Paul Chan’s publishing house Badlands Unlimited has opened a brick and mortar location on the Lower East Side, titled Y.oung P.ublisher 99¢ & Up.  The space is run in conjunction with local business owners Mr. and Mrs. Yu, and will feature the company’s books alongside daily necessities and household items.  “Badlands publishes books that are as essential as toiletries,” says Micaela Durand, director of Badlands. (more…)

The Art Newspaper profiles a Starbucks location in Chelsea that is currently selling work from young artists, with proceeds benefitting Free Arts NYC.  “The space we’ve dedicated to art within our store enables emerging artists to gain exposure for their work in Chelsea,” says Lara Behnert, head of the chain’s global art program. (more…)

MoMA has announced the recipient of its 2016 Young Architects Program award, a massive awning constructed from strands of string, and hung over the MoMA PS1 Courtyard.  The work, designed by Escobedo Solíz Studio, is described as “neither an object nor a sculpture standing in the courtyard, but a series of simple, powerful actions that generate new and different atmospheres.” (more…)

Dealer Larry Gagosian and the Qatar royal family have reached a temporary agreement on the ownership of the Picasso bust currently in dispute.  The work will be held at Gagosian Gallery until its the conflict is adjudicated.  The disagreement around the work revolves around multiple sales of the piece, with both the royal family and Gagosian claiming purchase of the piece from the artist’s daughter, Maya Widmaier-Picasso. (more…)

An undercover sting in Istanbul has recovered Woman Dressing Her Hair, a Picasso piece stolen from a New York collector several years ago.  The thieves had demanded $7,000,000 for the piece. (more…)

Art Basel has published the exhibitor list for the 2016 edition of its flagship fair, consisting of 287 galleries from Switzerland and abroad, that will trek to Switzerland this June.  (more…)

The WSJ looks at the efforts of The Met to cater to more contemporary and modern art in its collections and exhibitions, noting the challenges the storied institution faces from the city’s great number of curators, museums and galleries, and its vision for the future.  “The Met used to talk about itself as 17 museums under one roof, and I have very actively been seeking to break down that notion,” says Director Thomas Campbell. “We are a single museum with a single collection.” (more…)

Max Ernst, The Stolen Mirror (1941), via Christie’s

A marathon night has concluded at Christie’s this evening, following the auction house’s back to back sales of premier works. The sale provided an solid start to 2016’s winter and spring seasons of sales, and sends an indication of the market’s stability moving forward, even if the astronomical prices of the recent past were notably absent.  All told, the Impressionist and Modern Sale saw a respectable outing, with 12 of the 50 lots on sale going unsold, and reaching a total of £66,430,000, while the Surrealist auction immediately after achieved £29,487,100, with 10 unsold lots.

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Paul Cézanne, Ferme en Normandie, été (Hattenville) (1882), via Christie’s

With the opening weeks of 2016 drawing to a close, the London auction houses are preparing for the first entries in the year’s sales calendar, presenting two weeks of offerings that will serve as a bellwether for the year. Considering recent concerns (and numerous articles) over the cooling of the market in the early months of this year, the market should offer an initial indication of just how buyers and sellers may respond, and whether recent notes on an increased reliance on Asian customers will be proven accurate. (more…)

William Kentridge, More Sweetly Play the Dance (2015), via Art Observed

Artist William Kentridge is currently presenting a pair of multi-media film installations at Marian Goodman’s uptown New York location, drawing on parallels of death and life, utopia and decay, atrophy and entropy.

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The LA Times profiles Thomas P. Campbell, and his tenure as Director of the Met, including his work on the Breuer Building project, and the difficult financial straits he was thrust into when he took the position in 2008.  “It was by no means a slam dunk,” he says.  “I spent the first six months of being director going through a contraction of the institution. We had to contract by 10%. And while we were doing that, we were trying to plan for the future.” (more…)

Yves Bouvier is the subject of a lengthy profile by the New Yorker this week, focusing not only on his history as head of the National Le Coultre freeport and his current conflicts with Dmitriy Rybolovlev, but also on the logistical systems that he oversees as the company’s owner.  “To be invisible is the best way to make business,” he says.   (more…)

The Temptation of St. Anthony, a work held in the collection of a Kansas City museum, and long attributed to the followers of Hieronymus Bosch, has been authenticated as a work of Dutch master himself after analysis in the Netherlands.  “It’s the same painting, and all of a sudden you see it with more affection,” says Julián Zugazagoitia, director and CEO of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, which owns the work. “It’s like your child who just won the Nobel Prize. You love your child just as much, but you’re bragging more about it to your cousins and friends.” (more…)

The Louvre and the nation of Iran have negotiated a historic deal agreeing to shared exhibitions, and collaborations on publications, scientific visits and training sessions, as well as cooperation on archaeological digs.  The agreement was signed during an Iranian diplomatic visit in Paris, at the Elysée Palace. (more…)

Continuing his show of solidarity with Syrivan refugees on the Greek isle of Lesbos, Ai Weiwei has posed in a photograph recreating the scene of a drowned Syrian child.  “The image is haunting and represents the whole immigration crisis and the hopelessness of the people who have tried to escape their pasts for a better future,” says India Art Fair co-owner Sandy Angus. (more…)

Paramount Ranch, all photos via Art Observed

Nestled away in the Thousand Oaks town of Agoura Hils, the Paramount Ranch served as a film location for much of Hollywood’s elite, seeing Bob Hope, Cecil B. DeMille and Gary Cooper step on camera for iconic Westerns. Now, almost 90 years later, the Ranch (currently part of the National Parks system), the ranch has become the annual retreat from LA Art Week for the titular Paramount Ranch fair.

Janis Varelas at The Breeder (more…)

Thomas Eggerer, Waterworld (2015)

Tucked inside a single room at Petzel Gallery is Waterworld, a humbly scaled exhibition, yet impressively scaled work by New York-based, German artist Thomas Eggerer.  The artist’s work has long been shown in this context, showing only a few works at a time in their enthrallingly large-scale dimensions that further the artist’s ongoing aesthetic tendencies and focus on each meditative, impressively detailed scenario.

Thomas Eggerer, Waterworld (detail) (2015) (more…)