The WSJ looks at the work of Simon Denny this week, as the artist preps his show of work at Petzel Gallery this week, and discusses his ongoing interest in blockchain technology.  “I became interested in how different people with different types of agendas are invested in the future of what this could be,” he says. (more…)

Ai Weiwei, Standing Figure (2016), via Art Observed

Turning his sense for political inequality and global human rights issues towards the Mediterranean’s current refugee crisis, Ai Weiwei has brought a body of both new works and recent pieces from the past ten years to Athens’s Museum of Cycladic Art, exploring a fruitful intersection of historical and current political contexts in conversation with the artist’s own personal history.  The exhibition, which marks both Ai’s first exhibition with an archeological museum context as well as his first in the nation of Greece, is a well-selected show, which takes direct aim at the Syrian refugee crisis while addressing the history of Greece in subtly powerful ways. (more…)

Steve McQueen is the recipient of the Johannes Vermeer Award. awarded by Dutch culture minister Jet Bussemaker.  The $112,000 prize is awarded to an artist working in the Netherlands, and is intended to help fund a special project by the artist.  (more…)

The New York Times looks at Doug Aitken’s soon to be installed underwater sculpture off the coast of Catalina Island, which the artist created as part of his exhibition for MoCA Los Angeles.  “So much land art is monumental, static,” he says. “I’m interested more in artworks that are continuously changing or evolving — artworks as living systems.” (more…)

Artist Sally Mann is interviewed in the New York Times this week, as she prepares for a new show at Gagosian in New York. The piece traces the death of Mann’s son, and frequently dwells on her friendship with Cy Twombly, who lived close to Mann’s Virginia home. “He taught me a lot,” she says. “He was so loose and free and energetic.” (more…)

An article in the Art Newspaper notes the increased number of curators leaving more traditional posts to join auction houses, focusing on the economic and cultural appeal of working in the commercial sector. “What was interesting… for me was the opportunity to transcend place and suddenly to become a global art professional,” says Jonathan Binstock, who left a position at the Corcoran to work for Citi Bank’s art advisory. “It’s a totally different kind of life.” (more…)

Christie’s has changed its fee structure for the first time since 2013, with works up to $150,000 adding a 5% premium, works up to $3 million claiming a charge of 20%, and works above that price receiving a 12% premium. (more…)

Former dealer and current Phillips director Martin Klosterfelde is joining Sotheby’s London office as senior director for Contemporary art, as well as serve as an auctioneer for the company. Klosterfelde’s eponymous gallery long served as a linchpin of the Berlin art scene, and was a founding member of both Art Berlin Contemporary and Berlin Gallery Weekend. (more…)

Mark Grotjahn, Pink Cosco (Installation View), All artworks © Mark Grotjahn. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian Gallery. Installation photography: Mike Bruce

Continuing his inquiries into the modes of perspective, constraint and repetition at play in the modes of contemporary art practice, Los Angeles-based painter Mark Grotjahn brings a new series of works to Gagosian Gallery in London, under the title Pink Cosco.  Reprising several of his previous forms, particularly his painted “mask” sculptures, executed in bronze and covered in varied layers and styles of paint, Grotjahn again insists upon the beauty and precision to be discovered in variations on a theme. (more…)

The New York Times has an in-depth piece on the protracted endeavor to complete construction for the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall in Washington, D.C., detailing the decades-long efforts to secure land and funding for the institution, which opens this fall.  “There is no doubt that we knew you couldn’t build this with African-American money alone,” says  director Lonnie G. Bunch III, “but we also know that there was much more money in this community than most cultural institutions had ever tapped.” (more…)

The exhibitor roster for the 2016 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach has been announced, with an over 200-strong list of galleries included this year.  This year’s special sections include a survey of works by Anicka Yi at 47 Canal’s Nova booth, and Maggie Lee’s show of pieces at Real Fine Arts. (more…)

Turkey’s Ã‡anakkale Biennial, which was previously slated to open later this month, has been canceled in the wake of political instability and an increasingly hostile government stance towards journalists and artists.  “Exactly one year after Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body was washed up on our shores, we would like to dedicate the unrealized 5th Çanakkale Biennial and the efforts of everyone involved to all the people who have been expelled from their homelands,” the organizers said in a statement. (more…)

Bill Viola will open a major retrospective of his work in Florence next year, the Art Newspaper reports, taking over the Palazzo Strozzi and filling it with both his own works and a “wish list” of Renaissance masterworks.  The show marks a significant return to the city, where Viola worked for over a year after finishing college.  “Every day, he walked past Michelangelo’s David—the replica, of course—in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in the Piazza della Signoria to go to work,” says his wife and collaborator, Kira Perov. (more…)

In more Brexit-related news, Victoria and Albert head Martin Roth is expected to announce his resignation this week and return to his home country of Germany, a decision many attribute to Roth’s disillusionment over the UK’s vote to leave the EU.  “For me, Europe is simply synonymous with peace,” Roth said. “I didn’t want to be a German. I did not want to grow up in a country that had killed a huge part of its population. So for me, Europe always gave hope for a peaceful future, based on sharing, solidarity and tolerance. Dropping out always means creating cultural barriers and that worries me.” (more…)

An article in the New York Times sees a number of galleries still planning exhibition spaces in London, despite the pending Brexit.  “Brexit is a technicality,” Thaddaeus Ropac says.  “It will be expensive and complicated, but London is London.  The museums are here. The auction houses are here. The best galleries in the world are here. I do not see another city taking London’s place. Madrid? Los Angeles? I just don’t see it.” (more…)

New York Central Art Supply has closed its doors after 111 years of operation.  The business was long a cornerstone of New York’s downtown arts community, and left a lasting imprint on many artists practicing today.  “I learned an enormous amount about being an artist from going there,” says Kiki Smith. (more…)

An article in the Financial Times this weekend notes the increased prominence of artist-curated exhibitions in recent years, and the motivations behind them.  “I’m not sure it’s the artists’ choice,” says Ryan Gander, who is currently presenting a show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. “There is such an over-saturation of biennials and exhibitions now, organizers and institutions are looking for new and exciting twists.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal looks at the burgeoning gallery scene in Harlem, and the vision gallerists have for the neighborhood.  “There’s a long cultural history here, you won’t have the same situation where the galleries come and take over and gentrify everything into an art zone,” says Harry Schlieff of Rear Window Gallery. (more…)

Keith Sonnier, Ba-O- Ba VI (1970), Copyright: Haeusler Contemporary Munich/Zurich Photograph: Wolfgang Stahl

Keith Sonnier‘s work has stood as a landmark voice in the development of abstract languages and explorations in the sculptural form, suspending neon lights over and across varied materials, from strips of cloth to reflective panes of glass, each time utilizing his materials’ internal consistencies to drive at nuanced explorations of light and space.  It should be telling then, that Whitechapel Gallery’s impressive exhibition focused on the artist takes up only three years of his career, examining his creative output from 1968 to 1970 as a foundational point in both his work, and the generation of artists around him. (more…)

Ed Ruscha at Gagosian Gallery, via Art Observed

Few artists have left the sort of impact Ed Ruscha has left on the field of small-press and art book publishing over the course of their career.  Ruscha, whose almost constant output of small books of photography, prints and other printed matter, has consistently redefined both the material and conceptual practice of book manufacturing since the 1960’s.  His early pieces in this medium, executed during the 1960’s and 70’s, helped to redefine its practice, shifting the artist’s book from a limited-edition, rare item, to a mass-produced and widely distributed object that was seen as a step towards the democratization of art through its scalable production.

Ed Ruscha at Gagosian Gallery, via Art Observed

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Vito Acconci, WHERE WE ARE NOW (WHO ARE WE ANYWAY?), 1976 (Installation View)

Continuing a consideration of its nearly half-century long history in New York City, MoMA PS1 is celebrating its fortieth anniversary with an exhibition dedicated to the early career of artist Vito Acconci, a pioneer of body and performance art in the United States during the 1960’s and 70’s that drove forward new concepts and perceptions of art practice while PS1 was similarly expanding the concept of the exhibition space.  WHERE WE ARE NOW (WHO ARE WE ANYWAY?), 1976 focuses on Acconci’s works from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s—the years that proceeded the opening of PS1 as an experimental, non-profit art center under the guidance of Alanna Heiss. (more…)

Old Master specialist Cécile Bernard has been named general manager of Sotheby’s France, Sotheby’s reported in a statement this week.  Bernard has worked in the auction market for over 20 years, and was instrumental in building Paris’s market to its current stature. (more…)

Elissa Tenny, former provost and dean at Bennington College and dean at New School, has been named as the head of the SAIC.  “The School of the Art Institute of Chicago has been a leader in art and design education for more than 150 years, and I am humbled to have the opportunity to carry on the School’s legacy and help pave the way for the next generation of thinkers and makers,” she said in a statement.  “I have learned so much from our students, faculty, and staff over the last six years, and I am looking forward to leading the School as we head into our next 150 years.” (more…)

Liu Wentao, Untitled (2015), via White Cube

Taking over the full two-floor layout of White Cube’s Mason’s Yard exhibition space, the gallery’s summer exhibition the world is yours, as well as ours explores the richly diverse and energetic forms of Chinese painterly abstraction, considering its format beyond facile classifications as a corollary to Western technique.  Delving into the cultural histories and forms of Chinese painting over the past centuries, White Cube presents the abstraction of China’s current crop of artists as a deeper engagement wth a range of practices between modernism and more traditional approaches to the painterly surface.  The show places Taoist thought at its base, exploring how the appreciation of abstract form in Chinese culture more broadly has left the door open for diverse experiences and engagements with the canvas in the modern era. (more…)