Chicago art dealer Richard Gray, long a cornerstone of the city’s arts scene, has passed away at the age of 89.  Gray cultivated and supported a range of artists over the course of his life and work, including Alex Katz, Theaster Gates, and David Hockney. “The reality is, sooner or later—but not so much later—it’s all going to be all over for me, and I accept that. I know it,” Gray said in 2007. “It doesn’t change one iota my ability to continue, every day, to be active and involved and committed, to gain from everything around me, what people are doing—artists, musicians, family.”  (more…)

MoMa has announced the acquisition of 324 works on paper by ninety-seven artists from the holdings of Merrill C. Berman, a Rye, New York–based investor who amassed a collection of 20,000 early twentieth-century works on paper.  “By representing crucial figures—often women and artists from lesser-known geographies—missing or underrepresented in our collection, this extraordinary body of work is especially welcome as the museum continues its commitment to diversifying modernism’s narratives with its forthcoming expansion in 2019,”says Christophe Cherix, the MoMA’s chief curator of drawings and prints. (more…)

The Nahmad family has purchased Pablo Picasso’s Fillette à la corbeille fleurie (Young Girl with a Flower Basket) (1905), which sold at Christie’s New York last week for $115 million. The confirmation came as part of an announcement that the piece would go on view for a show at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris this fall. (more…)

The Corcoran Gallery of Art will give away the remaining 11,000 works in its collection to the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, the U.S. Supreme Court, and 10 Smithsonian Institution museums. “Having three anchors, where the bulk of the collection legacy of the Corcoran could be accessed, seemed like a great balance,” says Corcoran board chairman Harry F. Hopper III. (more…)

Attempts to move a Bernini sculpture has led to a missing right ring finger of his subject, St. Bibiana.  “After this incident we have much to reflect on, as art historians, which you are becoming,” says Professor Giovan Battista Fidanza, who discovered the damage. “We know that moving works of art is always a huge stress for them.” (more…)

The Guardian has a piece this week recapping the sale of the Rockefeller estate last week at Christie’s, noting that the sales raised a final total of $832 million, breaking 22 auction records for artists in the sale. (more…)

For the second time, a Steve Wynn-owned Picasso has been damaged, leading to Christie’s withdrawal of the artist’s Le Marin piece from auction this week.  It was valued at $70 million.  Information on the damage to the work was not specified, but Wynn previously put his arm through Picasso’s Le Reve last year.  (more…)

Charles Ray is profiled in the New York Times this week, as the artist opens a show of new works at Matthew Marks. “When I was a younger man I was very aware — and perhaps still am today — of a degree of provocativeness carrying a work into a room and grabbing people’s attention,” he says.

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Gagosian will unveil a new sculpture by Urs Fischer titled “Things,” at 511 Fifth Avenue this week, opening a disused bank building northeast of Bryant Park until June 23.  “It happened by accident,” Fischer says of the work, which features a massive rhinoceros. “I just saw a rhino and was like, ‘That’s my protagonist that I’ve looked for for years.’” (more…)

The Court of Arbitration for Art, or CAA, a new juridical body formed to resolve international conflicts over art, has been founded in The Hague, Artforum reports.  “Courts are reactive bodies,” founder William Charron of the New York firm Pryor Cashman says. “They don’t go out and independently try to search for the truth on their own. They take the evidence that is presented by the parties and they do the best they can. The thinking with CAA is, if you have art practitioners as the deciders, they’re going to be better positioned to evaluate the evidence.” (more…)

Following the success of a Claude Monet sale this week at Christie’s, the auction house will try its hand at the higher end of the artist’s market next month in London, announcing a second work depicting La Gare Saint-Lazare for £22-£28 million. “The paintings represent a dialogue between Monet and the increasing modernity of everyday life in Paris, which was rapidly changing at that time,” says Keith Gill of the auction house’s Post-War and Impressionist Department. (more…)

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University have partnered to create a new three-year program that combines academic training and work experience to develop and encourage a diverse body of new arts curators. “We need things to start changing now,” LACMA head Michael Govan says. “Addressing it directly and speaking loudly sends a strong signal.” (more…)

A group of British artists including Tracey Emin and Wolfgang Tillmans have published an open letter decrying the current state of British arts education. “There is compelling evidence that the study of creative subjects is in decline in state schools and that entries to arts and creative subjects have fallen to their lowest level in a decade,” the letter reads. “Young people are being deprived of opportunities for personal development in the fields of self-expression, sociability, imagination, and creativity.”  (more…)

Two teachers at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan have been removed from their posts following complaints of improper conduct by students. Roy Frumkes and Robert Haufrecht were both fired over violation of the school’s misconduct policies. “The College is firmly committed to the rights of all members of its community,” says spokeswoman Joyce. “SVA responds to sexual misconduct complaints swiftly, investigates them thoroughly and resolves them in accordance with local, state and federal laws.” (more…)

New York’s Joan Mitchell Foundation has named Kay Takeda as its new senior director of artist programs. “Joan Mitchell was not only at the vanguard of American abstraction, but forward-thinking in endowing a foundation to assist generations of artists in developing and sharing their creative work,” Takeda says. “This is a mission I have long shared and it’s an honor to help steward such an important vision and resource into the future.” (more…)

Nicolas Bourriaud, the director of Montpellier Contemporain in France and the cofounder of the Paris’s Palais de Tokyo museum, will curate the next Istanbul Biennial.  “I am very honored to be able to contribute to the history of Istanbul Biennial, which has always been a place of strong curatorial statements since its creation in 1987,” Bourriaud says.  “Also, as a crossing point, the city of Istanbul takes a specific signification today, in a global political era marked by binary thought. I will try to build an exhibition that measures up to our historical situation.” (more…)

Finland has tapped the Miracle Workers Collective to represent the country at the 2019 Venice Biennale.  “If people have been engaging with the possible and ‘the way the world is today is the result of the possibles that they did’ as Sun Ra said,”the group says of their work in a statement, “then what would be the results of imagining and engaging with the impossible?” (more…)

As the Rockefeller Collection heads to the auction block, the Art Newspaper spotlights the wealthy family, and how they built such a landmark collection, while simultaneously defining the modern market landscape. The piece spotlights the family’s varied tastes, and how each of them left their mark on the collection. (more…)

As auction week prepares to heat up, Bloomberg profiles a group of collectors and dealers, and their perspectives on how to build a collection. “In the art market there are no rules, that’s why it is such a minefield and why it has such opportunities,” says adviser Wendy Goldsmith. “When I start with a new client, half my job is to say no, especially to people from finance who think because they can master one market they can master any market.” (more…)

Printed Matter is opening a new satellite store in the lobby of the new Swiss Institute space on St. Marks, the store announced today.  “We are deeply excited to welcome Printed Matter as part of the new SI building,” says Simon Castets, the Swiss Institute’s executive director. “As a nonprofit dedicated to contemporary forms of expression, SI couldn’t dream of a better partner than Printed Matter: more than just a space, we share a commitment to artists’ voices and strive to amplify them.” (more…)

David Wojnarowicz’s Science Lesson will look to set the stage for the artist’s emergence into the blue-chip market next week at Christie’s Contemporary Sale in NYC, Art News reports. “Now is the moment to launch him onto an international platform,” says Andy Massad, Christie’s deputy chairman of postwar and contemporary art department. “There’s a lot of education that needs to be done out there, because honestly he’s seen more as a very intense cult figure.” (more…)

The US Government could introduce legislation next week to more aggressively regulate the art market, Art Newspaper reports. “If the legislation is passed, the Treasury Department will draft regulations making art dealers subject to an anti-money-laundering compliance and reporting regime, and will possibly require documented provenance and electronic publication of sales,” lawyer William Pearlstein says. (more…)

Dealer Ezra Chowaiki has pleaded guilty to wire fraud after allegations that he fabricated sales of works at his Manhattan gallery. “As he admitted today in federal court, Ezra Chowaiki ran a multimillion-dollar fraud on art dealers and collectors around the country,” says attorney Geoffrey S. Berman of the Southern District of New York. “In some instances, Chowaiki sold artwork, purportedly on consignment, without the owners’ authorization. In other instances, he took money from clients purportedly to purchase artwork, and kept the money but purchased no art.” (more…)

Collector Hubert Neumann is suing Sotheby’s over an allegedly “botched” sale of a Jean-Michel Basquiat, which the auction house has slotted a major sale in its upcoming auction.  “This is a case about a broken promise, a family disagreement, and an art masterpiece that, if this Court does not step in now to save it, will be lost to the people who love it, and to New York, forever,” a court filing reads. (more…)