Agnes Gund is expanding her Studio in a School arts education program nationally, founding a Studio Institute to lead arts education initiatives around the country for low income students. (more…)

Christie’s announced its total sales for 2015 this week, tallying a total of $7.4 billion that sees sales down 5 percent from the previous year, although the company also notes that figure as second-highest total in company history.  “You never know going into 2016, because you always start from scratch,” said Stephen Brooks, Christie’s deputy chief executive. “But at the moment we’ve entered the year with the wind in our sails.” (more…)

The Swiss government is investing over $2 million to aid museums in determining the ownership of artworks that may have been stolen by Nazis during WWII.  “Switzerland is one of the first countries that offers financial assistance for provenance research,” said spokesperson Anne Weibel. (more…)

The Art Institute of Chicago has received a cash bequest of thirty-five million dollars from Dorothy Braude Edinburg, the largest single donation of money to the school in its history.  The money will be used to build the school’s collection of Asian art, and to acquire new paintings and drawings.  “We will use this incredible funding to carry Dorothy’s vision forward—to inspire, educate, and delight future generations through the collection and presentation of exceptional art,” says Art Institute president Douglas Druick. (more…)

David Zwirner is reportedly looking for exhibition space in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post reports.  “A couple of years ago, we thought we would just come to the art fair. Now, I’m convinced we need a gallery here,” he said. (more…)

The Art News reports from the early days of the Knoedler Gallery trial, noting early testimony and opening arguments from both sides, including an interesting piece of evidence that director Ann Freedman had allegedly traded an authentic Rothko from her personal collection to fraudulent dealer Glafira Rosales for a fake one, and kept it hung in her apartment for 15 years.   (more…)

MoMA has scaled back its ambitious expansion plans for its museum, the New York Times reports, abandoning the “art bay” entrance that would have allowed direct access to galleries from the street, and the fourth floor performance space.  “The goal is to be larger and clearer,” says Ann Temkin, chief curator of paintings and sculpture. “You think these two things might be opposed, but we’re going for both. As you travel through the building, the relationship among galleries is more evident, and the choices for places to go are more obvious.” (more…)

An article in Art Newspaper this week notes a gradual cooling of the art market, but also points to an increasingly competitive market for Modern pieces, as seen in last year’s record-setting sales by Picasso, Gauguin and Modigliani.  “Throughout last year we saw increasingly high sell-through rates in the middle market across categories, including post-war and Impressionist and Modern,” says Christie’s CFO Stephen Brooks. “Christie’s is just as much about a $15m Warhol as a £15,000 chandelier sold in South Kensington.” (more…)

Sarah Meyohas at 303 Gallery (Installation View)

303 Gallery is hosting a special collaboration with New York based artist Sarah Meyohas, merging the inherently performative natures of two distinct terrains of art making and stock marketing.  Stemming from Mehoyas’s dual educational background in both business and fine arts, the Yale MFA graduate traded stocks on the New York Stock Exchange during the market’s operating hours for ten business days, affecting the value of these stocks.  Transferring their behavior into stark black and white drawings, Mehoyas transfers the market’s often erratic movements into the serene white cube. (more…)

The Art Newspaper reports on the lawsuit between the Art Loss Register, the long-running database of missing or stolen artworks, and new upstart the Art Recovery Group, which offers similar services, stemming from a question of proprietary data and how much the ARG has benefitted from the use of data allegedly obtained without consent.  “The ALR knows exactly the extent of information in my possession because it was obtained openly, transparently and with express permission pursuant to an agreement signed by Julian Radcliffe in 2012,” says ARG head Chris Marinello. (more…)

Alexander Calder, Antennae with Red and Blue Dots (1953), © 2015 Calder Foundation, New York and DACS, London

Alexander Calder’s work as the originator of the mobile, and his free-flowing, languid techniques have long established him as a distinct pioneer of mid-20th Century sculpture.  His floating, kinetic sculptures and more grounded, static works were iconic elements of the post-war movements towards the abstract and expressive in sculptural practice.  Yet presentations and explorations of Calder’s work frequently obscure his early interest in the theatrical and performative, threads which were long instrumental to the artist’s practice, and to the development of much of his later work.  It’s these same threads that receive express emphasis in the Tate Modern’s Performing Sculpture, an exhibition of work culled from the length of Calder’s career, and which places his interests in performance, movement and time back into the proper context his later sculpture is so strongly rooted in.

Alexander Calder, Vertical Foliage (1941), Calder Foundation, New York © 2015 Calder Foundation, New York / DACS, London

(more…)

Ai Weiwei has created a series of new works for Paris department store Le Bon Marché, showing a body of work inspired by traditional Chinese “Shan Hai Jing” children’s stories. “This casualness of urban culture is very appealing: It’s not like being in a museum, in a white box — it’s part of a metropolitan landscape — and the people, or audience, are not artgoers,” the artist says. “People experience the art as they go about their day and something unconsciously happens.” (more…)

Marianne Boesky’s temporary project gallery uptown will close its doors this year after a six-year run. The space had been intended as a five year “experiment” by the gallery, but “I loved it so much we signed on for another year,” Boesky said. (more…)

The New York Times takes a look inside the Hebrew Home senior center in Riverdale, which has built a remarkable collection of art from Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Marc Chagall and Alex Katz, among others. “Art is an integral part of life here,” says curator Emily O’Leary. “Because many of them can’t go out to museums,” she said, “the idea was to bring the museum to them.” (more…)

The New York Times takes a look inside 347 West 20th Street, the former home of Louise Bourgeois that has been converted into a museum documenting the artist’s rigorous studio practice. “It has a heart and a soul. People are very moved when they come here,” says former assistant Jerry Gorovoy. (more…)

A selection of previously unpublished diaries by Eric Allden, a close friend of Francis Bacon’s, who writes on the artist’s early years.  “His people live in Ireland, County Kildare, and he told me that when he was 16 he ran away to Paris, but was brought back, though soon after he was permitted to return there,” Allden writes in one passage. (more…)

Lizzi Bougatsos, The King’s Virgin (2015), via Rae Wang for Art Observed

What does it mean to work? To what extent is play quantifiable as labor and vice versa? Such are the questions posed by Work Habits, the latest solo exhibition from artist Lizzi Bougatsos on view at James Fuentes.  Stepping into a space lit up in traffic light red on opening night, one quickly garners a Nietzschean sense of faith unfound, unraveling foundations and unsustained beliefs.  The room, minimally adorned with a dynamic installation of assemblages, depict these found and repurposed objects as inherently lazy. (more…)

The Venice Biennale has announced Christine Macel as the Director of the 57th edition of the Italian art exhibition.  Macel, currently the Chief Curator at the Musée national d’art moderne, has worked with Venice in curated the French and Belgian pavilions in past years.  “Her experience in the Department of “Création contemporaine et prospective” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris has long offered her a vantage point rich in potential from which to observe and identify new energies coming from various parts of the world,” says Biennale President Paolo Baratta. (more…)

The art forgery lawsuit between the family of Sotheby’s Chairman Domenico De Sole and Knoedler Gallery’s Ann Freedman is set to begin this week over the sale of a counterfeit Mark Rothko.  “Banking on their unblemished and impeccable reputations, Knoedler and Freedman fraudulently warranted that the work was an authentic Rothko, when they knew or should have known otherwise, lied about their knowledge of the work’s provenance, and hid the true facts,” writes the De Soles lawyer. (more…)

Barcelona gallery Mayoral is bringing a replica of Joan Miró’s studio to the 2016 Armory Show, placing the artist’s work in the context of his creative process.  “The Studio offered Miró a suitable working environment,” says the artist’s grandson Joan Punyet Miró. “When he closed the door behind him he knew he was cutting all contact with the outside world and entering into his imaginary universe.” (more…)

Artist Cai Guo-Qiang is set to premiere his documentary Sky Ladder at Sundance this week, documenting the artist’s magnum opus performed in 2014.  “His story is not just that of a Chinese artist becoming successful and going international,” says producer Wendi Murdoch. “His is a story that reflects the changes in China over the past 15 years.” (more…)

The ICA in London is embarking on a mission to find and help develop the future of the British avant-garde, led by Director Gregor Muir, known for his early championing of the YBA’s.  “If we are looking for something radical, it is not always about shocking people. It is about being more pernicious, about getting under people’s skin,” he says. “Finding a real sub-culture is more important now than just calling something the new ‘avant-garde’. We need to hear a voice from cultures that are not represented well elsewhere.” (more…)

Tauba Auerbach, Shadow Weave – Metamaterial/Slice Ray (2013) © Tauba Auerbach. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, Photo: Steven Probert

Tauba Auerbach’s work does much with its slight physical moorings.  Utilizing sparse, repeated patterns, meticulously executed sculptural objects and a nuanced eye for her selected materials and colors, Auerbach’s work creates delicate structural harmonies and ordered, meditative pieces that create a sense of calm despite their geometrically-complex, constantly evolving surfaces.  This method is executed to great effect in the artist’s just-opened exhibition at Paula Cooper’s 21st Street location, compiling selections from several ongoing series of the artist’s work, as well as new sculptural elements, a library of texts, and several new publications from Auerbach’s Diagonal Press publishing house, included in the gallery bookstore. (more…)

Elizabeth Peyton, Sea (Kristian) (2016), via Sadie Coles

Presenting a new body of paintings, including both landscapes and portraiture from her travels and experiences, Elizabeth Peyton opens a new body of work at Sadie Coles HQ in London, filling the gallery’s Davies Street location with her uniquely delicate watercolors, pencil drawings and oil compositions.  The show is Peyton’s seventh with the gallery in nearly twenty years, and marks a continuation of her recent practice and stylistic diversity.    (more…)