Barry Avrich’s documentary on the Knoedler Gallery forgeries, “Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art” will be adapted into a feature film by the director’s Melbar Entertainment Group. “The extraordinary story beautifully lends itself to a dramatic feature film and its characters are beyond priceless. I can only dream that Meryl Streep will want to play Ann Freedman,” Avrich says. (more…)

Project Reset, a New York program that allows perpetrators of nonviolent offenses to take art classes instead of taking a court date, is facing budget shortfalls, and may shut down. “Project Reset is one of the most valuable tools we have to address low-level offenses. When you can prevent someone who is arrested for a low-level offense from entering the criminal justice system—and instead offer them a meaningful intervention through art, therapy, and other forms of restorative justice—you spare them the consequences of a criminal conviction, help them recognise and change behaviours, and ideally prevent future arrests,” says DA Cyrus Vance. “Especially today, when criminal justice reform and jail reduction are priorities for New Yorkers, it would be a shame to end this critical program.” (more…)

Marian Goodman Gallery is planning to close its London gallery at the end of this year, striking an ominous note for the future of London’s art market.  “The art world has undergone dramatic changes in recent years, and the current health crisis and Brexit have introduced even more uncertainty into the market, especially for galleries operating in London,” the dealer said. “The decision to close the London space was made together with the executive team as part of the gallery’s overarching programming and sales strategy to pursue a more nimble approach in London, while continuing our strong presence in New York and Paris, which has served as the hub for our European activity for more than 25 years.” (more…)

Deana Lawson has become the first photographer to win the Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize. “Her contribution to the medium and the larger cultural landscape is indelible,” says director Richard Armstrong. (more…)

Tavares Strachan, In Plain Sight (Installation View), via Marian Goodman

On view this month at Marian Goodman in London, artist Tavares Strachan takes an in-depth, beguiling look at the interconnected figures of 20th Century politics and culture for his first UK solo show, part of his ongoing investigatory project The Encyclopedia of Invisibility.  The show, on view through tomorrow, makes a powerful, serpentine pathway through the landscape and history of the world, tying together the Queen, Haille Selassie, Nina Simone, and many more.   (more…)

Sondra Perry, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Martine Syms, and Zhou Tao have been nominated for Rolls-Royce’s art program, Muse, and its first-ever Moving-Image Dream Commission.  The initiative “offers an opportunity for artists to have a space to develop their aesthetics and to be able to delve deeply into an area where they can have an autonomy to make a work which can resonate,” according to a statement.  (more…)

The heirs of Piet Mondrian have filed suit against the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, alleging that the museum is holding works owed to them, valued at over $200 million. (more…)

Theaster Gates has a profile in The Guardian this week, as he opens his first solo show in New York at Gagosian.  “What separates art from craft?” He says. “Who divides the highbrow from the commonplace, the seen from the unseen?” (more…)

A long-missing Jacob Lawrence painting has been located, reuniting it with its larger series, Struggle: From the History of the American People.  “The painting has been hanging in my living room for 60 years untouched,” one of the painting’s owners said.” (more…)

Ronald Perelman is selling the iconic Giacometti sculpture Grande femme I in a sealed bid sale at Sotheby’s. “This is the bespoke sale for a very special work by one of the greatest 20th century artists, designed to both embrace the vast potential field of interest, but also to maintain the privacy that people desire,” Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s vice chairman of global fine arts. (more…)

The Art Newspaper looks at the number of museums deaccessioning works, and the issues it could cause for the market. “Museum deaccessions come in two categories,” says Marc Porter, president of Christie’s Americas. “The first is the traditional paring of a collection, which has always existed—but now is used to diversify towards works by artists of color, women artists and living artists. The second is the use of the proceeds of such sales for collection maintenance, which is a reflection of these economic times. This is absolutely a change in the market.” (more…)

The New York Times charts the current situation for galleries in New York, as institutions and dealers brace for a possible surge of coronavirus cases. “The situation in New York is extremely fluid, and that could change our trajectory and our plans, but we are prepared for that,” says Andrew Fabricant, the chief operating officer of Gagosian. (more…)

Coventry will host the Turner Prize in 2021 as part of its “city of culture” year. “Hopefully, what we’re doing is creating a glimmer of hope for 2021 and showing that we can still do live events, we can still put on a great show in this new world that we’re living in,” says Chenine Bhathena, the creative director for Coventry’s city of culture year. (more…)

Sotheby’s has announced it will sell two works by Jean-Michel Basquiat from the estate of dealer Enrico Navarra at the auction house’s October 28th sale in New York. (more…)

David Kordansky’s efforts to diversify his gallery program and respond to injustice in the world gets a spotlight in the NYT this week. “He has been ambitious in trying to figure out ways for his gallery to better reflect the world that we live in, and the concerns many of us have about it,” says artist Rashid Johnson. “Racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia — the gallery is working with artists that attack and consider these issues in their projects.” (more…)

American universities’ move towards remote learning have caused uncertainty for college museums. “The last several months have been very complicated,” Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, former director of Spelman’s campus museum, “but we’ve relished the opportunity to be quiet and inward. We didn’t feel the impulse to get out in front of the Zoom superhighway.” (more…)

A sale of Impressionist and Modern works October 28th at Sotheby’s New York could see new records for works by Giorgio de Chirico and Man Ray, Art News reports. “Both masterpieces are the epitome of museum-quality painting and provide a unique glimpse into the profound early output of these two visionary artist,” said Lisa Dennison, Sotheby’s Americas chairman. (more…)

A piece in Art News this week notes the challenges and opportunities that arise when a collector’s sudden change in fortune results in a sell-off of works. The piece surveys a range of collectors who suddenly sold off their collections in the midst of panics or other issues. (more…)

Gabriel Orozco, Estanque (2020), via Marian Goodman

Currently on at Marian Goodman’s New York exhibition space, artist Gabriel Orozco is presenting a body of new works drawing on his continued exploration of global and local cultural formats, and the possibility for performance and repositioning within their varied aesthetic and conceptual palettes.  For this exhibition, Orozco presents a new series of tempera paintings in a large and small scale, and a selection of new watercolor collages which expand upon his Suisai series, begun in 2016. (more…)

Photographer Dawoud Bey gets a profile in the New York Times this week, as he looks at his body of work and the violence against black bodies endemic to the United States.  “What underlines and underpins all of this are these places, and what these places are and what they were and what they represent in our collective history,” he says. “You can either tie an enslaved person to a tree and whip them until they pass out or you can put your knee on their neck and wait until they die.” (more…)

Michael Queenland, Untitled (Stationary) (2017), via Tanya Bonakdar

Marking a sustained engagement with language and text, the current group show at Tanya Bonakdar Los Angeles, Restless Index, explores a specific approach to cataloging and documenting, and the potentials that these explorations of archives and databases might offer for the future.  Inadequacies of language—whether legal, symbolic, written or visual—are cast into stark relief during moments of social upheaval, a point which feels particularly apt during this cultural moment, and which serves as a bedrock for the show, exploring associations once normalized by cultural hegemonies as renewed sites of contention and conflict.  The show explores the canon as a permeable and flexible, where monuments and institutional mandates are called into question, histories reassessed, and so too are visual codes that derive from those histories. (more…)

The New York Times this week describes a protracted battle to reclaim the looted collection of Baron Mor Lipot Herzog, and the collectors’ descendants who have taken up the cause.  “It’s the third generation and fourth generation who is actively pursuing the quest to restitute the memory of the Herzog family, to right the provenance of the looted artworks,” said Agnes Peresztegi, a lawyer who has represented parts of the family for 20 years. (more…)

Kevin Beasley, The Road (2019), via Casey Kaplan

Artist Kevin Beasley returns to Casey Kaplan this month for an exhibition of new work surrounding questions and explorations of ancestry, ownership and land, dwelling on a range of questions over ownership and property that underscore the United States’s relationship to its own past, and the culture of violence and oppression that helped to build its economic foundations.   (more…)

Sotheby’s will sell the collection of New York collector, art dealer, and interior designer Hester Diamond, featuring a range of both Old Masters and Contemporary works, valued at $30 million. “Her taste and her visual sensibility were so strong, it ran through everything, the modern and the old,” says Diamond’s Stepdaughter, dealer Rachel Kaminsky. (more…)