Olafur Eliasson is planning a giant water fountain for his Versailles commission this summer, playing on one originally designed for the palace grounds during its construction, which was abandoned due to the logistics concerned with pumping water for its operation.   “Of course I could tell you how many meters it is, but I am not going to because we need to leave it to the audience to make up their minds how high is high,” he said. (more…)

The Museum of Modern Art is offering a contract buyout for employees aged 55 or older with at least nine years of service as of July 31, as the museum prepares for curtailed activity during its ambitious renovation.  “The museum is in a transitional stage in terms of the scope of its operations, which are at a reduced level during the renovation period,” the museum said in a statement. “The program is entirely voluntary and is intended to benefit staff who are considering retirement this year.” (more…)

The WSJ profiles Dan Colen’s upstate farm project, where the artist’s full crop output is donated to the New York City Food Bank.  “Art turned out to be way more of a business than I ever intended,” Colen says of his venture.  “The last thing I need is more business.” (more…)

Maurizio Cattelan is interviewed in the Financial Times this weekend, as he prepares to re-stage his 1994 work Enter at Your Own Risk — Do Not Touch, Do Not Feed, No Smoking, No Photographs, No Dogs, Thank you at Frieze New York, an installation the features a live donkey in a small room at the fair.  “Based on my experience it’s considerably difficult to force a donkey into doing something it perceives to be dangerous for whatever reason,” Cattelan says of concerns for the animal’s safety. (more…)

Yayoi Kusama has executed another iteration of her Narcissus Garden work at the Glass House in Connecticut, floating 1,300 mirrored steel spheres drifting around the property’s newly restored pond.  “We are honored to be working with Yayoi Kusama, an artist Philip Johnson both admired and collected,” said curator Irene Shum. (more…)

Marisol, the Venezuelan-American artist who carved sculptural portraits of politicians, historical figures, and other iconic figures of contemporary life, has passed away at the age of 85.  The artist, who first saw success during the early 1960’s, often blurred the iconography of pop art through mediations on the body and her craft that complicated classifications of her work.  Yet her appeal was undeniable, and her unique approach to sculptural figuration earned her recognition.  “She was an incredibly significant sculptor who has been inappropriately written out of history,” Marina Pacini, chief curator at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, who organized a traveling survey of the artist’s work, says. “In the 1960s, she had more press and more visibility than Andy Warhol.” (more…)

The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts has announced its first round of commissions in Los Angeles, among them a miniature golf course running through the city’s Skid Row neighborhood, which examines and underlines how zoning policy directly affects and reshapes cities.  “Zoning is something that is both totally fundamental to the way a city works and the way it feels and who gets supported and who gets booted from the city,” says artist Rosten Woo, one of the organizers of the piece. (more…)

The Art Newspaper notes the increased popularity of heritage French artists in recent years, in part based on attractive market prices, and a previous lack of institutional attention.  “In France, we don’t always do enough to celebrate our own,” Pompidou Director Bernard Blistène says. (more…)

Simon de Pury is the subject of a profile piece on NPR this week, offering some backstory on the auctioneer, and his strategy on building his former company, Phillips de Pury, into a force in the contemporary market.  “I didn’t have the means, the financial means to take on the two houses frontally. So we thought, let’s develop areas in which we become the best,” he says.  “So we thought we go to do contemporary art, emerging contemporary particularly, design and photography. And in these fields, we just become the best.” (more…)

Artists Space is leaving its Greene Street home, following its landlord’s decision to build a penthouse atop the building, a project that would cause considerable delays and interruptions to its exhibition schedule.  The space is looking to move “into a neighborhood where artists currently live and work, which has not been the case for a long time in SoHo,” says Director Stefan Kalmar. (more…)

Vigée Le Brun, Baron de Thellusson (1814), via Art Observed

There are few prominent female artists that are as highly revered as Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was in 18th Century France. Falling in love with painting through her father, Louis Vigée, Le Brun went on to work for the aristocracy in Paris during the French Revolution.  After painting more than thirty portraits of Marie Antoinette and her family, Le Brun was forced to flee the country over her association with the queen, ultimately working in Italy, Austria, and Russia. Once she settled in Italy, she was elected into the artist group Accademia di San Luca, and moved on to painting portraits of Catherine the Great’s family as well as Stanislaw August Poniatowski, Poland’s last king. (more…)