Sotheby’s has announced that Benjamin Doller will take over as the chairman of Sotheby’s Americas, effective immediately.  Dollar has worked with the company for over 35 years, and has recently served as the company’s Vice Chair for the Americas.  “The auction world is an evolving space, and I thrive on change,” he said in a statement.  “Sotheby’s its embracing that evolution in everything it does, which makes this a particularly exciting time to be a part of this business.”  (more…)

Anish Kapoor has designed for the performance of Tristan and Isolde at the English National Opera.  “My sculptures are deeply rooted in orientating the body, in putting one in a frame of a certain kind of looking and thinking,” he says.  “I think that’s religious. It’s often processional and intentionally philosophical, too. That’s what Wagner is about, too.” (more…)

Spain’s Guardia Civil has released the inventory of works seized from collector Benito Amor, totaling over 10,000 pieces of art and antiques, including an alleged fragment of Jesus’s cross.  The collector had been arrested over several counts of theft, and questions remain as to the provenance of many of these works. (more…)

The New York Times charts the numerous challenges to galleries and museums in the face of rising rents and immense auction prices, and the solutions some art taking to sustain themselves.  Gavin Brown’s new exhibition space in Harlem is profiled alongside new spaces in the Lower East Side, the Meatpacking District, and elsewhere. (more…)

The Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam was forced to evacuate works from its collection last night as flooding and water seepage threatened to wreak major damage to museum holdings.  Deputy director of the museum Ina Klaassen described the threat to the works as “very serious.” (more…)

An article in the Art Newspaper this morning charts the uncertain fate of arts funding and international exchange in the UK following the vote to leave the EU this week.  “At one level there is obviously now great financial uncertainty—the effect on European funding streams for the arts, for example—but quite as important is the potential effect on the spirit that drives a myriad of international partnerships in the arts,” said Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund. (more…)

MoMA has announced a major upcoming retrospective for Louise Lawler, running in the spring of 2017, and titled Why Pictures Now.  The show will cull together over 40 years of the artists work, and will include the artist’s sound work installed in the museum’s sculpture garden. (more…)

Jimmy DeSana, Shoes (1979), all images via Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Unexpected at first, Salon 94’s pairing of historic works by Jimmy DeSana and Hanna Liden’s new body of work pushes a refreshing outlook for how photography can operate in terms of manipulating both reality and perception of the body. Culling works from distinctly separate eras and cultures, both DeSana and Liden made their paths to New York to pursue artistic careers. The first from mid-west and the latter from Sweden, they had never had a physical encounter.  Yet aesthetic and thematic parallels in their works are uncanny, tracing similar investigations into the displacement and manipulation of bodily elements in space, creating bizarre, occasionally otherworldly arrangements. (more…)

Clara Drummond has been selected as the winner of this year’s BP Portrait Award, receiving the award’s $44,000 purse and a commission by London’s National Portrait Gallery.  “‘She is always immersed in the ideas around whatever she is making at the time—history, nature, mythology, and art all feed into her work” Drummond said of her sitter in the winning picture, fellow artist Kirsty Buchanan, “so when I am drawing or painting her it feels more like a collaboration than a portrait sitting.’” (more…)

The L.A. Times looks at the boon Instagram has provided to artists and dealers looking to promote work online, but also notes the issues of censorship that have plagued the platform.  “We are making up the rules as we all go along,” says Rebecca Morse, associate curator of photography at LACMA. “This is a topic that social scientists are grappling with — how [a social media platform] is laid out affects the information that people insert into it.” (more…)

MOCA has added Hard Rock Cafe Founder Peter Morton to its board of trustees.  The board is co-chaired by Maurice Marciano and Lilly Tartikoff Karatz.   (more…)

Jean Dubuffet, Late Paintings (Installation View), all images via Timothy Taylor

Now through July 2, London’s Timothy Taylor Gallery presents an exhibition of Jean Dubuffet’s late works, featuring paintings, sculpture, and works on paper completed from the late 1960’s through to the 1980′.  Works from his L’Hourloupe cycle, pieces from the Théâtres de mémoire, as well as a selection from the Psycho-sites, Mires, and Non-Lieux series join together in the gallery space, marking the artist’s transition from traditional painter to sculptuor and conceptual architect in the late years of his prolific career. (more…)

Walter de Maria, Truth/Beauty series (detail) (1993 – 2016), © The Estate of Walter De Maria, Photo Joseph Asghar. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Comprising two separate series created by the artist during the course of his career, Gagosian Gallery on London’s Britannia Street has opened an exhibition of work by renowned minimalist Walter de Maria, opening a dialogue within the artist’s own body of work across decades of practice, and through a range of materials that underscore the artist’s particular approach to questions of space, subjectivity and time. (more…)

Amedeo Modigliani, Madame Hanka Zborowska (1917), via Christie’s

Early warnings about this week’s sales in London seem to have some weight to them following the sales outcome at Christie’s this evening.  The auction house’s summer Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale wrapped in London tonight with a dreary outing, closing the 36-lot auction to the paltry tune of £25,612,500, with almost one third of the works offered failing to find a buyer.

Claude Monet,  L’Ancienne rue de la Chaussée, Argenteuil (1872), via Christie’s

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Terence Koh will be transmitting the names of the Orlando shooting victims into space tomorrow during a performance outside Andrew Edlin Gallery.  The performance will be followed by the simultaneous screening of a selection of films including John Waters’ Pink Flamingos and David Wojnarowicz’s Beautiful People. (more…)

The New York Times looks at the work of Le Consortium, a Dijon-based non-profit that has been at the forefront of the last 40 years of contemporary art.  The space gave both Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince their first solo shows during the early 1980’s, and has continued to support ground-breaking new art.  “I believe in this idea that the artist should want to add something really new to art history — and I still admire courage,”co-director Eric Troncy says. “It logically kicks out so many contemporary artists, but I think it’s quite helpful when someone on a team says no.’” (more…)

HaeAhn Kwon, the sole USC student to remain in the school’s embattled MFA program, has announced that she will also be leaving the program, publishing an open letter to the school’s provost in protest.  “I hope that this letter and the information it holds rings an alarm within USC as a whole,” she says. “I could not have anticipated the degree to which my entering this school would reaffirm the opinions of those who deem Roski to be on a downward spiral of predatory, wrongheaded, and woefully oblivious decision making.” (more…)

The Ruya Foundation, a Baghdad-based NGO, has announced its curatorial focus for next year’s Venice Biennale, exhibiting Iraqi artifacts alongside new, commissioned artworks. (more…)

Gerhard Richter is profiled in the WSJ this week, reflecting on his career, and his perspectives on engaging with the canvas during his work.  “When you do something with your hand, it’s a different thing than simply conceiving it. You do it with your whole body,” he says. (more…)

Amedeo Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne (Au Foulard) (1919), via Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s logged its entry in the Impressionist and Modern Evening sales last evening, with a healthy, brisk sale that reached a final tally of £103,280,000, beating initial estimates with only three works unsold.  Despite a small selection of lots, the evening’s offerings saw healthy competition, and several top lots that commanded hefty final prices, even if prices tapered off quickly after several marquee works.

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NADA has announced nine new galleries on its roster, including four Los Angeles galleries, as the organization continues its expansion on the West Coast.  Mier Gallery, ltd los angeles, Moran Bondaroff, and The Pit have all joined the group. (more…)

Sotheby’s is jumping into the Modern and Contemporary African Art Markets as they continue to heat up, offering the first round of major sales for the category in 2017.  Former Bonhams exec Hannah O’Leary will head up the department.  “The African art scene is thriving, and as our sales develop in 2017, we anticipate that we will establish a significant profile in this field, while also looking to enhance our presence on the African continent,” says Maarten Ten Holder, Managing Director of Sotheby’s Europe. (more…)

Artists Cao Fei and John Baldessari have been selected to create the next editions of the BMW art car.  “The theme of this century is that we enter ‘a landscape of no man’s land’, e.g. autonomous cars and aircrafts and virtual reality,” Cao Fei says.  “I expect to transcend the current context of ‘cars’ and to embrace new possible ways of expressions. to me, that not only includes the artist, but also the public.” (more…)

The New York Times profiles the use of the large-format Polaroid camera, a massive piece of equipment used heavily by Chuck Close, Robert Rauschenberg, and other, which is quickly on its way to obsolescence.  “Here’s yet another medium that will be lost to history, and it just shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” Close says. “If it does, I don’t know what I’m going to do, to tell you the truth. It’s so integrated into everything I do. I can always imagine what making a painting from one of those pictures will look like.” (more…)