Swiss authorities have seized a contested Modigliani from the collection of David Nahmad, following the release of documents in the Panama Papers leak last week showing that the work was held by a shell corporation attributed to the family. The piece is the subject of a restitution claim by the heir of a Jewish art dealer, Oscar Stettiner, and was confiscated by Nazi forces during WWII. (more…)
The New York Times notes the impressive response to an exhibition of long-duration performance art at Greece’s Benaki Contemporary Museum, which often dwells on concepts of suffering and fear. “They’re kind of mirroring Greek society through the work,” says critic and gallerist Iliana Fokianaki. “The fact that we’re the scapegoat of Europe, and we are the pariah — these are all emotions most Greeks have. This frustration is manifested through the work.” (more…)
Oscar Tuazon, Shelters (Installation View), All Photo credits: © Florian Kleinefenn
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
Wordplay is the primary focus in Oscar Tuazon’s current exhibition at Chantal Crousel Gallery in Paris this month, pursuing a constantly folding, nebulous interpretation of concepts around reading, space, text and composition. The show, Shelters, takes its title from the angular structures erected throughout the gallery, accompanied by wall-hangings and utilitarian sculptural works that offer multiple points of engagement and interaction with the viewer. (more…)
The leaked documents of Mossack Fonseca may help in identifying the buyer of a $17 million Modigliani, a work seized by Nazis during WWII and under request for return by a Paris art dealer’s estate. The company holding the work has been shown to be owned by the Nahmad family. “The main thing is what are the issues in the case, and can the plaintiff prove them?” says lawyer Richard Golub, who represents David Nahmad. (more…)
The Guardian reports on another art world story hidden within the Panama papers, noting that the record-breaking auction of the Ganz collection in 1997 may have been heavily manipulated by financial speculator Joe Lewis. A shell company held by Lewis is noted in the leak as buying up all of the most valuable works from this auction six months before the sale, ultimately making a tidy profit through the smashed auction estimate. (more…)
The students who dropped out of USC’s MFA program last year are holding their own “thesis show” at an alternative space in Los Angeles. “There was kind of a collective nodding of heads among my peers and people who are still in grad school,” says artist Barnett Cohen. (more…)
Sotheby’s has announced a trio of strong works leading its May Impressionist sale in New York, among them Paul Signac’s Maisons du port, Saint-Tropez, estimated at $8-$12 million. It is joined by Andreì Derain’s Les Voiles rouges (estimate $15-$20 million) and Maurice de Vlaminck’s Sous-bois($12-$18 million), both from the collection of philanthropist Sarah Campbell Blaffer. (more…)
A pair of Egon Schiele works in the collection of Vienna’s Leopold Museum, looted from the collection of Karl Mayländer by Nazi forces when Mayländer was deported and killed during the Holocaust, will return to his family. The restitution was announced on Thursday by the Austrian culture minister, Josef Ostermayer. (more…)
Joan Jonas, They Came to Us Without a Word II (2015), via Art Observed
This week, Joan Jonas returned to The Kitchen to present They Came to Us Without a Word,” a reprisal and reimagining of her work from the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale last year. Working closely with a group of schoolchildren, and featuring a live score by her longtime collaborator Jason Moran, the show takes her initial project, and moves it closer towards a standalone stage production, dwelling on her interests in fragmented media, interrelated histories and meanings, and human understandings of the world. (more…)
London is set to experiment with its first “Art Night,” where museums and galleries will remain open late into the night for wandering visitors this July, just before the city will launch its long-awaited all-night Tube service on weekends. Confirmed exhibitions include a performance by Joan Jonas, and an installation at the disused Charing Cross station by South Korean artist Koo Jeong-a. (more…)
The Dia Art Foundation has been awarded a $735,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation. The funding is earmarked for a new archives program, an appointed postdoctoral scholar, and other initiatives. (more…)
An agent working for the Qatari royal family has been granted the right to question Pablo Picasso’s daughter and her son regarding the sale of the contested Picasso work Bust of a Woman. Pelham Europe Ltd, working on behalf of the family, has been pushing for the right to interview Maya Widmaier Picasso about the work. (more…)
Anri Sala, Moth in B Flat (2015), via Art Observed
Spread across three floors at the New Museum, Anri Sala’s current career retrospective is an impressively deep, immersive offering; a lyrical, twisting series of pieces that investigate the phenomena of sound in its relations to cultural, institutional and technological containers.
The Venice Biennale of Architecture will partner with the V & A Museum this year for an exhibition that will examine how historical sites may be preserved and protected during turbulent political crises, and how these sites may be made more flexible through the use of duplicates and copies to protect the original objects. (more…)
Wikimedia Sweden has lost a court case over its rights to exhibit images of public sculpture against the Visual Copyright Society in Sweden, saying that digitally shown images of public art and sculpture should be protected by copyright law. “Such a database can be assumed to have a commercial value that is not insignificant,” the court said in a statement. “The court finds that the artists are entitled to that value.” (more…)
Urs Fischer, officeguy (2016), via Art Observed
Entering Gagosian’s fifth floor exhibition space on the Upper East Side, one is greeted with something of an exercise in phenomenological affect. Smelling faintly of bacon (the artist stipulated that several slices must be cooked in the gallery space each morning), the space is adorned with sweeping brushstrokes on each of the walls, and topped with a series of aluminum panels, bearing cartoon icons twisted into abstract geometric arrangements. The result is a twisting, surreal environment that feels as surreal as it looks. (more…)
The Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn and the Kunstmuseum Bern have announced joint plans to show a selection of works from the Cornelius Gurlitt trove, The Guardian reports. The show will take on a “historically and scientifically contextualized framework.” (more…)
The Public Art Fund has announced its summer exhibition in front of New York’s City Hall, a selection of works based around Walter Benjamin’s essay On language as Such and on the Language of Man. The show will feature the first public art piece by Tino Seghal. (more…)
The Whitney Museum is naming its new Meatpacking District building after collector and philanthropist Leonard Lauder, following a dinner last night at the museum where Lauder was also awarded with the inaugural Whitney Collection Award. “Leonard Lauder is one of the greatest benefactors in the Whitney’s history,” says Director Adam D. Weinberg. “I cannot express how grateful we are to Leonard for his exceptional generosity, leadership, and devotion.” (more…)
Artist and performance poet Bobby Miller has filed a lawsuit against the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and a group of galleries for a total of $65 million, alleging that photos he took of the artist have been used without his permission or compensation for decades. (more…)
Following a decision by the Austrian government not to offer operation cost funding to the private Essl Museum, the institution has announced its decision to close July 1st. “Sadly, this won’t be possible any longer,“ says collector Karlheinz Essl. (more…)
An Edvard Munch work stolen from an Oslo Gallery in 2009 has been recovered by Norwegian police, the Guardian reports. Two men were arrested on suspicion of “handling stolen goods,” but not in connection with the actual theft. (more…)
Robert Rauschenberg, Tablet Series (1974)
Currently on view at Luxembourg and Dayan, the group exhibition In The Making seeks to shed light on the often overlooked, yet crucial creative dialogue between the artist and their assistant or assistants in the studio. Organized by Tamar Margalit, the exhibition, which runs through April 16th, unfolds in a manner similar to a family tree, connecting infamous or remote dots in New York art scene after the 1950’s through shared studio spaces, practices, and the informal education process that often occurs in the relationship between artist and their hired team. (more…)
