Ruberta, the collaborative Los Angeles gallery project undertaken by a quintet of Latin American dealers, is profiled in Art News this week, before it opens next week. “We joke now that Ruberta is the Wu-Tang Clan of galleries,” the Mexico City-based dealer and gallery founder Brett W. Schultz says in a statement. (more…)

Wood from artist Sam Durant’s controversial piece Scaffold will be buried, according to the ruling of Dakota elders committee. “The wood has a spiritual nature that is inherent to itself in Lakota Dakota tradition,” says Ronald P. Leith, a member of the Dakota elders committee. “Of the four elements — fire, water, air, earth — you cannot use any of the elements in a disparaging fashion without putting yourself in a position of being disrespectful. To use fire to burn this wood that has a negative stigma attached to it — that is not allowed.” (more…)

The New York Times has a piece this week on the continued efforts of The Met to rebuild following the ouster of Thomas P. Campbell.  The piece speculates on potential new Directors for the museum, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Anne d’Harnoncourt. “It would come as no surprise that Anne d’Harnoncourt might have been considered for this position,” Norman Keyes, a Philadelphia Museum spokesman said of this potentiality. “However, we have had no knowledge that such an offer was actually made and would be surprised in any case if she would have taken it. She was deeply committed to Philadelphia, and proved this time and again over a period of many years.” (more…)

Fifteen stolen paintings and drawings by Georg Baselitz, valued at around $2.9 million, have been recovered by German authorities. An unnamed suspect in the shipping industry was apprehended this week, resulting in the return of the works. (more…)

Constantin Brancusi gets a lengthy spotlight in the Wall Street Journal this week, documenting the artist’s enduring influence on the landscape of contemporary art, and the impact of the United States on the artist’s work. “If it hadn’t been for the Americans, I would have starved,” Brancusi once wrote. (more…)

Artist Robert Longo is preparing a monumental public work, American Bridge Project, which will cover a pair of walkways at Hunter College uptown with the artist’s vivid drawings of the American flag. “It was really difficult to figure out what would work from a distance,” he says of the project. “It’s like these slivers of images; they slice the sky. And bridges are metaphorically something we need politically more than ever.” (more…)

Artist duo Gilbert & George get a profile in the Financial Times this week, with the pair looking back on their career, and their approach to their work. “We believe in making money and industry,” says Gilbert at one point. “I’m interested in being a normal person who wants to make money and [sell] our stuff.” (more…)

A rediscovered Francis Bacon painting from the artist’s series of “pope” paintings will feature as a star lot at Christie’s fall sale in London, the Telegraph reports. The painting is considered quite rare, and expected to sell for upwards of £10 million. (more…)

As the Barbican prepares a major exhibition of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Guardian looks back at the artist, his career, and his early death. “I knew when I met him that he was beyond the normal,” says musician and film-maker Michael Holman. “Jean-Michel had his faults, he was mischievous, he had certain things about him that could be called amoral, but setting that aside, he had something that I’m sure he had from the moment he was born. It was like he was born fully realized, a realized being.” (more…)

Following several years of fierce debate, Italy is relaxing its strict export laws on art, particularly on post-war work.  Some have stated that the move will vastly charge the market, as “works made in the 1950s and early 1960s were not easily exportable,” according to dealer Luigi Mazzoleni. (more…)

The second annual NADA Miami Beach International Gallery Prize has been awarded to Bogotá’s Carne Gallery and  Warsaw’s Dawid Radziszewski, resulting both galleries’ participation in the December fair.  “NADA is a global alliance, and we’re proud that NADA Miami Beach has become an opportunity for galleries from around the world to forge new relationships and reach new audiences,” Heather Hubbs, NADA’s executive director, said in a statement. (more…)

Artist Miranda July has opened a charity store project inside Selfridges department store on Oxford Street in London, contrasting the luxury goods nearby with inexpensive garments sold to benefit various interfaith groups.  “Every faith, every disability, every cause has a charity shop and that just doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world,” she says of the city. “There’s something that feels very hopeful about them.” (more…)

Houston museums are starting to re-open, with The Menil Collection opening its doors today for the first time since Hurricane Harvey’s massive rainfall forced it to shutter last week. The museum’s collection was fortunately unaffected by the storm. (more…)

Artist Alex Da Corte has directed the new video for musician St. Vincent’s “New York,” contributing his signature visual aesthetic to the song’s ornate pop stylings. The song is taken from St. Vincent’s upcoming record, a release date for which has yet to be announced. (more…)

Rikrit Tiravanija and Gavin Brown’s restaurant project Unclebrother gets a profile in the New York Times this week, as the group’s renovated car dealership-turned-gallery and restaurant caps another season in the Catskills. “It was purely the ‘for sale’ sign,” Brown says of the idea for opening the space. “We were scared that no one would come.” (more…)

The city of Münster’s popular “Night of the Museums and Galleries” will see the Skulptur Projekte Münster join its list of institutions staying open late this weekend, with many works on view until 10PM or later. (more…)

Artist Trevor Paglen is profiled in the New York Times this week, as the artist prepares new work and looks back on several years spent observing and challenging the structures of modern surveillance. ‘‘People like to say that my work is about making the invisible visible, but that’s a misunderstanding,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s about showing what invisibility looks like.’’ (more…)

Crystal Bridges Museum has unveiled its plans for a converted Kraft Foods cheese plant, which will become a satellite space called the Momentary. “We’re definitely in a growth mode, and I think we’ll develop an innovative interplay between these projects and those in the new industrial facility,” says curator Lauren Haynes. (more…)

The Palais Brongniart in Paris will play home to a new art fair focused on drawing and sculpture this November, the Art Newspaper reports, aiming to fill a space in the city’s offerings for Old Masters works.  “I believe this fair is a reboot of Paris Tableau but that it will have a broader outlook,” says dealer Jill Newhouse, recalling Paris’s last fair dedicated to that category of works. “I have always sold well in Paris and to European collections so when this opportunity arose, I jumped!” (more…)

Artist Dread Scott’s flag work, A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday, is being added to the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Whitney, Art News reports. “You’re approximately six times more likely to be killed by the police if you’re black than if you’re white,” Scott said. “That is the terror that is perpetuated among people today, and that is the legacy of lynching. I want this flag to be a phantasm of the past: both as a means to mark this horror from the past that exists in the present, but also as the resistance from the past that persists in the present. The flag was flown because the NAACP organized people to stop lynching.” (more…)

Takashi Murakami has opened his career retrospective at the MCA Chicago, and has designed a series of prints and other pieces on sale at the museum gift shop, Art Newspaper reports, causing a major surge in sales that sees no sign of slowing. “I’ve never had to ask so much from the retail department, as well as everyone else in the building, including the social media team,” Mark Millmore, the MCA’s director of retail says. (more…)

A group of citizens living around Washington Square Park are opposing Ai Weiwei’s proposed fence installation around the park’s iconic arch. “The monumental Arch is a work of art in itself. It does not need to be politicized with the proposed installation,” a letter to the Public Art Fund reads. “The shape is grand and sculptural, as are the statues of George Washington. We feel that the integrity of its design would be compromised by Mr. Weiwei’s art work. This installation sets a dangerous precedent that one of New York City’s most recognized monuments and pieces of art can be decorated and co-opted for 4 months at a time.” (more…)

Artist Cai Guo-Qiang is featured in the Financial Times’s ongoing “Lunch with the FT” series, dining with writer Leslie Hook at his studio. “I can come back and do things for China; that is not a problem, but I also have my own viewpoint, my own principles,” Cai says. (more…)

Ai Weiwei is interviewed in Variety this week, as his documentary Human Flow prepares for its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. “I know what it is like to be viewed as an outcast,” he says of his work. “The current-day displacement of people is the largest since the end of World War II. It’s a global issue and one which tests the resolve of developed nations to uphold human rights. I am eager to understand how those values — which form the foundation of democracy and freedom — are protected and how they have been violated.” (more…)