do this.” (more…)
The Frick Museum’s proposed expansion plan has met with a new challenge by opposing forces, this time from a group called Unite to Save the Frick which is citing a 1973 agreement by the museum not to alter a garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Russell Page. This same garden would be demolished in the new expansion, giving the protesting party a stronger case. “It would have to be taken very, very seriously, because there is no qualitative need for this expansion,” said Roberta Brandes Gratz, a former panel member with the Landmarks Preservation Commission. “This is not really necessary for exhibition purposes. Given that, the permanence issue will be more important.” (more…)
Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, Still from untitled work in progress (2014), via Regen Projects
Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch have enjoyed one of the more distinctive artistic collaborations in recent history, creating bizarre viewing platforms, caves, stadium seating and other eerily familiar arrangements in the service of immersive film-viewing environments, some of which is currently on view at the duo’s first exhibition at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. Combining a set of Trecartin and Fitch’s bizarrely evocative sculptures with films and installations, the show welcomes a deep investigation into the pair’s practice, both as solo artists and in collaboration. (more…)
Mark Rothko, No. 21 (Red, Brown, Black and Orange) (1951), via Sotheby’s
Following a strong sale of works from the Mellon Collection last night, many were expecting Sotheby’s to continue with an exceptional start to the auction week, and given the strong offering the auction house had on view this past week at its York Avenue exhibition space, it was conceivable that it would bring forth a competitive sale. However, a number of major passes and underwhelming bids during the sale left the auction house with what could best be classified as a moderate success with $343 million tally, as a number of records were set, while other works failed to live up to initial estimates. (more…)
The Victoria and Albert Museum is preparing to unveil a cast of Michelangelo’s David, which was given to Queen Victoria in 1857, after a lengthy restoration. The 16-foot statue will go on view November 29th inside the the newly renovated Weston Cast Court. (more…)
