The Real Deal profiles the New York real estate world’s most active and avid art collectors, including Aby Rosen and Edward Minskoff, among others, who have become major players in the current market, and who have continued to vie for top works in recent years.  “Whatever the particular occupation may be, the collector becomes something of an addict,” says critic Judd Tully. (more…)

David Opdyke Exhibit A (2012), all photos via Josie Berman for Art Observed

This summer, Marianne Boesky Gallery’s uptown location has put forth a new group exhibition, organized by Aniko Berman, entitled Weird Science, a playful show that dwells on common threads that explore art as a discipline that attempts to logically reveal the possibility of unperceived worlds outside or within our own metaphysical landscape. Through process or content, the artists chosen attempt to expose the fantastic lurking behind everyday occurrences. (more…)

Poor working conditions and substandard pay persist at Abu Dhabi construction sites for the Louvre and Guggenheim, despite ongoing protests and investigations, the Art Newspaper reports.  The news comes from a new report by Gulf Labor, noting few improvements in the past year.        (more…)

Studio Museum head Thelma Golden has been appointed to the board of directors for the the Barack Obama Foundation in Chicago this week.  “I am very much looking forward to joining the Board of Directors, and working to make the Obama Presidential Center a hub for creative expression through the arts,” Golden said in a statement. “The South Side of Chicago has historically been the nexus of several important cultural movements for African-Americans, and I believe the new Center will help usher in a new era of community engagement for this extraordinary neighborhood.” (more…)

An article in Bloomberg this week notes the increasingly difficult challenges of turning a profit for smaller and less commercially-focused galleries, despite a booming art market, and points to writer/art adviser Magnus Resch’s book Management of Art Galleries for potential solutions.  “I could have just said, ‘The revenue numbers are terrible,’ but rather than being so negative I’m actually offering solutions,” Resch says. “It’s based on the analysis that I did.” (more…)

Artist Ai Weiwei has been granted his full 6-month visa by the UK Embassy, following an intervention by Home Secretary Theresa May.  “She has reviewed the case and has now instructed Home Office officials to issue a full six-month visa,” an embassy official said. “We have written to Mr Ai apologizing for the inconvenience caused.” (more…)

The ArcelorMittal Orbit, Anish Kapoor’s sculpture at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, will soon have its own Carsten Höller slide, after Kapoor invited the German artist to collaborate.  “I am thrilled that my tallest slide so far will cling onto Anish Kapoor’s The Orbit, taking an existing artwork as its site,” Höller says. “A slide is a sculptural work with a pragmatic aspect; a device for experiencing an emotional state that is a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness.” (more…)

The Financial Times notes the benefits of major corporations and financial institutions from collecting art, including benefits to the galleries and artists selling work.  “The important thing is that companies run a collection professionally,” says Loa Haagen Pictet, who chairs the International Association of Corporate Collections of Contemporary Art.  “They manage it, show it, and have a proper database inventory and conduct activities directed at the public.” (more…)

Anicka Yi, 7,070,430K of Digital Spit (Installation View), via Kunsthalle Basel

Following up on her widely praised commission at The Kitchen earlier this year, Anicka Yi is presenting a new body of work on view at the Kunsthalle Basel, under the title 7,070,430K of Digital Spit.  Continuing the artist’s interest in time-sensitive and formally unstable media, the exhibition includes a number of works in various states of destruction and decay, applied here to explore notions of forgetting and memory loss. (more…)

 Ai Weiwei, Bench (2004), via Faurschou Foundation Copenhagen

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is currently presenting an exhibition of collected works that span the artist’s long career, encountering and documenting the artist’s countless conflicts, arrests and vocal critiques of the Chinese regime.  As a social activist, the artist’s work reflects the history and challenges of China in the 21st Century, placed alongside his own reflection and perception of his home country.  His work is intended to act as a form of intervention, and to encourage social change within the contemporary art sphere, while reflecting on China as the product of its vastly deep historical reserves.  This practice, and its history against the backdrop of contemporary China is illustrated in detail at Farschou Foundation this year, as the institution presents Ai Weiwei: Ruptures. (more…)