Miuccia Prada is taking an active role in strengthening diplomatic relations between Iran and Italy, lending works from the Fondazione Prada’s current exhibition Serial Classic, on ancient sculpture, to an exhibition starting next month at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran. (more…)

Tania Bruguera has returned to the United States, following 8 months of detainment in Cuba for her protest work, Tatlin’s Whisper #6.  The artist’s arrest for the work had evoked fears that she may be placed in detention for “disturbing the public order.”
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Jack Pierson, Two Places at Once (2015), via Cheim & Read

For his first exhibition with Cheim & Read in over 6 years, Jack Pierson has returned to the canvas, bringing a series of bright, pastel-colored compositions that trace the artist’s renewed interest in the painterly surface as an opportunity for encounter, while exploring his own meditative process in realizing, executing and completing his works.  Created during a self-imposed retreat on the island of North Captiva (just off Florida’s Gulf Coast), Pierson seems to have taken a moment away from his often brash, challenging wordplay and sculptural practice to examine the beaming sun and gentle waves of the island getaway. (more…)

LA’s The Broad is set to open September 20th with a vast exhibition of its permanent collection.  “This installation is an incredible opportunity to highlight the collection’s breadth and demonstrate in full force the Broads’ nearly five-decade engagement with art,”Founding Director Joanne Heyler. “We are not only able to present exciting moments of the collection’s well-known depth in artists like Twombly, Lichtenstein, Koons, and Warhol, but we also have explored interconnections between artists, and are showing works not previously associated with the collection and shared for the first time with Los Angeles audiences, including many of our most recent acquisitions.”  (more…)

An article in NPR this week questions the oft-praised attendance records and audience engagement implying the strength of the art world, and examines the quality of evaluation that visitors to museums are currently practicing.  “The art world can survive anything from the public — hostility, ignorance, even fanatical prudishness — but the art world cannot survive an indifferent public,” says Michael Lewis, an art history professor at Williams College. (more…)

Dutch police have arrested a man accused of trying to sell a counterfeit Van Gogh painting for â‚¬15 million, claiming the piece was an early study for the artist’s work The Harvest.  Several buyer had expressed interest in the work, which had forged papers claiming authenticity by the Van Gogh Museum. (more…)

The LA Review of Books examines the career Peter Zumthor this week, and the Swiss architect’s plans for the extended design of LACMA, which boasts one of his signature, stark towers and will connect the museum with the existing Broad Contemporary Art Museum, the Resnick Pavilion, the Pavilion for Japanese Art, the Page Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits. (more…)

Banksy, Dismaland (Installation View), via The Guardian

Banksy, the master of grandly executed public projects and sharp jabs at the banality of pop culture, has opened his newest project, Dismaland.  The exhibition, which the subtitle a “family theme park unsuitable for children,” is spread out across the Tropicana, an abandoned site in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, and features a number of contributions from more mainstream contemporary artists, including Damien Hirst and Jenny Holzer.  Yet the park is still definitively Banksy, with his trademark irreverence and coy inversions of pop culture formats abounding across the derelict swimming club in the British resort town, and continues his barbs towards the Walt Disney Corporation.

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Marketplace has an article on Arthena, the startup aiming to encourage investment in fine art through an equity share purchase of a curated art collection.  “I’m part of this generation that they’re trying to reach out to, and I realized that this generation looks at art not only from a cultural perspective, but also a financial perspective,” says founder Madelaine D’Angelo. “And it makes sense, because if you look at how many kids my age have student loans, if you put $10,000 into something, you want to make sure it’ll be worth $10,000 the next day.” (more…)

UK Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has placed an export bar on the 1762 study of Niagara Falls by military artist Capt. Thomas Davies, the first eyewitness artwork depicting the natural wonder.  “I hope that the temporary export bar I have put in place will result in a UK buyer coming forward and that the watercolor will be available for all to better understand Britain’s global role in the 18th century,” Vaizey said. (more…)

Four stolen Andrew Wyeth paintings have been recovered from a pawn shop featured on reality TV, NBC reports, worth about $1 million to $2 million each.  The paintings were stolen from a home in Maine in 2013, and traveled cross-country before ultimately being sold at the Beverly Hills Pawn Shop, subject of a program on cable channel Reelz.  Two paintings from the collection are still outstanding.  “I’m optimistic that one day soon the paintings will be returned to their rightful owner and we’ll bring those responsible to justice,” says Vincent B. Lisi, special agent for the FBI’s Boston Division. (more…)

Hank Willis Thomas, The Truth Is I See You (Installation View) at MetroTech Promenade

The Truth Is I See You, the Public Art Fund’s recent collaboration with Brooklyn-based artist Hank Willis Thomas, is on view at MetroTech Promenade through June 3rd, 2016. Dispersed throughout the flush, green common areas of the park, and nestled amongst high rise commercial buildings in downtown Brooklyn, the project addresses issues of communication, individuality and globalism within the frame of Brooklyn, one of the most dynamic urban areas of the United States.  Focusing particularly on languages spoken throughout the city, Thomas installed all twenty-two lines of Ryan Alexiev’s Truth Poem in a similar fashion to street signs, each showing a line from this poem in English, while the other side gives its translation in languages including Chinese, Polish, German and Hebrew, accompanied by a pronunciation guide. (more…)

Yoko Ono, Half-A-Room (1967), via Art Observed

It’s easy to lose sight of Yoko Ono.  The Japanese artist has consistently shifted forms and formats over the course of her career, working with poetry, painting, performance, choreography, public art, and more, often in subtle actions that belie their often considerable emotional and physical affect.  The fluxus-trained artist brings her early work to MoMA this summer with One Woman Show, an in-depth consideration of her practice and evolution as an artist at the intersection of performance, encounter and installation in the early years of her work.

Yoko Ono, Bag Piece (1964), via Art Observed

The exhibition is expansive, to say the least, and despite the considerable amount of space afforded it, still manages to feel close to bursting with the artist’s work.  Her textual prompts run the length of the gallery, joined by paintings and drawings that mix participation, meditation and time as complicit elements of the work’s reception. Poetic in its presentation, there remains a trace of the physical throughout, from these calls to action, to works like A Painting in Three Stanzas, a frozen moment in time where a plant stem pierces through a fabric sheet painted in sumi ink. While time and process is suggested by the work, its status as a static work points to another number of timeframes, where the viewer might encounter a seedling, a fully grown vine, or perhaps no plant at all.

Yoko Ono, Painting in Three Stanzas (1961), via Art Observed

It also culls a number of the artist’s early, playful inversions on both Dada and Surrealism, like her classic works Apple and Three Spoons, divergent takes on Magritte’s linguistic subterfuge that maintain a more organic focus on the present object rather than a representation. One could almost consider this work an extension of the surrealist’s work, pushing his semiotic challenge to a natural conclusion. Also on view are a number of the artist’s early performative works, including Bag Piece, a performance for a single dance in which they cover themselves in a black sheet as they traverse a small space. Taken here amongst her other art objects and textual prompts, the minimal space afforded the work makes it all the more surreal.

Yoko Ono, Painting to Hammer a Nail (1961), via Art Observed

The exhibition continues through her work following her marriage to John Lennon, and the pair’s collaborative work in music, art and performance, including their famous Bed-In (in which the pair stayed in a hotel bed for days as a protest for peace), and their massive billboard installation project, War is Over (if You Want It). Video and audio from this period, including a special room set aside for the Plastic Ono Band (her long-running musical endeavor), reflects the power influence that both Lennon and Ono left on each other’s work, and on each other’s lives.

Yoko Ono, Cut Piece (1964), via MoMA

Perhaps what feels most compelling about Ono’s exhibition is her practice’s emphasis on possibility, the open-ended conclusion of her works as activated by the viewer/user. There’s a certain satisfaction, even, to this format, as if the work’s idea remains free from a final determination, and rather allows the viewer their own act of completion, liberated from the restraints of a physical space. Even in rooms so full of her various pieces, ideas and actions, that one can walk away from the show with this sense of completion is a testament to the artist’s practice.

One Woman Show is on view through September 7th.

Yoko Ono, Apple (1966), via Art Observed

— D. Creahan

Read more:
Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971 [Exhibition Site]
“‘Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971’ Review: Performance for a Lifetime” [WSJ]
“Review: In ‘Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971,’ Text Messages From the Edge” [NYT]
“Yoko Ono at MoMA review – a misunderstood artist finally gets her due” [Guardian]

The Kansas City Art Institute, which has trained or employed a number of major artists, including Robert Rauschenberg and Nick Cave, has received an anonymous gift of $25 million to its endowment, one of the largest gifts ever to an American art school.  “I hate to use the word ‘transformational,’ because it’s bandied about so much these days,” says interim president Tony Jones said, “but it’s true in this case. It’s literally a make-the-difference gift in terms of scholarships.” (more…)

NPR has an in-depth profile in Paul Durand-Ruel this week, the 19th century Paris art dealer who first fostered the market for Impressionist works, and the story of his rise to success.  “One of his artists came in one day with a young French painter, introducing him and saying, ‘This artist will surpass us all’ — and that artist was Claude Monet,” says curator Joe Rishel, who organized a show on the dealer at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (more…)

Forbes has published an eye-opening profile on Elisa Stephens, head of the for-profit Academy of Art University, and her struggles to keep the university’s national chain of schools (which have drawn criticism for poor graduation rates and job placements) afloat.  “This industry was the darling of Wall Street,” says Trace Urdan, a research analyst for Credit Suisse. “But you have a federal government that for the last six and a half years has been very hostile to this sector. The re-regulation of this space has depressed valuations.” (more…)

German art historian Eike Schmidt has been appointed director of the Uffizi Gallery, one of seven foreigners heading up some of Italy’s top museums and exhibition spaces, part of a reform program for the nation’s public museums.  “The promise held out by autonomy, is that you can do simple things to make the museum more accessible without too much fuss,” James Bradburne, the Canadian-born former director of the Palazzo Strozzi in Milan just appointed as head of Milan’s Brera Gallery. (more…)

Michael Govan has been awarded the Independent Curators International Leo Award for “extraordinary commitment to artists and pioneering contributions to the field of contemporary art.” “It’s an honor to be part of an ICI event,” Govan said.  “ICI’s exhibitions and support for independent curators have helped shape the field over many years. And ICI often gives art and artists exposure ahead of the curve.” (more…)

Artist Charles Pétillon has been commissioned to fill London’s Covent Garden market with 100,000 balloons, the first installation the artist has created outside of France.  “I want to change people’s point of view, their perspective of a place they see every day and never really look at,” he says. “A swimming pool, a field: if I suddenly put something strange in it like these balloons you will see it differently. I don’t want my works to be seen just as decoration, there is always something they are trying to draw out or question.” (more…)

This year, the Turner Prize is taking to the road in Scotland, with an art gallery on wheels transporting the shortlist exhibition through Scotland.  The exhibition also features past winners of the prize, and begins in Edinburgh this Sunday.   (more…)

The New York Times looks at the ongoing competition between Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and recent strategy changes that each have taken to gain the upper hand in their decades-long competition.  We have been recruiting talent as well as exploring bolder ideas designed to substantially improve our performance in contemporary,” says Sotheby’s CEO and President Tad Smith. (more…)

An article in The Guardian this week looks behind the veneer of Andy Warhol’s New York cool, showing an artist who loved weightlifting, jewelry and his family life.   “When we were all together as a family, my mom would sometimes question Uncle Andy about his art,” says nephew James Warhola.  “You know, ‘What’s that meant to be?’, or even ‘Why are you wasting your time on this?’ And he would give as good as he got – not in a hostile way, but saying that this was his work, it had value and importance for him. He had studied art and was very knowledgeable.” (more…)

Melva Bucksbaum, the vice chairman of the Whitney Museum, and a trustee of the Aspen Institute, the American friends of the Israel Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, has passed away.  Bucksbaum had a reputation for her charitable support of artists and institutions. “They support artists, even new ones. They buy according to their hearts, and they have good ones,” artist Pat Steir said of Bucksbaum and her husband. (more…)

As new information surfaces on the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist, Slate looks at why so many art heists go unsolved, and why recovering these works often proves so difficult, including long storage times for stolen works and the difficulty in keeping trained police to investigate these crimes.  “The art crime team still exists—it’s managed by a trained archaeologist, not an FBI agent—but turnover is rampant,” says Robert Wittman, who previously headed up the FBI’s art theft investigations. (more…)