Anish Kapoor has contributed to Artforum’s “500 Words” section this week, describing his recent work with the pigment Vantablack, and its capabilities for absorbing light to create a sense of infinite depth on a flat surface.  “I’m absolutely sure that to make new art, you have to make new space,” he writes.  “Malevich’s black square doesn’t just make a proposition about non-images or black as an image; it suggests that space works in a different way than previously conceived.” (more…)

An article this week in the Financial Times forecasts a “grim” outlook for UK Museums in the face of harsh budget cuts and austerity measures.  Those in the field note that while museums seem to be at a stronger state than ever within the British Nation, operational budget cuts threaten to hamper continued development and harm future plans.  “Museums are ironically better than ever before, better presented, better run and in better condition,” says  Stephen Deuchar, chief executive of the Art Fund.  “It’s just at the point where we ought to be reaping all the benefit from that investment that revenue funding is being cut back at a worrying pace.” (more…)

Giuseppe Penone, Earth on Earth – Face (2014), via Marian Goodman

The New York outpost of Marian Goodman Gallery is currently presenting an exhibition of new works by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone, continuing the artist’s practice of casting living trees in order to reposition his subject’s relationship to the natural world.  The exhibition, curated by Dieter Schwarz, director of the Kunstmuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, also culls a series of historically resonant works from the artist’s early career, extending a natural progression throughout the last 40 years of the artist’s practice. (more…)

Rudolf Stingel, (Installation View), all images courtesy Gagosian Hong Kong

On view at Gagosian Hong Kong is an exhibition of recent paintings by Rudolf Stingel, representing the Italian artist’s first major exhibition of work in Asia. Exploring the nature of memory and the relationship between artwork and artist, Stingel continues expanding the vocabulary of painting with this series of work.

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Keith Haring, Untitled (May 29, 1984) (1984), via Art Observed

Culling a minimal selection of works from Keith Haring’s immense output over the course of his life, Skarstedt Gallery is currently presenting Heaven and Hell a series of colorfully surreal compositions from 1984 and 1985, several years before the artist passed away in 1990. (more…)

Yayoi Kusama has earned the hyperbolic title of the “world’s most popular artist” following the release of Art Newspaper’s annual survey.  “Kusama is the only one of our artists who sells on every continent.  “She’s very rare in that she has this kind of credibility within the art world establishment, but she also has a very broad popular appeal,” says Glenn Scott Wright, co-director of Victoria Miro. (more…)

The Dia Art Foundation has acquired composer LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela’s famous Dream House installation for its permanent collection, and will recreate the work at its 545 West 22nd Street Chelsea location this summer and fall from June 17 through Oct. 24.    They’ve made this incredible contribution to music that I think is still very underappreciated nationally and even internationally,” says Dia head Jessica Morgan.  “He should be understood as a John Cage of our era.” (more…)

Writer Louis Menand is in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, reviewing the recent restoration of Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals using a specially designed lighting system, and the small crowd that gathers each day to watch as the murals’ lights are turned off.  “You can still see the bones of the murals, the formal architecture—Rothko’s floating blocks, made to resemble portals in these pieces—but the glow is gone,” he writes.  “As one observer put it, when the lights go off, comedy turns into tragedy.” (more…)

London’s Hayward Gallery has commissioned a major commission from artist Carsten Höller for the artist’s upcoming retrospective, Decision, inviting the artist to design a pair of slides for installation on the outside of its facade.  “Decision will ask visitors to make choices, but also, more importantly, to embrace a kind of double vision that takes in competing points of view, and embodies what Höller calls a state of ‘active uncertainty’ – a frame of mind conducive to entertaining new possibilities.” says Ralph Rugoff, the gallery director. (more…)

Pace Gallery has announced an ambitious architectural expansion for its 540 West 25th Street location in New York, turning the building into an 8 floor gallery and office complex with 60,000 square feet of space.  “The last ten years have seen incredible changes in the art world as creative communities from different parts of the world have started to connect. Now it’s time for the art galleries to change too. This new building gives us the chance to reimagine what we are all about and that’s exactly what we plan to do,” says President Marc Glimcher. (more…)

Anicka Yi, You Can Call Me F (Installation View), via Art Observed

Five vinyl tents populate the darkened upstairs gallery at The Kitchen. There are two constants in this room, a steady hum of rotating motor helmets and an indiscernible smell. Through these minimal elements, Anicka Yi brings us encapsulated ecologies, and a single lively billboard with the words “You Can Call me F” to the Kitchen, an exhibition layered with materials, time-scales, and most of all, infusions of body matter.

Anicka Yi, You Can Call Me F (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Henry Moore, Wunderkammer – Origin of Forms installation view, Photo: Mike Bruce, Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

Gagosian London presents a new look at Henry Moore’s body of work in its current exhibition, a cunningly arranged series of small-scale sculptures.  Though best-known for his large abstractions of the human form, Moore’s inspiration often came from small objects he found in nature—pebbles, shells, animal bones—which have been preserved in his Hertfordshire studio in Perry Green, his former home and now a museum and headquarters of the Henry Moore Foundation.  These pieces are currently on display in this unique show demonstrating Moore’s artistic process. (more…)

A survey by Art Newspaper shows that almost one third of US Museum solo shows go to artists represented by just one of the top five galleries worldwide: Marian Goodman, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner, or Pace.  “Curators are abdicating and delegating their responsibilities to more adventurous gallerists who, aside from the profit motive and in some respects because of it, seem in many cases to be bolder and more curious than their institutional counterparts,” says Robert Storr, the dean of the Yale University School of Art. (more…)

In the wake of the controversy over its canceled Hermann Nitsch show, Mexico City’s Museo Jumex has appointed Julieta González as chief curator and interim director, replacing the departed Patrick Charpenel.  “Although Patrick is now moving on, the bonds between him and Museo Jumex are indissoluble,” said Jumex heir Eugenio López Alonso. “I am certain we will have the opportunity to collaborate with him in the future.” (more…)

The thieves behind the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum have been identified, according to a report by Breitbart.  The career criminals George Reissfelder and Lenny DiMuzio were named as the perpetrators by anonymous sources within the FBI, which had recently been reinvestigating the case.  Reissfelder had previously been represented by Senator John Kerry during his days of private defense practice for a murder conviction, which was overturned.  “I don’t know if those paintings ended up on eBay,” Kerry once joked, “but they’re not on my wall!” (more…)

Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis will leave her position at the museum after five years at the helm of the museum that have been marked by criticism and occasionally turbulent personnel changes.  She will move to be the first international director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon.  “I want to keep all that is good about the museum, which I admire deeply, while developing ways in which it can make more of its context and position,” she says, “especially in relation to the neighboring Modern Art Centre, and more widely.” (more…)

Lynda Benglis sits down with John Baldessari in this month’s issue of Interview magazine for an exchange in which the two artists compare working styles, mutual inspirations and their shared interest in hybrid forms of art making.  “I think I started doing the [paint] pouring because I couldn’t pour wax on the floor and make it work, and I wasn’t interested in straight canvases,” Benglis said.  “I had made these sort of popsicle-stick paintings that were limited in format. But I was mocking the whole issue of figure ground.” (more…)

Alicja Kwade, Something absent, whose presence was expected (2015), via Johann König

A narrative surrealism infuses the work of Alicja Kwade.  Works depict objects in the midst of transformation, moments of fusion, transposition and alteration of forms or materials that give the viewer the impression that time may in fact be standing still, if only for a moment.  This sense of momentary pause is on view at the artist’s most recent solo exhibition at Johann König in Berlin, where the artist is presenting a body of new work under the title Something absent, whose presence was expected. (more…)

Klaus Albrecht Schröder, the director of Vienna’s Albertina Museum, has publicly called for a time limit Nazi-loot restitution claims for work held in public collections  “The international community should decide on a sensible time frame of 20 or 30 years from now,” Schröder argues. “If we don’t set a time limit of around 100 years after the end of the Second World War, then we should ask ourselves why claims regarding crimes committed during the First World War should not still be valid; why we don’t argue anymore about the consequences of the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian war, and why we don’t claim restitution of works of art that have been stolen during previous wars?” (more…)

The Guggenheim has appointed two new trustees to its board this week, Artforum reports.  Valentino D. Carlotti, a Senior Partner at Goldman Sachs, and private investor David Shuman will join the museum leadership, both of whom have worked with the museum in the past as collectors and supporters of recent acquisitions. (more…)

A Munich court ruled in favor of the Kunstmuseum Bern’s claim to the trove of Cornelius Gurlitt this past week, rejecting the suit by Gurlitt’s cousin Uta Werner.  Even so, the situation remains mostly unresolved, as the Task Force appointed to sort the provenance of the works have only returned a handful of findings, and several works are already under legal contention. (more…)

As the fallout over Brazil’s scandal regarding oil giant Petrobas’s continues, the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba is receiving 139 works from the collections of Petrobas heads and other involved parties, including pieces by Salvador Dali and Joan Miró.  The majority of work comes from the collection of Petrobras’ former director of services Renato Duque, who stands accused of siphoning off over $3.8 billion from Petrobras. (more…)

Tracey Emin’s My Bed has gone back on view at the Tate Modern, following the work’s record-setting auction sale last year for £2.2 Million.  “I always admired the honesty of Tracey, but I bought My Bed because it is a metaphor for life, where troubles begin and logics die,” says its new owner, Count Christian Duerckheim. (more…)

Plans for a New York outpost of the Andy Warhol Museum have reportedly been abandoned, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  “Despite the efforts of both the museum and the developers, an internal study of business and other operational considerations led the museum to this decision,” Director Eric Shiner said in a statement. (more…)