Artists in Oakland and the Bay Area at large are outraged after the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area filed a lawsuit against the city for requiring all new building projects to include plans for public art on the premises.  “Developers owe it to the city and residents to enrich the landscape and culture of the urban space,” says Emma Spertus, artist and founder of the Oakland studio building and residency program Real Time and Space. (more…)

Katherine Bernhardt has completed a commissioned mural for Venus Over Los Angeles, covering the outside of the gallery in her signature cartoonish drawings of food and cigarettes.  The mural is on view through August 9th. (more…)

The New York City government has pledged $10 million towards Spaceworks, a city-based non-profit aiming to convert public spaces into affordable studio space for artists and community art sites.  The sites will be located in The Bronx.  “It’s a borough that is clearly under-resourced in terms of creative space,” says executive director Paul Parkhill. He is also hiring a full-time community organiser based in the area “to make sure there is a grassroots conversation early on, so people know what is happening.” (more…)

Following a number of walkouts and week-long protests, the staff at London’s National Gallery has announced its first full strike this August.  “Our members in the National Gallery have been engaged in a heroic struggle to defend the functions of a national institution,” PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said in a statement. “They have taken 52 days strike action so far and are prepared to take more. Accordingly, we have served the employer with notice today of more sustained action in August.” (more…)

Barbara Hepworth, Pelagos (1946). All Images courtesy Tate London

Now through October 25^th, the Tate Modern in London is hosting an exhibition of Barbara Hepworth’s sculptural work. The Yorkshire-born artist is known for her elegant abstract forms, and is considered among the most important British modernist sculptors of her time.  Hepworth has continued to produce consistently throughout her lifetime, creating a wide array of structures and employing a variety of materials evocative of natural landscapes and relationships, two of her main points of inquiry.

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Olaf Breuning, Life III (2015), via Michael Benevento

Compiling a body of work from the past several years of the artist’s practice, Michael Benevento  in Los Angeles is offering a broad look at the recent practice of Olaf Breuning, exploring the artist’s interest in vastly differing modes of production, and the thematic interests that unify his work.

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A Venice court will hear the lawsuit filed by The Icelandic Art Center (IAC) in Reykjavik over the closure of Christoph Büchel’s Icelandic Pavilion “mosque” in the Italian city over a perceived “security threat.”  The work was closed in May after remaining open for only two weeks. (more…)

The Financial Times profiles Patricia Barbizet, Christie’s newly minted chief executive, who moved from her early work with Renault through her longtime career working under François Pinault.  “My mother was an artist, my brothers and sisters are film and theatrical producers, my father was in cinema. I chose Renault — spot the odd one out,” she jokes. (more…)

The Tate Modern has announced its schedule of exhibitions for 2016, including a major survey of the work of Georgia O’Keefe, as well as the first posthumous retrospective of the work of Robert Rauschenberg in the UK.  “There is next to no work by Georgia O’Keeffe anywhere in Europe,” says Achim Borchardt-Hume, the gallery’s director of exhibitions. “Unless you travel to the States and travel quite extensively across the States it is very difficult to form a coherent picture of her work.” (more…)

Repairs to a boiler system at the financially troubled South Carolina State University Museum has led to disputes over what will happen with its art collection, with some arguing that moving the works puts them at risk during the University’s currently dire financial straits.  “There’s a certain care that we need to provide to preserve the collections, not only for the university but for the state and the country,” says Museum director Ellen Zisholtz. “We are looking for ways to carry out the mandate without putting the collection at risk.” (more…)

Matthew Eck, former co-director of the SELECT art fairs in Miami and New York, has announced a new fair project to premiere at Art Basel Miami Beach this December, X Contemporary.  “Art doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and X Contemporary aims to present this overlap through dynamic events and collaborations, and within a curated context that prominently features some of the most exciting new galleries and artists today,” the fair says in its press release. (more…)

Emily Mae Smith, The Studio (Science Fiction) (2015), all photos via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

An eccentric addition to this summer’s calendar of group shows is I Dropped the Lemon Tart, on view at Lower East Side gallery Lisa Cooley. As its title implies, the exhibition articulates human failure as an aggravating force for pushing and breaking barriers.  The title, having both literal and metaphorical connotations, refers to an actual case, in which a sous-chef at a famed restaurant drops one of the last two lemon tarts en route to customers’ table.  Instead of admitting defeat, the chef decides to serve the damaged tart under a fresh name and new arrangement. The show finds its inspiration in this incident, setting an example for the inevitability of human error, while embracing the subsequent stages of coping and acceptance of error as crucially generative. (more…)

Hedge Fund Manager and Collector Bruce Berkowitz, of Fairholme Capital Management, has reportedly scrapped a proposal for a ten-story office building, which featured public exhibition of works by Richard Serra and James Turrell, in Miami, following fines and a reported lack of attention from City Hall.  “There are no ongoing discussions and the only thing I’ve heard from the city is that I’ve been fined $300,000 for the way we cleared and secured the lot.” (more…)

Ingrid Sichy, International Editor of Condé Nast, former editor of Interview Magazine, and longtime contributor to Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, passed away late this week in New York City at the age of 63.  Sichy was a foundational chronicler of the New York avant-garde and modern fashion for nearly forty years, and was a fixture at openings and runway shows around the globe.  “She could write about anything, but what interested her most were art and fashion, and she traversed those two hothouses like a bemused empress,” says Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.  “She had a crisp mind and an almost uncanny focus when she sat down to write. She was a fun, conspiratorial gossip, but never with malice or envy — the working tools of so many gossips.” (more…)

FAILE, FAILE Temple (detail) (2015) via Brooklyn Museum

FAILE, a Brooklyn-based collaboration between artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, is currently presenting their exhibition Savage/Sacred Young Minds at the Brooklyn Museum, continuing the artists’ practice in obscuring the boundaries between fine art and street art through techniques of both traditional and rebellious creative processes within predominantly institutional settings. (more…)

Lee Lonzano, Slide (1965), all photos via Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting Drawings and Paintings, a historical survey of artist Lee Lozano at the gallery’s Chelsea space on 18th Street, featuring a selection of critically significant works from 1964 and 1965.  Lozano’s pieces, expressive in their energy and form, showcase depth in exploring issues relating to both gender and the body in general, with drawings and paintings suggesting intersections and geometric interplays using color, line, gradient, and variations of perspective. (more…)

A theft of 43 engravings by 16^th-century artists valued at about $4.4 million from the Richelieu-Louvois branch of the National Library of France has led to the arrest of a library employee.  This is the second time engravings have disappeared from the institution this year.

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Artist and amateur chef Rikrit Tiravanija has opened his first commercial restaurant in Hancock, NY, titled Unclebrother, and incorporating food from the surrounding area into his menu.  “The surprising thing is that, actually, there are a lot of artists around,” Tiravanija says. “Even people who kind of ran away from the city, and are not participating in the art world anymore. Now they’re growing vegetables. These are people who would be interested in something like this.” (more…)

Funding for the proposed Ground Zero Arts Center in New York has reportedly been cut by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation again, bringing the budget for its construction to under $200 million.  “We can do a great building for $200 million — it has to be built,” says Maggie Boepple, president of the Performing Arts Center. “It will be smaller; there may be things that you might have liked to see, but that’s how it is.” (more…)

A new art fair has been announced for the week of Art Basel Miami Beach.  Titled Satellite, the fair will be spread across a series of vacant buildings in North Beach, and populated individually by a group of curators from WhiteBox, TransPecos, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and more.  “Each venue will be specially sub-curated by specific art world organizations and individuals, each bringing their personal identity and vision to the plate,” says Director Brian Whiteley. (more…)

Niele Toroni at Swiss Institute (Installation View), via The Swiss Institute

The work of Niele Toroni is currently the subject of a pair of shows this month, with exhibitions at the Swiss Institute through September 6 and at Marian Goodman Gallery through July 30.  The Swiss-born Toroni is known for his reductive, repetitive paintings, emphasizing a conceptual approach which he executes with impressive regularity.  According to some, the artist repeats his painting techniques to free his work from the formulaic politics of representation, and divorce art from authorship.  Toroni creates site-specific and serial paintings, placing brushstrokes at regular intervals with a 50cm paintbrush, 30cm apart on a variety of surfaces including canvas, newspaper, and fabric.  Toroni began employing this method during a 1967 performance in Paris. (more…)

The Observer notes an increasing number of dealers allowing collectors to take a work out of the gallery to view it in their homes before agreeing to buy.  “If they are on the fence—for instance, if it is a couple and one [person] likes it more than the other—living with it for a few days helps in the decision,” says dealer Debra Force. (more…)

Adam Szymczyk, director of Documenta 2017 in Athens, is interviewed this week in Deutsche Welle, discussing how the recent financial strife between Germany and Greece bodes for the event.  “We don’t want to illustrate the crisis,” he says.  “We believe that the real image of the crisis doesn’t exist and it perhaps should not be imposed. We just try to exist in this state of crisis, every single day – in Germany and in Greece.” (more…)

Paris-based art dealer Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand has opened a massive sculpture park in France’s Côte d’Azur, with more than 30 works spread out across the grounds’ lakes and trails.  “The works will change whenever they have to be returned or if some are sold. Also the park will be extended when new works are installed,” says the dealer’s son, Edward.  (more…)