The Met has taken another step towards mandatory admission fees, filing a proposal to charge out of town visitors while keeping the museum donation optional for residents of the city.  “We will review it carefully,” says commissioner of cultural affairs Tom Finkelpearl.  “The city is committed to working with the Met to ensure that its unrivaled collection and programming remain accessible to all New Yorkers.” (more…)

The New York Times has an interview with New Museum director Lisa Phillips this week, labeling her “The Most Powerful Woman in the New York Art World.”  “The concept of soft power has become a bit of a cliché, I guess,” she says of her work shaping the Museum’s impact on the city’s art community.  “But it’s the way I’ve always thought about what I do, and I think it’s the way this museum has made a difference.” (more…)

An article in Bloomberg this week notes a distinct increase in value for artists showing in this year’s Whitney Biennial. “There’s no doubt that collectors troll these biennials at the openings and attempt to ferret out who will be the hotshot artist or artists, and they corner the gallerists to secure the ‘glittering trophies,’” says advisor Todd Levin. “The auctions that take place after the biennials are part and parcel of the same kind of market mechanism.” (more…)

An unidentified man slashed a Christopher Wool painting in the town of Aspen this weekend, leaving a several inch-long hole in the canvas.  “On it’s face, it’s extremely suspicious,” Aspen Police Detective Jeff Fain said. “There has to be a reason someone would want to destroy this painting.”  The work is valued at $3 million. (more…)

Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Al-Thani of the Qatari Royal Family has opened the Institute of Arab and Islamic Art in New York, focused on representing and advocating for Muslim artists around the world.  “If we dig into how Arabs and Muslims are stereotyped, they go way back,” Al-Thani says. “It made sense to me there had to be an art and culture institute that represents the Arab and Islamic region, as there isn’t really one here in New York.” (more…)

The Tate Modern will name its new Switch House expansion after USSR-born billionaire oligarch Len Blavatnik.  “My family and I are honored to support Tate, and to be linked to this exceptional building,” Blavatnick said.  “Tate provides incomparable service to the arts, culture and education throughout the world.” (more…)

Vanity Fair has a piece this week on the rapidly expanding market for Modigliani works, and the increasing frequency of controversies, lawsuits and threats following close behind, stemming from the disorganized and hectic nature of the artist’s catalogue.  “To say that the catalogue raisonné situation of works by Modigliani is a mess is an understatement,” says Kenneth Wayne, a foremost Modigliani scholar. (more…)

An article in Bloomberg examines the recently minted “.ART” domain, which current operator UK Creative Ideas Ltd. claims will help bring transparency and security to an unstable market.  “The art market lacks basic infrastructure and standards that exist in any other business,” says investor Ulvi Kasimov. “It’s hard to create cash flow.” (more…)

LA Weekly profiles  Jamillah James, who will head up curatorial duties at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.  “I love L.A.,” she says of her move from New York. “I was a very quick convert. I’m just like a little Benedict Arnold from the East Coast.” (more…)

John Currin is interviewed in Art News this week, offering a look at the artist’s process and the drawings that often serve as the initial structure for his ideas.  “They range from real doodles to pretty finished drawings, but the majority are quick things,” Currin says. “A lot of naked ladies, that kind of stuff.” (more…)

The Turner Prize has announced its shortlist for 2017, with a considerably older group of artists reflecting the prize’s decision to drop its upper age limit of 50 years.  Lubaina Himid, Rosalind Nashashibi, Hurvin Anderson and Andrea Büttner have earned a place in the Turner Prize exhibition, which will open later this year in Hull. (more…)

Massimiliano Gioni sits down with PS1 founder Alanna Heiss for a conversation this week in Art News, as the pair reflect on their early work, their work as curators, and their visions for the future of the field.  “A grown-up radical starts her or his own thing and sees it through, takes the criticism from other radicals and tries to solve problems instead of marching,” Heiss says.  “I had wings and a halo—everything I needed—so I decided to build an anti-museum. That’s what P.S. 1 was.” (more…)

Despite calls by President Trump to nix funding for the NEA, the budget expected to pass both houses in Congress has included a small increase in funding for the organization, the Art Newspaper reports.  The previous budget proposal had seen ample criticism on both sides of the aisle, leaving many Republican representatives and Senators willing to ignore Trump’s prompts.   (more…)

Laure de Beauvau-Craon, the former Sotheby’s head who broke a monopoly on the French auction market during, has passed away at the age of 74.  De Beauvau-Craon used her influence and connections as a princess of the duchy of Lorraine to win a battle against France’s “commissaires-priseurs” to enable Sotheby’s to do business in the country, fundamentally changing the European art market.  (more…)

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art has received a $575,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support increased collecting of archival materials from African-American artists.  “We are delighted to receive this generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to bolster our collections by and about African American artists and make them available to the world at our headquarters in Washington and digitally,” says director Kate Haw. (more…)

French cultural groups are organizing against conservative Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, with artists Orlan and Kader Attia leading initiatives against Le Pen.  “I believe that Marine Le Pen and culture is like radical Islamists and culture: hatred of freedom and difference,” Attia says. (more…)

The Art News has a piece on Christie’s upcoming May sales, and the “reloaded” auction house’s preparations for what may be a major statement in the secondary market.  The article traces the auction house’s ups and downs over the past year, including the departure of Brett Gorvy.  “The market has changed over the last decade,” CEO Guillaume Cerutti says. “Some fields, like the decorative arts, have seen a decline, and we have to take into account that tastes have changed. There’s a shift toward more modern and contemporary, and we have to reflect and adapt. I thought it was better to do that very quickly and focus on the future—very quickly.” (more…)

The New York Times takes an even-handed look at recent political work made in the U.S., and how it has fared on the market abroad, focusing in particular on Jordan Wolfson’s Real Violence and recent pieces by Awol Erizku.  “Artists aren’t making political work for the market, it’s for people watching the world,” Paul Schimmel says. “Goya made the greatest political art, but the market wasn’t kind to him, either.” (more…)

Artist Cornelia Parker has been named as the official artist for the UK’s 2017 elections, the first woman to take on the role since it was developed in 2001.  Parker’s work will respond to the country’s general elections, which will take place in June.  “We live in scary but exhilarating times. The whole world order seems to be changing,” she says.  “As an artist, I feel honored to have been invited to respond to such an important election. With all its challenging issues and complexity, it is an event that I’m excited to engage with and I look forward to sharing my finished work.” (more…)

Art News takes a tour of Galerie Perrotin’s new exhibition space on the Lower East Side, a five-floor complex that includes storage, accommodations for visiting artists, and ample exhibition space, much of which was driven by artists’ needs.  “We didn’t decide, exactly, but we had some complicity with the architect,” says Ivan Argote, whose work christens the gallery’s first show this month.  “I wanted to have this open space so we could look at the space, and I worked on the lighting and how it’s structurally built.” (more…)

Thaddaeus Ropac has opened the doors on his exhibition space in London’s Mayfair neighborhood, covering 16,000 square feet over five floors.  The gallery is currently showing a wide range of works by its artists to celebrate its first exhibition in its new home.   (more…)

Jeff Koons is interviewed in the LA Times this week, as the artist opens a new show at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, and reflects on his recent collaboration with Louis Vuitton.  “The idea of the ready-made — something pre-existing for usage — kind of always existed,” he says. “But it’s really about celebrating a vocabulary. If you look at the letters in the alphabet, and all of the sudden there’d be restrictions on those letters, it would really eliminate the world of poetry. It’s the same with the visual world and incorporating the things around us that we’re familiar with. So it’s being able to articulate these familiarities, to be able to create a visual poetry.” (more…)

New Museum curator Lauren Cornell is leaving the institution to take a position as director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and chief curator of the Hessel Museum of Art.  “Our recent expansion broadened our capacity for archival research and contemporary art scholarship, creating greater opportunities for the CCS students, the undergraduate programs at Bard and visitors to the museum,” CCS director Tom Eccles says. (more…)

The Tate is facing criticism after the museum reportedly asked staff to chip in money towards buying a sailing boat as a going away present for Nicholas Serota.  “The staff at Tate are underpaid and overworked, and haven’t had appropriate pay rises, and this just demonstrates how divorced from reality the management at Tate are,” says Tracy Edwards, the PCS union representative for Tate staff. “It seems to me they’ve made a big error of judgment.” (more…)