Portrait of a Young Girl with Blond Hair, a small painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir was stolen from an auction house in the Paris suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye this week, Artforum reports. The painting is estimated to be worth between $30,000 and $35,000. (more…)

The New York Times looks inside artist Howard Hodgkin’s art collection, which will hit the auction block later this month at Sotheby’s. “What appealed to Howard was when it broke away from the norm, when it was an extra something or other,” his partner, Antony Peattie says. (more…)

Roy Lichtenstein’s Female Head will come to auction for the first time ever this November at Sotheby’s in New York, estimated to sell for as much as $15 million. To stand in front of this painting is to understand and appreciate Roy Lichtenstein’s enduring engagement with beguiling blondes, as well as his brilliance as one of the trailblazers of Pop Art,” says Grégoire Billault, head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art department in New York. (more…)

A sexually-explicit sculpture by Dutch art and design collective Atelier Van Lieshout has been pulled from the FIAC sculpture show in Paris’s Tuileries Gardens, the Art Newspaper reports. “Online commentaries point out this work has a brutal aspect; it risks being misunderstood by visitors to the gardens,” says Jean-Luc Martinez, the director of the Louvre. (more…)

David Geffen has pledged $150 million to the planned expansion and renovation at LACMA, the LA Times reports. “There is no great city without a great museum,” Geffen said. “Los Angeles is the city of the future, and with the involvement of those who support art and architecture here, the creation of this building is a very important event.” (more…)

NADA Miami Beach is launching an Acquisition Gift fund for the PAMM, providing the institution with resources to purchase new works from its galleries and represented artists. “We are very appreciative of NADA’s generous gift to the museum,” curator María Elena Ortiz said in a statement. “With such a variety of exhibitors and works on display from around the world, I look forward to selecting an artwork that will complement PAMM’s collection, which highlights Miami’s diverse community and pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas.” (more…)

Snapchat is preparing to launch a series of augmented reality projects alongside Jeff Koons this week, featuring the artist’s works in environments spread around the globe. “Discover Koons’s innovative digital installations scattered across the world to experience them for yourself, and learn a little more about them,” the company wrote in a statement. (more…)

The Guardian profiles a piece on the Tate St. Ives’s impressive expansion project, which was done in the face of fierce protests by local residents. “It has been a very fine balancing act between the gallery and the community,” says Mark Osterfield, the executive director of Tate St Ives since 2007. “There’s a real danger in situations like this that the big institution is perceived to be taking over a place, so we didn’t want to slap an ‘iconic’ new building up on the hill.” (more…)

Gallerist Sarah Kay, who previously served as director at White Cube in London, is opening a new exhibition space in New York’s East Village, WWD reports. “I think this was always the end goal,” Kay says. “It was always a dream, even though I did a number of different things to get to this point.” (more…)

Artist Yoko Ono is selling a Basquiat painting from her collection at Sotheby’s upcoming Post-War and Contemporary Sales this November in New York, Bloomberg reports. The work is presented as a tribute to boxer Muhammad Ali, and is expected to fetch upwards of $12 million. (more…)

A group of experts have released an opinion this week that Leonardo da Vinci may have painted a nude version of the Mona Lisa, the Telegraph reports. Researchers point to the artist’s work Joconde Nue as bearing a striking similarity to the sitter in Da Vinci’s famed portrait. “The drawing has a quality in the way the face and hands are rendered that is truly remarkable. It is not a pale copy,” says curator Mathieu Deldicque. “We are looking at something which was worked on in parallel with the Mona Lisa at the end of Leonardo’s life.”  (more…)

Art Basel has agreed to continue its programing at the Miami Beach Convention Center for another five years, extending its residency at the site through 2023. The Convention Center will add a series of additional renovations to its space as part of the deal. “This agreement is comparable to locking in the Super Bowl for five years,” Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine said in a statement. (more…)

The Tate Modern’s most recent installation project, a massive swing set built by Danish Collective Superflex, gets a profile in The Guardian this week, emphasizing its attempts at encouraging reflection through social interaction.  “We’ve made sure the carpet is very thick so it is extremely comfortable, you can rest,” says Superflex member Rasmus Nielsen. “You can come here and take a nap.” (more…)

Los Angeles’s Institute of Contemporary Art gets a profile in the LA Times this week, showcasing the institution’s new exhibition space downtown and its vision for the future. “We have an important program that’s different from a collector’s museum or a collecting museum or a smaller organization,” says director Elsa Longhauser. “People are so interested in having cultural experiences—there’s a hunger—and I don’t think you can have too many.” (more…)

A pair of missing Henri Matisse cut-outs valued at $4.5 million sit at the center of a claim in France, with the artist’s heirs claiming the works disappeared while in storage and showed up at a sale at Sotheby’s in 2008. The lawsuit was filed “out of respect for the artist, because many were never intended for commercial sale, and finally for the integrity of the art market,” according to the artist’s great-grandson, Georges Matisse. (more…)

Artist Brian Belott is selling a body of works at museums across the city this weekend, pricing the works at arbitrary price points from 5¢ to $5,000, with the funds going towards his upcoming Performa project. “We expect to be kicked out of museums pretty quickly,” says curator Jens Hoffman. (more…)

The Nuevo Museo, a small, egg-shaped exhibition space from Guatemala City has arrived in Los Angeles, and is currently installed outside of LACMA. “Our interest is in giving visibility to others,” says founder Stefan Benchoam, “a balance of Guatemalan artists and international artists who would resonate locally.”  (more…)

MoMA’s associate director Kathy Halbreich is leaving the museum to lead the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the NYT reports. “It’s a foundation focused on doing the best for artists,” she says. “The more I learned, the more perfect the match felt as my next chapter.” (more…)

Simon Sakhai and Aya Mousawi, founders of the itinerant Moving Museum project, will join Art Basel’s new Cities initiative as consulting strategists. “In so many respects, Art Basel Cities was the opportunity to explore all of the same themes and questions we were trying to answer with the Moving Museum, but on a much bigger scale, and the mobilization of so many additional stakeholders beyond what was possible in our own capacity,” Sakhai says. (more…)

The New York Times profiles Yayoi Kusama’s newly opened museum in Tokyo, and the artist’s push to preserve her legacy as one of Japan’s foremost Post-war artists. “Until now, I was the one who went overseas,” she says. “But I now recognize that there are more people coming to Japan to come to see my work.  And that is why I decided to establish a place for them to see my work.” (more…)

Having just pulled works from a show on Chinese conceptualism, the Guggenheim is now facing harsh criticism over giving in to protests. “When an art institution cannot exercise its right for freedom of speech, that is tragic for a modern society,” artist Ai Weiwei said of the occurrence. “Pressuring museums to pull down artwork shows a narrow understanding about not only animal rights but also human rights.” (more…)

Bowing to a wave of criticism, the Guggenheim will remove three works from its show on Chinese conceptualism.  The pieces, which featured live animals, draw strong condemnation over their use of live animals. “Although these works have been exhibited in museums in Asia, Europe and  the United States, the Guggenheim regrets that explicit and repeated threats of violence have made our decision necessary,” the museum said in a statement. “As an arts institution committed to presenting a multiplicity of voices, we are dismayed that we must withhold works of art. Freedom of expression has always been and will remain a paramount value of the Guggenheim.” (more…)

Gavin Brown’s Enterprise will host a fundraiser event to benefit the recovery efforts in Puerto Rico. “What can we do?” it said in a statement. “We need to pool together resources to rebuild the island as soon as possible. Each of us has to put our talents to use towards the goal of getting Puerto Rico back on its feet again.” (more…)

The New York Times has a profile on Thelma Golden this week, as the Studio Museum head steers the institution towards its new home on 125th Street. “What she has done is to simultaneously foreground the Harlem-ness in Studio Museum but also enabled it to become a national institution,” says MoMA Director Glenn Lowry. (more…)