Curator and writer Darren Flook, cofounder of the Independent Art Fair, will open a new project space in London. “I spent a long time thinking about small galleries after Hotel closed and what I saw at fairs including Independent,” he says. “Young galleries trying to play the same game as big galleries and failing.” (more…)

Artist Fred Tomaselli is featured in the New York Times this week, showing off a collection of works by friends and fellow artists Amy Sillman, Allen Ruppersberg, and more. “It’s an ad hoc thing, networks of friends who brought these works into our lives,” he says of his works. “You’re looking at the objects that come with aging.” (more…)

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A museum dedicated to the work of Old Master Pieter Bruegel the Elder has been put on hold due to Belgian laws on over-spending.  “The project is not abandoned but for the moment it is on hold,” says Samir al-Haddad, a spokesperson for the Royal Museums. “It is not that we are begging for money. The strange situation is that we have €5m in our reserves, but with this financial regulation we cannot dig into those reserves.” (more…)

The Uovo Art Storage company will open a new space in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Crain’s reports. “Since opening Uovo in 2014, we have seen an unprecedented demand for our integrated art storage and services,” founder Steven Guttman said in a statement. “Opening Uovo: Brooklyn is our latest contribution to supporting New York’s cultural community.” (more…)

A portrait of Prince Camillo Borghese by the French painter François Gérard, purchased by the Frick last year, is currently the subject of controversy after Italy revoked an export license on the work, and demanded that the Frick return it to the nation. (more…)

Artist Bjarne Melgaard has been denied by local councils in Norway from building an ambitious home and sculpture near Edvard Munch’s Oslo studio. “We want the site where the death house was intended to be placed to remain a green area for the benefit of the local population, and we encourages Bjarne to find a new site for the project,” city councillors from the Labour, Socialist Left, Green, and Progress Party said in a joint statement. (more…)

Collectors Manfred and Ingrid Rotert have donated their collection of one hundred and fifty works by Joseph Beuys to the Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History in Münster, a major gift consisting of many of the artist’s small-scale “multiples” and film reels. “We were never so ambitious to own everything made by Beuys, but from our first purchase on, we knew: That’s it,” Rotert said. (more…)

Yasuaki Ishizaka has been appointed chairman & managing director for Sotheby’s Japan, Art News reports. “We are delighted to welcome Aki back to Sotheby’s,” says Kevin Ching, CEO of Sotheby’s Asia. “Not only is Aki an art world veteran with over three decades in the field, he also has extensive experience in both auction and private sales businesses.”  (more…)

Roya Sachs is taking over as curator for the Lever House Art Collection, and will open the fall art season with a two floor installation in the space by Peter Halley next month, Art News reports. “There’s something really quite inexplicably magic about this building, because its interior and exterior are in constant dialogue with one another,” Sachs says. “It’s public, but it’s private. It’s a lobby, but it’s also a glass box.” (more…)

France is developing a new “culture pass” app, which will aim to improve access to arts and culture for young people across the country.  “No cultural or artistic offering will be excluded,” says France’s culture minister, Françoise Nyssen. Every organization active in the cultural arena will be welcome on the pass – public or private, physical or virtual.” (more…)

Zona Maco’s sister fairs, Zona Maco Salón and Zona Maco Foto will return this month  after cancellations last September over the earthquake that ripped through Mexico City. The fairs open tomorrow, August 22nd. (more…)

A visitor to an Anish Kapoor show at the Serralves museum in Porto was injured after falling into one of the artist’s works, an 8-foot deep hole titled Descent into Limbo. The visitor is believed to have slipped and fell, although an investigation is still underway.  (more…)

The New Yorker has a piece this week on Alex Katz, and his impressive influence on the field of painting, despite remaining relatively overlooked by the art market’s blue-chip buyers.  “I never fit in,” he says. “I’m not a Pop artist, and people can’t see my work as realistic, either.” (more…)

New Met Museum Head Max Hollein gets a profile in Vogue, exploring his leadership style and vision for the storied institution. “Max likes to run things,” Dede Wilsey, the main patron of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco says. “He’s always way ahead of everybody in his thinking. So if he’s decided this is going to work at the Met, he’s figured out how it’s going to work.” (more…)

Gagosian Gallery has hired dealer Andrew Fabricant after his departure from rival Richard Gray Gallery. “Gagosian’s global platform and broad embrace of both historical and contemporary artists was inspirational and important to me in this decision,” Fabricant said in the statement. “The gallery’s international profile has influenced and informed the tastes and interests of both a seasoned and new generation of collectors.” (more…)

Research into the current state of the arts in Berlin shows that the city’s artists face frequent challenges of poverty, gender pay gaps and minuscule pensions.  “Most of the numbers were expected, but I was alarmed by how low the pension expectancy of artists actually is,” says researcher Hergen Wöbken. (more…)

MoMA Local 2110 union has reached an agreement for a new contract with management at the institution. “We attribute the museum’s retractions in no small part to the dedicated efforts and perseverance of our members, who have spent months volunteering their time to our activism and turning out in record numbers to participate in collective actions, as well as to the resounding vocal support from our colleagues, friends, and the public at large,” says Maida Rosenstein, the president of United Auto Workers Local 2110. (more…)

Peter Paul Rubens’s The Massacre of the Innocents will travel to the Rubenshuis museum in Antwerp this fall from the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Newspaper reports.  The painting, last sold in 2002 for £49.5 million, will be a part of research projects during its loan. “We can imagine with disbelief that he painted as much as he did within that relatively small space over a relatively short period of time… He establishes what is arguably the most productive artistic studio of all time to date in that space,” says Sasha Suda, the AGO’s curator of European art. (more…)

Nicole Eisenman and Anton Kern, have agreed to significantly reduce the price for the fountain sculpture requested by the City of Münster, putting the city’s fundraising efforts much closer to completion. “We wanted the bulk of the funding to come from Münster citizens,” says dealer Maria Galen, who has led the push for the sculpture. “But we have also applied to some foundations, and we don’t yet know what we will get. We are very confident.” (more…)

Artist Jamie Isenstein has withdrawn her work from a summer group exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery following criticism of what some deem inadequate critique of racist subject matter.  The show, which aimed to address Peter Sellers’s film The Party (in which the lead actor wears brown face), drew criticism from artists Ajay Kurian and Vijay Masharani for failing to fully address the racist framework of the film.  “I realized that if I expect the show to address racism, I also have to address it. I should have thought longer about my assumption that other artists would do it for me,” Isenstein said. (more…)

Martin Puryear has been confirmed as the representative for the United States at the 2019 Venice Biennale, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Madison Square Park Conservancy announced today. “Martin Puryear confronts contemporary issues as a maker of objects in the studio,” says exhibition curator Brooke Kamin Rapaport, the deputy director and senior curator of the Madison Square Park Conservancy. “For more than five decades, Puryear has created a body of work distinguished by a complex visual vocabulary and deeply-considered meaning.” (more…)

The BBC profiles Tate Liverpool this week, and the impact that the institution has had on the city. “Coming from the Left, my idea of economic regeneration was to do with factories and shipyards – the idea that art could be an economic driver didn’t figure for me. But, looking back, that was out of date,” says comedian Alexei Sayle of the museum’s birth. “I would never have guessed that tourism, looking at things and shopping could have become economic drivers, but they have. (more…)

The Kassel state prosecutor’s office has dropped an investigation into misuse of funds by the management of the 2017 edition of Documenta, Art Newspaper reports. “The mere fact that some projects don’t comply with the tastes of some observers or—in their view—are not suited to the goal of promoting the event, doesn’t meet the conditions for criminal breach of trust,” the prosecutor said. (more…)