The Art Newspaper has a piece this week on the network of art storage warehouses and complexes in the U.S. and abroad, charting the map of companies working in the $1 billion industry.  “Until about ten years ago,” says Stephane Custot of London’s Waddington Custot gallery, “Modern and contemporary art collectors were mainly made up of art enthusiasts and amateurs, they had a real passion, spending their money on what they liked; they collected in order to simply enjoy the work in their home environment. Today you have to work with an increasing number of art funds or speculators buying art for investment. Art buying has become accessible to a much larger audience than before and is considered an asset. The result of this is that more work sleeps in warehouses rather than hanging in collectors’ homes.” (more…)

Artist Ei Arakawa has had a work stolen from the Skulptur Project Münster, an LED panel painting that was pried free from its display.  “This is a really interesting ‘performance’ in a way, revealing how vulnerable art in public space can be, and how public space can be violent,” the artist said. “This often happens in the history of Skulptur Projekte.” (more…)

Sotheby’s has tapped Jan Prasens as its new Managing Director of Europe, putting him in charge of the auction house’s operations in the continent, as well as in the Middle East, India and Africa.  “While Jan’s commercial credentials are impeccable, he also commands a deep understanding of our business and clients,” CEO Tad Smith says.  “I am delighted he is taking on this position where I know he will thrive alongside the exceptional team already on the ground there.” (more…)

Roughly $12 million in art was stolen from a Sunnyside storage facility in Queens, the New York Daily News reports, including pieces by Frank Stella and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.  Owner William Pordy discovered that thieves had broken the locks on the door and stolen all 22 works in storage.  “They broke the locks and they stole everything, all my paintings,” Pordy said. “It’s awful.” (more…)

Artist and poet John Giorno is profiled in the New York Post this week, as a massive exhibition devoted to his work is set to open across multiple venues in the city, curated by his husband, Ugo Rondinone.  “John has a childlike curiosity,” former REM frontman Michael Stipe says of Giorno. “I love how open he is.” (more…)

Sam Durant is interviewed in the LA Times this week, after signing over the intellectual property rights of his controversial work Scaffold to the Dakota people in Minnesota. “I have no intention of making a representation of that again,” Durant says. “They asked me, ‘How do we know you won’t do this again?’ I said, ‘That makes perfect sense. It’s yours. You decide what happens to it.’” (more…)

Artist Hermann Nitsch is interviewed in The Guardian this week, as he concludes a controversial performance in Australia.  “I want only to show what is,” he says. “I never was interested to make provocation. I want to show intensity. And let’s say, maybe in intensity is a kind of provocation, but for me [it] always is important to show life and to celebrate life.” (more…)

The New York Times reports on recent controversies in the study of the work of Andrew Wyeth, after researcher Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw published research documenting a series of the artist’s works changing the race of his subjects, or using their bodies as models while often denying them a fully formed sense of identity in his final paintings.  “I think we can find artists to be complicated and frustrating and disappointing in some ways and still love the work,” says Shaw. (more…)

An article in Art Newspaper this week traces the remarkable market rise for the Gutai group of Japanese post-war artists in the past years, and its subsequent decline in popularity.  “A big price will always drive the market,” says Grégoire Billault, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s New York. “When people can buy for $200,000 and sell for $2m, it’s irresistible for some of them.  I think it just needs a bit of time. It’s a question of needing a bit of maturity.” (more…)

Tracey Emin is featured in The Guardian this week, as she reviews works by Egon Schiele, one of her principal inspirations.  “You could see the anguish he was going through: ‘I am in pain. I am drawing this, but I am drawing this in a different way, because I see it differently from other people. I see it through the eyes of pain.’” (more…)

Creative Time is embarking on a new project that sees a series of artist-commissioned flags flying over the organization’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan, including work by Tania Bruguera, Alex Da Corte, Jeremy Deller, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Yoko Ono.  “We live in a very dark political time, bombarded by bad news every morning, so it’s important for people not to feel outnumbered by bad ideas,” Nato Thompson, Creative Time’s artistic director, says. “We can produce a community and we can resist, collectively.” (more…)

The Met has announced a shake-up in its administration structure, placing president Daniel H. Weiss at the head of the museum, and putting the directorship of the museum under his supervision.  “He has worked hard, he’s gained the confidence of the board, of the curators, of the executive staff — he is the natural person to lead and run the museum at this time,” says Daniel Brodsky, chairman of the museum’s board of trustees. “There is really no one else to consider other than Dan.” (more…)

London’s Institute of Contemporary Art is growing its supervisory council, adding Wolfgang Tillmans, Russian collector Delya Allakhverdova and Lebanese patron Maria Sukkar.  “These new appointments align with my ambition to make the ICA a truly progressive and radical contemporary arts organization ready of the 21st century. Seventy years on, this need is felt more acutely than ever,” says director Stefan Kalmár. (more…)

The Financial Times focuses on sales at this week’s Art Basel fair, noting the ever-increasing popularity of blue-chip works in an uncertain financial market.  “Ten years ago, everyone raced upstairs for the exciting new artists, now they rush downstairs for the opportunities in the blue-chip, postwar market,” says art adviser Hugo Nathan. (more…)

Khadija Saye, a 24-year-old London artist currently showing at the Venice Biennale, is currently missing following the massive tower block fire in the British capital.  “We’ve been calling the hospitals, but I know from my own experience after the London riots people will be in hospital with no belongings, many of them will be unconscious,” says Labour MP David Lammy, whose wife mentored and employed Saye for some time. “So of course we hope and pray that she is amongst them and not perished in that building as I suspect hundreds will have done at the end of this count.” (more…)

Houston’s Menil Collection will close its doors for eight months for a major renovation project, including a full restoration of the building’s floors, the Houston Chronicle reports.  The piece notes the damage to the museum’s stained-black pine flooring, which has resulted from years of foot traffic.  “Everything I do in the building has to consider his architecture,” facilities manager Steve McConathy says of Renzo Piano’s original design for the building. (more…)

Andy Warhol’s first self-portrait will go on sale in London in the coming weeks, estimated to sell for £7 million at Sotheby’s June 28th.  “The artist’s first self-portraits – created using a strip of photographs taken in a New York dime store photo booth – have never felt more relevant to contemporary culture,” says Sotheby’s senior specialist in contemporary art, James Sevier. (more…)

Art Market Monitor looks at Marcato Capital’s gradual sell off of its holdings in Sotheby’s, even as the auction house’s value continues to increase.  The publication’s analysis indicates that, despite its activist push on the auction house’s business structure and goals, Marcato was unable to see major gains. (more…)

Mitchell-Innes & Nash has taken on the estate of General Idea, a three-artist collaborative that worked for over 30 years through a mixture of politically and socially-engaged art.  “They reinvented the idea of artist activism,” says Lucy Mitchell-Innes. “They took on ideas—those often demonized or ignored—with a boldness that was unheard of at the time. [General Idea] came of age in a period that saw pivotal changes in queer conceptualism and postmodernism. They led the charge in decentralization and intervention within the institutional framework.” (more…)

Following the failure of UK authorities to find a buyer for Parmigianino’s £24.5m The Virgin and Child with Saint Mary Magdalen and the Infant St John the Baptist, the work’s export bar has been lifted, sending it to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.  Getty director Timothy Potts calls the acquisition “a rare opportunity to enrich our collection with a masterpiece from one of the most accomplished Italian artists of the 16th century.” (more…)

A group of animal rights activists have attacked the Athens studio of artist Aboubakar Fofana, who is currently participating in Documenta 14.  Fofana’s work, which features a group of 54 dyed sheep, each representing a nation in Africa, has earned fierce protest over the animals’ confinement.  “I’m not treating [the sheep] badly,” Fofana says of the issues over the sheep’s presence in the work. “I’m not putting chemicals on them; it’s more like dyeing hair. In my culture, we use indigo and henna to dye hair black.”  (more…)

Los Angeles’s Broad Museum has signed on to host a sweeping Jasper Johns retrospective which will also show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.  “The Broad Art Foundation has been lending art for over three decades, so the logistical, practical side of taking on a show of this magnitude is something we are ready to handle,” director Joanne Heyler said. (more…)

In one of the more unique angles on Art Basel reporting, Bloomberg has a piece on the influx of collectors, advisors, and bankers to Basel this week, as over $3 billion in art hits the market, spotlighting the wealth management services various banks are looking to sell alongside those works.  “Our clients are here, so we are,” says Deepak Soni, chief executive officer at Vontobel Swiss Wealth Advisors. (more…)

The New Yorker joins James Turrell on a visit to the new wing of Mass MOCA, where the artist is installing a series of works.  “Generally, we don’t see light this way, because we see light illuminating things,” he says. “But my interest is in the thingness, the physicality, of light itself.” (more…)