NEA Chair Mary Anne Carter has resigned as the Biden administration takes over, the Washington Post reports. “Understanding that the arts play such a crucial role in everyday life. That’s how you expand the arts, broaden the support for arts funding,” she says of her time in the position. (more…)

Tony Oursler speaks with the Hong Kong Tatler this week, as he opens a show in Taiwan.  Television was really a drug, but it was never controlled like a drug. People are realizing the same thing about smartphones,” he says. (more…)

Sotheby’s will auction off the collection of the late French illustrator Pierre Le-Tan, which includes a portrait by David Hockney.  “We’re trying to stay true to his spirit. It’s not one of these collections where you’re going to have a $20 million Picasso. It’s a universe we want to re-create, one we hope will appeal to all kinds of collectors around the world. There’s something for everybody,” says Etienne Hellman, the auction house’s senior director of modern art. (more…)

The UK is considering laws to protect statues from being removed from public spaces.  “Our view will be set out in law, that such monuments are almost always best explained and contextualized, not taken and hidden away,” says Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick. (more…)

A piece in the New York Times looks at the work Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer by Frans Hals, and looks into why the work has been stolen three times from its place of exhibition.  “It’s really that painting for some reason, and I don’t know why,” says Christa Hendriksen, an alderman in charge of culture in Leerdam, the Netherlands. (more…)

A 16th-century copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi  stolen from a museum in Naples has been recovered by Italian police, the Art Newspaper reports. (more…)

The NYT has a piece this week on Donald Trump’s attempts to defund the NEA, and the resultant push by both parties to keep the organization funded. “The years and years of work that we had done to create a pro-arts Congress, whether Republican or Democrat, really came through,” says Nina Ozlu Tunceli, executive director of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund. “Congress became a firewall to prevent that termination from happening.” (more…)

The Castello di Rivoli will become the first museum in Italy to function as a Covid-19 vaccination site. “Art has always helped, healed, and cured—indeed, some of the first museums in the world were hospitals,” said Castello di Rivoli director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in a statement. “Now we are repaying the favor, so to speak, and opening Castello di Rivoli’s galleries for the vaccine effort.” (more…)

The Brooklyn Museum will install Nick Cave’s piece Truth Be Told outside the museum, which generated controversy last during its installation at the Jack Shainman space in Kinderhook, NY.  “Museums are being called on to tell the truth, from the painful to the celebratory,” says museum director Anne Pasternak. “We can invite a constructive conversation.” (more…)

The Guggenheim has appointed Naomi Beckwith, formerly senior curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago as deputy director and chief curator. “If you look out over the cultural landscape — particularly in the U.S. — she is quite obviously one of the outstanding leaders of today with a huge potential as well,” says museum director Richard Armstrong. “She’s very adept at issues of identity and, particularly, multidisciplinary art. We have to think about the Guggenheim’s growth over the next few years, so it needs to be a person with enormous capacity.” (more…)

A piece in Bloomberg charts the rush by galleries to move works out of the UK before Brexit goes into effect. “The higher up the market, the more global it is,” says Anthony Browne, chairman of the British Art Market Federation, regarding the challenges posed by shipping more works outside of the UK borders. “It’s the smaller galleries and dealers and mid-market ones that have buyers in the EU that will be mostly affected.” (more…)

Hank Willis Thomas’s 22-foot-high bronze memorial honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King’s commitment to racial equity will go on view in Boston Commons. “At this moment in 2021 we are asking: What would it be for Boston to be the epicenter of civil rights? And of economic and racial justice?” says Imari Paris Jeffries, executive director of King Boston. “We want to imagine that and do that.” (more…)

Curator Chris Sharp, part of the team behind Mexico City’s Lulu has opened his own space in Los Angeles. The space opens Jan. 23rd with a show of work by Emma McIntyre. (more…)

A collection of drawings, collages and studies held for years in Kara Walker’s personal archives will go on view thus summer at Kunstmuseum Basel.  “I invited Kara Walker to do an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel and proposed a focus on her drawings rather than her cutouts,” says curator Anita Haldemann. “She has hidden these drawings from the public and sometimes also from herself because they were either too intimate and too painful or too shocking to face them herself or to confront the audience with them.” (more…)

A piece by Jason Farago in the New York Times this week calls for a New Deal for the Arts as a way to rehabilitate the currently struggling arts sector during the pandemic. “Not since 1945 has the United States required catharsis like it does in 2021,” he writes. (more…)

Germany has returned the last of the 14 works from the Gurlitt Collection that could be authenticated as looted, DW reports. “We cannot make up for this severe suffering, but we are trying with the appraisal of Nazi art looting to make a contribution to historical justice and fulfill our moral responsibility,” says Culture Minister Monika Grütters. (more…)

Jannis Kounellis will receive the first major retrospective of his work in the US in 35 years, opening a major show at the Walker Art Center in 2022. “Jannis is an artist that moved all his life from one country to another to fulfill his dream of being an artist,” says curator Vincenzo de Bellis. “His works speak to memory, history, and migration—things which are very important today.” (more…)

The Smithsonian will partner with PBS this year to launch a series of online education programs, the Washington Post reports.  “The Smithsonian has so many resources, but even we don’t have broad enough shoulders to do all of this,” says Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III. “The pandemic has given us the opportunity to fill a void. It has accelerated where we wanted to go. [PBS] gives us a great portal to do that.” (more…)

Kamel Mennour has ceased its relationship with artist Claude Lévêque over a string of allegations of sexual abuse of minors.  The gallery stated its decision was made “in order to allow the judicial authority to carry out the necessary investigations.” (more…)

Following the third suicide at its site, The Vessel in Hudson Yards has been closed until new safety measures can be put in place. “Because the Vessel’s chest-high barrier is all that separates the platform from the edge, the likelihood of a similar, terribly sad loss of life cannot be ignored,” says Related Companies board chairman, Lowell Kern. (more…)

A string of new art spaces are set to open in Australia this year, Artforum reports, including a series of new renovations and new non-profit centers opened country-wide. (more…)

Artist El Anatsui gets a profile in the New Yorker this week, as he discusses his career and his modes of working. “If you feel attached to your work, it means you have a feeling you have gotten to the end,” says. (more…)

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The Hirshhorn is facing pressure over the proposed redesign to its sculpture garden by Hiroshi Sugimoto, which some say threatens the geometries and concepts of the original design. “It’s a process of negotiating and talking and I have no answer yet,” said the artist. “My opinion is just 10% or 20%. I tell people what I want to make.” (more…)