Christie’s is holding its first Modern and contemporary Middle Eastern art sale in London this fall, as it looks to expand the market for Middle Eastern work on a global scale.  “Moving to London will help engage a wider audience, particularly on the contemporary side,” says Michael Jeha, managing director and deputy chairman, Middle East. “Stylistically, Modern art tends to appeal more to regional collectors.” (more…)

Adam Lindemann is planning a massive development in Los Angeles’s Arts District, a 12-story mixed use building with live-work spaces and street-level retail and art spaces. The space, located at 641 South Imperial Street, will continue Lindemann’s engagement with Los Angeles’s East Side.  (more…)

A group of South Korean officials have been sentenced to prison terms for their roles in maintaining a black list of artists opposing former president Park Geun-hye. “It’s against the Constitution to exclude artists from government support programs according to the taste of political power,” presiding judge, Hwang Byeong-heon, said in his ruling. (more…)

Critic Jerry Saltz takes a tour of MoMA this week with architect Liz Diller of Diller Scofido + Renfro, and examines the prospects for the museum’s new expansion project. “This next version of the museum is going to be the best version we’ll get for a while,” he writes.  “Which is okay. I can’t live without this museum. I love it. It’s where we all come from — and need to return in order to spawn new ideas of modernism.” (more…)

The Menil Collection in Houston has postponed a major expansion project that included a new Drawing Institute building, after Director Rebecca Rabinow shuffled construction schedules this week. “We’re in it for the long haul and have very exacting standards,” she says. “Better to take time and get it perfect than open too early.” (more…)

Former Met Director Thomas Campbell has been awarded the Getty Rothschild Fellowship, which will see him embarking on eight months of research at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and at Windsor Manor in Buckinghamshire, England. Campbell’s research will investigate  “the related question of how we can use art and culture as a gateway to promote understanding in an ever-more connected but ever-more divided world,” according to a statement. (more…)

Former Met Museum director Philippe de Montebello will become the new director at Acquavella Galleries, Art News reports. “I think it’s one of the great art galleries,” de Montebello said. “We have been talking over the last few years since I left the Met about how I could use some of my academic and other experience with the gallery.” (more…)

Russian collective Pussy Riot is fundraising to create a play based on its experience of Russian political oppression, recreating the “epic ordeal when the members were arrested, forced through a flawed judicial system and finally transported to a Russian jail,” according to a press release. “The audience will actually get the chance to re-live each one of these experiences themselves in London, learning what it means to be a political opponent in Russia today,” front woman Nadya Tolokonnikova said of the work. “We’ll take you on a journey from the cathedral altar deep into the vaults of the Kremlin itself. Hopefully, this is a journey that you’ll only have to make once in your life.” (more…)

The 2017 Istanbul Biennial, curated by artist duo Elmgreen and Dragset, has announced its artist list for the exhibition, which opens September 16 and runs through November 12.  The list of artists, each exploring what it means to be “a good neighbor,” includes Mark Dion, Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. (more…)

The Condo art fair project, which is currently wrapping a first run in New York, will launch editions in Mexico City and Shanghai, Artforum reports. “It had the same communal atmosphere as the London edition, which was important to me,” says organizer Vanessa Carlos of Carlos/Ishikawa, “and it definitely achieved the aim I have for Condo of demonstrating an alternate way of exhibiting abroad, of focusing of collaboration and of proposing a good way for audience members to encounter international artists and galleries.” (more…)

Rock and Roll superstar Alice Cooper has reportedly discovered a lost Andy Warhol Electric Chair painting in his collection, a piece that could be worth several million dollars, The Guardian reports. “Truthfully, at the time no one thought it had any real value,” Cooper’s manager, Shep Gordon says. “Andy Warhol was not ‘Andy Warhol’ back then. And it was all a swirl of drugs and drinking. But you should have seen Alice’s face when Richard Polsky’s estimate came in.” (more…)

The Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland has taken control of the first works from the Cornelius Gurlitt art horde, spurring new research into the work’s provenance in the Swiss city. “It is impossible to separate the Gurlitt collection from […] the debate about Nazi-looted art,” says Nina Zimmer, the director of the Kunstmuseum Bern. “I am glad the museum’s board took on this responsibility.” (more…)

A recent report on the year’s auction health sees auction sales slightly improving, while private sales are drastically down at Christie’s, the Financial Times reports. Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti has attributed this to the “counter-cyclical relationship” between auctions and private sales. (more…)

The most recent financial disclosure by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump has valued the couple’s art collection at over $25 million, CNN reports. This comes after months of reported foot-dragging by White House officials in the release of information on the family’s holdings. “We’re not getting the level of responsiveness from the White House counsel’s office that we’re used to, or that we need to do the job really effectively,” says Walter Shaub of the Office of Government Ethics. (more…)

A group of vandals attacked a sculpture in Nicole Eisenman’s site-specific installation, Sketch for a Fountain, at Skulptur Projekte Münster, Artforum reports. A large figure in the sculpture has been beheaded, and will remain without its head for the remainder of the show.  (more…)

The Getty Museum has made a major purchase of 16 drawings and one painting including works by Michelangelo, Parmigianino and Watteau, among others, one of the most expensive single acquisitions in the museum’s history. “This acquisition is absolutely transformative in terms of the quality of our drawings collection,” says director Timothy Potts. “There hasn’t been an opportunity like this in 30 years of the Getty’s existence and there won’t be again.” (more…)

Despite attempts by Donald Trump to defund the NEA, a bill guaranteeing future funding for the organization has won approval this week from the House appropriations committee, the New York Times reports. “It is a very solid rejection of the administration’s proposals to terminate the two agencies,” says Narric Rome, who heads up government affairs at advocacy group Americans for the Arts. “We consider the House number to be a very good starting point for the appropriations process.” (more…)

A young Israeli art student, Rotem Bides, is facing major criticism and potential criminal from the Polish government, after she reportedly stole artifacts from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum for a show at Beit Berl College in Kfar Saba. “The college believes that this move points to a lack of public sensitivity and a misunderstanding of its criminal significance,” Bides’s college said in a statement, after deciding to cancel her exhibition. (more…)

New York City embarked on an ambitious plan to refocus its orientation towards the arts in modern urban life. “We are clear: there are no cultural deserts in New York City,” Tom Finkelpearl, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, says. “There are arts organizations and artists in every part of the city, but there are not necessarily well-resourced artists and arts organizations in every part of the city. There are parts of the city and communities that remain underserved.” (more…)

Three of five Francis Bacon pieces stolen from the Madrid home of the artist’s friend José Capelo have been recovered by Spanish police, the BBC reports. The works were recovered after a string of arrests in the past months led to the work’s discovery. (more…)

The Centre Pompidou has confirmed an expansion to Shanghai, with plans to stage a series of exhibitions at a new pop-up space called Le Centre Pompidou Shanghai (West Bund). “This cultural partnership [with the West Bund Group] will also allow the Centre Pompidou to present Chinese contemporary art in Paris,” says a gallery statement. (more…)

The daughter of Brazilian artist Lygia Pape is suing electronics giant LG for is reportedly unlicensed use of the artist’s sculpture Tteia 1, C in packaging materials, advertising and promotions for one of its phones. “That LG and others stole her work for their crass commercial purposes is not only against the law, it is an affront, an ugly reminder that enormous corporations such as LG believe themselves beyond the law,” Paula Pape says. “They can steal now and pay later from their profits,” she said. (more…)

A Manhattan Federal Court judge has dismissed a request for dismissal by Richard Prince and Gagosian Gallery regarding a lawsuit over one of the artist’s Instagram pieces, which features the work of photographer Donald Graham. “The judge applied the wrong standard,” Prince’s lawyer, Joshua Schiller, of Boies, Schiller & Flexner says. “We will be able to show fair use.” (more…)

The New York Times spotlights the friendship between painter Andrew Wyeth’s son Jamie, and Andy Warhol, and the time the two shared at Wyeth’s home in rural Pennsylvania. “Andy would spend most of his time down here watching soaps on TV, because he said the TV reception was better than in New York,” Mr. Wyeth says.
(more…)