The LA Times reports on the closure of PSSST, a non-profit arts space in Boyle Heights that shuttered after repeated protests from local anti-gentrification activists.  While our closure might be applauded by some, it is not a victory for civil discourse and coalition building,” the gallery said in a statement. (more…)

Francis Bacon’s triptych portrait of his lover George Dyer is set to go to auction for the first time at Christie’s in New York this May, carrying an estimate of $50m.  “George Dyer is to Bacon what Dora Maar was to Picasso,” Loic Gouzer says of the artist’s longtime muse.  “He is arguably the most important model of the second half of the 20th century, because Dyer’s persona as well and physical traits acted as a catalyst for Bacon’s pictorial breakthroughs.”
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The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has established a $200,000 matching grant to the Perez Art Museum in Miami, intended to benefit the museum’s already existent fund for work made by African American artists.  “We are proud to be a museum with a collection that is reflective of our diverse Miami community,” said director Franklin Sirmans.  (more…)

Bloomberg has a piece on Dmitriy Rybolovlev’s art collection this week, after the collector lost a reported $100 million on sales in the past months.  The piece notes Rybolovlev’s aggressive buying as a cause of these losses, as he seeks to unload a number of works acquired at record prices, while the collector points to the immense prices as further evidence of the damages caused by his purchases through dealer Yves Bouvier.  “The gulf between Christie’s estimates and the original purchase prices of the works is a further illustration of the unprecedented scale and audacity of the fraud that the plaintiffs allege was perpetrated by Mr. Bouvier,” says Sergey Chernitsyn, a representative of the Rybolovlev Family Office.   (more…)

Marlborough Chelsea has renamed itself as Marlborough Contemporary, consolidating with another London gallery in the network of family exhibition spaces to become a transatlantic project.  “This expansion opens up an exciting opportunity for connecting with new artists and expanding our audience,” says Director Max Levai. (more…)

The Venice Biennale is posting videos each day to its website, profiling the 120 artists showing in its exhibition this summer through their work and interviews.   (more…)

The Marciano Art Foundation has set May 25th as its official opening day, the LA Times reports.  “We could not be more excited to welcome the public into our new art space, and to share our love, obsession and curiosity of contemporary art with visitors,” founder Maurice Marciano says. “We hope you will be just as excited when you discover Marciano Art Foundation.”   (more…)

Art News spotlights artist collective Studio Drift, which will levitate a concrete block at the Armory Show next week in New York.  “It’s straightforward, but of course, it’s not simple,” the group says. “Concrete is something we completely rely on. The whole world is built on concrete, and the concrete block symbolizes the main building element of our world.” (more…)

Julian Schnabel is profiled in the New York Times this week, as the artist gives the paper a look at his recent work in preparation for upcoming shows in Aspen and New York.  “Do you know who the mayor of the town was when Van Gogh lived in Arles? Do you know who the president of the republic was? I don’t know,” he says. “But we know Van Gogh was there — a guy who was mistreated by everybody, and now there are souvenir shops selling posters of his paintings. It’s interesting that someone involved just in the process of putting paint on a canvas would have this resounding ripple effect over the years.” (more…)

Protests are taking place at MoMA this week, as a group of activists seek to unseat BlackRock CEO and Trump adviser Larry Fink from his seat on the museum board.  “Fink is not in Bannon’s camp.  He’s a liberal. He was talked about as a potential Clinton treasury secretary. But now he’s on Trump’s team,” the group said in a statement.  “And because Trump is waging a war of hate and lies against Muslims, Immigrants, women, LGBTQ, disabled, and the planet itself, one cannot reasonably advise or do any kind of business with this regime. To advise this regime is to normalize White Supremacy.” (more…)

As Argentina invests more in cultural development, the Art Newspaper traces an increasing presence of its artists on the world stage, including an impressive number of galleries at this year’s ARCO Madrid fair.  “One of my main objectives,” says Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, the president of Buenos Aires, “is to promote what I call the creative or ­talent-based industries.” (more…)

Met Director Thomas Campbell has an op-ed in the New York Times this week, rallying against proposed cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts.  “Eliminating the N.E.A. would in essence eliminate investment by the American government in the curiosity and intelligence of its citizens,” he writes.  “As the planet becomes at once smaller and more complex, the public needs a vital arts scene, one that will inspire us to understand who we are and how we got here — and one that will help us to see other countries, like China, not as enemies in a mercenary trade war but as partners in a complicated world.” (more…)

Artist Geoffrey Farmer will take over the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, exploring relationships between images, human relations, and the political situations that bind them.  “In his Venice project, Geoffrey once again finds a world enclosed inside an image and an image giving rise to a world,” says Kitty Scott, a curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the organizer of the pavilion. (more…)

The Iraqi Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale is set to show a series of ancient artifacts from the National Museum of Iraq in conjunction with contemporary artists.  The exhibition is curated by Tamara Chalabi of the Ruya Foundation, in collaboration with Paolo Colombo. (more…)

Vjeran Tomic, the burglar nicknamed “Spider-Man” for his daring art heists, has been sentenced to eight years behind bars for the theft of five paintings worth over €104 million.  The thief’s haul included Matisse’s Pastoral, which he stole as he claimed it “embodied my youth.” (more…)

The New York Times spotlights Damien Hirst’s highly-anticipated exhibition in Venice this spring, taking over the Pinault Collection’s two locations at the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana, a selling show that will show whether or not the artist can boost a somewhat lagging market.  “He’s certainly confounded the market before. It depends on how successful the work is,” said Marc Porter, a chairman of Sotheby’s fine art division. “He’s taking on Venice and that’s audacious.” (more…)

The Telegraph has an early preview on the upcoming March auctions this week, noting high expectations for the Impressionist and Modern Sales, while the Contemporary category is likely to see a battle over market share continue with high guarantees and third-party bidders underwriting the proceedings.  Of particular note is the figure that Sotheby’s has guaranteed 43.5 percent of its estimated sales price. (more…)

Art dealer Michael Werner will receive France’s Legion of Honor this month in recognition of his contributions to the arts, including a donation to the Musée d’Art Moderne that its director, Fabrice Hergott, called “the most significant enrichment of the museum’s collection since the bequest made by Dr. Maurice Giradin in 1953, which led to the creation of the institution.” (more…)

The New York Times reports on one surgeon’s ongoing investigations into the death of Andy Warhol following gallbladder surgery, and notes the complicating factors in the surgery that have long been left out of the story behind the artist’s sudden death.  The compiled research shows the physical strain Warhol’s injuries from a 1968 murder attempt (from which he never fully recovered), and a severely infected gallbladder, as additional complications in his surgery. (more…)

Los Angeles–based artist Max Hooper Schneider has won the BMW Art Journey award, and will use the funding for an exploration of global coral reef sites.  The project will spotlight “pilgrimage sites seminal in the development of the coral imaginary in science and art: Cocos Keeling Islands, where Charles Darwin conducted fieldwork for his 1842 treatise, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs; and the Bahamas, to which André Breton traveled on an imaginary voyage via readymade photographic representations of Bahamian coral in order to document nature’s surreality. (more…)

The Art Newspaper profiles New York collector Thomas Kaplan, who currently holds one of the largest private collection of Rembrandt works, possessing 11 of the 35 works currently outside of institutional collections.  Kaplan is currently touring large portions of his collection globally as a way to build cultural connections.  “We, as collectors, are American,” he says. “We can use Dutch art, with an exhibition starting at a French museum, to build bridges between the West and China. Then, at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the paintings will be down the road from Mosul and Palmyra.” (more…)

Gallerist Andrea Rosen has announced that she will be closing her gallery to focus on representing the estate of Felix González-Torres in collaboration with David Zwirner.  “While the gallery will continue to exist, with selective activities, like the representation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, I will no longer have a typical permanent public space and therefore no longer represent living artists,” she said in a statement.  “This transition will transpire over the next few months.” (more…)

Susan Greenberg Fisher has been appointed as director of collections at the Brooklyn Museum.  Fisher previously worked as the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation’s executive director in New York.   (more…)

The Royal Academy of Art has embarked on a partnership with over 60 London Galleries to rebrand the Mayfair Art Weekend with a three-day calendar of exhibitions and events.  “Our aim is to open up our schools, the collection and our buildings and make them all more accessible to the public,” says Kate Goodwin, the RA’s curator of architecture. (more…)