MoCA Los Angeles has received a major gift of twenty-two works from collectors Alan Hergott and Curt Shepard, including pieces by Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Catherine Opie.  “As with many American museums, MoCA would not exist without the selfless engagement of its patrons. With this gift, Alan and Curt join a family of collectors who have changed museums in this country forever,” director Philippe Vergne says. “Their gifts to MoCA benefit the museum and its artists, the city of Los Angeles, and its citizens. This is true philanthropy at the highest level.” (more…)

Painter Jack Whitten is interviewed in the Paris Review, as the artist reflects on his works currently on view at Hauser & Wirth in New York, and the process used in creating his works, particularly in his use of units of paint he calls tesserae.  “The tesserae, in my mind, is the unit, it’s the thing that makes them. I can build anything I want with the tesserae, using all acrylic paint, built layer by layer by layer until I get the thickness that I want,” he says.  “As a rule, I work with a thickness of a quarter of an inch to three sixteenth of an inch. I have ways that I can calculate the thickness that I want. There is a lot more, deeper material than the paint, of course—all the psychological stuff.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper sits down with George Goldner, former head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of prints and drawings, to discuss the Thomas Campbell’s ouster, and the issues the museum was facing.  “I think they did a disservice to the institution because it’s impossible for Tom to improve morale in that kind of atmosphere,” he says.  “It is unconscionable that the pension of a person making $60,000 a year is cut through no fault of his or her own, whereas senior board members, who must in part take responsibility, have borne no part of the blame or burden.” (more…)

Collector Dmitriy Rybolovlev has taken a 74% loss on the sale of a Paul Gauguin canvas Te Fare (La Maison) yesterday at Christie’s, Bloomberg reports.  The Russian collector bought the work in 2008 through dealer Yves Bouvier, who he is currently suing for allegedly overcharging him on the purchases of a series of works.  “As Singapore’s highest court noted, the buyers in this case ‘obtained the masterpieces which were precisely what they wanted, and these were all transacted at prices they agreed to pay,”’ says Ron Soffer, Bouvier’s lawyer. (more…)

1:54, the art fair dedicated to the works of African artists, is establishing a new edition of its event in the Moroccan city of Marrakech, opening in February at La Mamounia Hotel.  “Because of space, the selection will be more specific,” founder Touria El Glaoui says. “We want North African and Moroccan galleries to feel included in the project.” (more…)

Pace Gallery will now represent the estate of artist Tony Smith, the Art News reports, taking over from Matthew Marks Gallery.  “Sometimes it’s time for a change—and that’s happened to us, to0,” says president Marc Glimcher. “It’s just part of the dynamic now.” (more…)

Juan Garcia Mosqueda, the founder of Chamber Gallery in New York, has been detained at the U.S. Border and forced to return to Buenos Aires.  The dealer and curator has issued an open letter detailing his rough treatment and the apparent oppression now faced by foreigners under the Trump administration.  “This thirty-six hour nightmare is nothing but clear evidence of a deeply flawed immigration system in the United States,” he says, “carried out by an administration that is more interested in expelling people than admitting them.” (more…)

The various organizations and groups of New York’s Lincoln Center have banded together in a call to save the National Endowment for the Arts, issuing a joint statement calling for the preservation of its funding.  “The total cost of the N.E.A. is less than one dollar a year for every American,” the statement reads. “But because it is so successful and its imprimatur so prestigious, every dollar the N.E.A. contributes leads to nine additional dollars being donated from other sources.” (more…)

Art News visits Jordan Wolfson this week, profiling the artist’s VR work soon to go on view at the Whitney Biennale, in which the artist pummels a digitally-rendered figure to near death.  “One of the problematic things with a medium like VR is that through its nature, people call it an experience,” he says.  “An experience means that something is hypothetically interactive, and I don’t think that interactive things make for good art.” (more…)

A show cancelled in Turkey over alleged censorship has found a new home in Stuttgart, the Art Newspaper reports.  The show, which featured works from Russian, Turkish, Palestinian and Dutch artists, drew on interrelated concepts of war and peace.  “We need these kinds of support structures in the international art world more than ever,” artist Köken Ergun says. (more…)

Magazzino, the Hudson Valley exhibition space dedicated to Italian Post-War and Contemporary Art, will open to the public this June with an exhibition on the impact of dealer Margherita Stein. “She was consistent with the exhibitions she was putting on. She believed in this group, in what the avant-garde was,” says Director Vittorio Calabrese.  “It was not just about exhibiting the artists’ work, but about living with them.”
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Following new legislation by the U.S. Congress over the recovery of expropriated art, a lawsuit by the heirs of an Austrian Jewish entertainer over a body of Egon Schiele works will go forward, Artforum reports.  The new law seeks to ensure “claims to Nazi-confiscated art are not unfairly barred by statutes of limitations and other similar time-based nonmerits defenses,” according to sponsoring Senator Ted Cruz. 
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Lisson Gallery is doubling down on its New York presence, opening a second space in Chelsea in less than a year.  “I started looking into it, and I realized we don’t have a space to show single-work exhibitions, or things that are a little more intimate. It was something that met the needs of a lot of our artists that make smaller work that we don’t exhibit all the time,” director Alex Logsdail said.  The new space is located at 136 Tenth Avenue.

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Artist Danh Vo has unveiled a new permanent, large-scale sculpture exploring the roots of the United States and its current political conflicts with Mexico in Beirut.  “I was really interested in this idea of exploring the time when [the US] fought for independence, and then became the dominant world power,” the artist says. “What I’m really interested in is the continual misuse of power, and that’s always a changing subject.” (more…)

Pace Gallery has announced plans for a new exhibition space in the South Korean city of Seoul, Art News reports.  The gallery is the first of the major American blue-chip spaces to touch down in the city.  (more…)

The Art Newspaper spotlights artist Doug Aitken’s installation in the California desert, on view starting this weekend; a mirrored ranch house titled Mirage.  “I wanted to take the vernacular of a West Coast suburban home… and reduce it of any human contact or belongings so it became pure form,” Aitken says. “I wanted the form to have a dialogue with the surrounding environment.” (more…)

The Art Market Monitor does some interesting analysis on recent data released by Artprice this week, noting that the market may in fact not be slumping, but rather, broadening its distribution with an increasingly large number of galleries and players.   (more…)

Questions over the provenance of a Gustav Klimt portrait have been resolved at Sotheby’s, allowing the sale of the painting to go forward during the auction house’s Modern and Impressionist Evening Sale tomorrow night in London.  The work was contested after a previous owner said she lost the painting while cleaning her house, but the issue has since been resolved after a formal claim was not filed.   (more…)

Thomas P. Campbell will step down from his directorship at The Met, the New York Times reports, after mounting internal pressure over Campbell’s ambitious expansion plans and the financial problems it has caused the institution.  “I have decided to step down from my role as Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to pursue the next phase of my career,” Campbell said in a letter addressed to “Colleagues” today. “I couldn’t be more proud of The Met’s accomplishments during my tenure.”  Met President Daniel H. Weiss will serve as interim CEO as the museum considers its options. (more…)

Following its inability to find a buyer to support its current insolvency, digital auction house Auctionata will close its doors, the company announced today.  “All necessary steps were taken. In the end, however, investors did not come together to make sufficient funds available to operate the insolvent German company as a going concern,” says preliminary insolvency administrator Christian von Brockdorff. (more…)

Sotheby’s beat expectations for the fourth quarter of 2016, posting a profit of $65.5 million.  “We were cautiously optimistic in November, but as it turns out, the weight in that statement should have been on optimism,” Tad Smith said during the quarterly call with investors. “This quarter demonstrated that when the market stabilizes, let alone when it returns to its secular growth trajectory, our company is poised to capitalize on the upturn and do very well for our shareholders.” (more…)

The New Museum will partner with Nokia Bell Labs, providing NEW INC collaborators with resources and technology for their work in the museum’s incubator program.  “The New Museum has long been at the forefront of art and technology; this partnership with a legendary research lab will help us continue to push boundaries of cultural expression and possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration. The NEW INC community embraces an untapped demographic of practitioners,” says Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal looks at the art market’s current state as it moves into a pair of auctions this week, noting the current challenges, and potential strategies auction houses are embracing to move beyond a struggling market. (more…)

Curator Paul Schimmel has parted ways with Hauser & Wirth’s Los Angeles location after a sudden announcement late this week, the LA Times reports.  Schimmel, former chief curator at MoCA was a founding partner in the gallery’s Los Angeles location, which opened last year.  “Going forward, Hauser & Wirth will continue building upon its longstanding, passionate commitment to Los Angeles with expanded programs, including an increasingly robust campaign of public events and community outreach activities, and an ever more dynamic schedule of exhibitions that celebrate our artists, and connections between California and the international scene,” Iwan Wirth said in a statement. (more…)