The Wall Street Journal spotlights the collaboration between architect Joe Weishaar and sculptor Sabin Howard to create a WWI Memorial in Washington, D.C., an effort that will create one of the largest bronze sculptures in the world.  “When I got to his website, I just knew he was the one I wanted to work with,” Mr. Weishaar says of Howard’s work. “There’s a level of craft there that has completely disappeared from American sculpture and drawing schools.” (more…)

Ai Weiwei returns to New York this fall in a big way, opening a pair of exhibitions at Mary Boone, as well as a show at Deitch Projects, and another at Lisson Gallery, returning to the city he lived in for much of the 1980’s.  “I wish I had known him in New York in the 1980s when he was here for a whole decade, and it turns out that many of my friends knew him,” Jeffrey Deitch says. (more…)

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Guy Wildenstein’s fate has been left to a tribunal following arguments in his tax evasion case, the NYT reports.  The judges will spend up to three months considering the case before reaching their decision, which could include jail time and a 250 million euro fine for alleged deceptions in how the works were held.  “The bank knows only what the family told them,” says Alexandre Bronstein, a laywer pushing a criminal case over several of the works seized from the Wildenstein collection.   (more…)

Phillips’s Robert Manley announced the auction house’s star lot for its upcoming November Contemporary Evening Sale in New York, a colorful Clyfford Still priced between $12 million and $18 million.  “Formerly in the collection of the artist’s friend and student, the painter Edward Dugmore, the painting has been off the market for decades and has never been to auction,” Manley notes of the work. (more…)

The Frick Collection has announced that Selldorf Architects will helm the museum’s upcoming renovation, returning to plans that had been put on hold after protest over the original expansion blueprints.  “It’s about enhancing the visitor’s experience and making it utterly seamless, so that it doesn’t harm any of the existing experience that people cherish, myself included,” Annabelle Selldorf said. “We’ll do our darndest.” (more…)

Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art is spending $500,000 to restore Wolf Vostell’s concrete encrusted Cadillac sculpture, a piece which has long sat in a yard lot until the museum decided to rehabilitate its blocky frame.   “Restoration and conservation is what we do, but I’d never done a project like this,”says Stephen Murphy, the general manager of Chicago Vintage Motor Carriage, where the car was restored. (more…)

Ai Weiwei is interviewed in the New York Times this week, as the artist prepares to open an exhibition at Deitch Projects, displaying the cast-off garments and shoes of migrant travelers.  “The migrants are there but they’re not there. These clothes are existing, something you can touch,” he says.  “I grew up in a similar condition. I would wear a shoe worn by my brother. It was often too big, but I would wear it. It’s better than no shoes. My father used his ties as a belt because he didn’t have a belt. When he was doing hard labor in the winter, he would open up the tie to wrap on his feet because he had no socks and they were so cold.” (more…)

Yoko Ono has opened her first large-scale public installation in the US this week, Skylanding, in Chicago’s Jackson Park.  “Skylanding is a place where the sky and earth meet and create a seed to learn about the past and come together to create a future of peace and harmony, with nature and each other,” Ono says. “Peace among all people and nations begins with peace in our hearts, streets and parks.” (more…)

The annual ArtReview “Power 100” list for the art world has been released, with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist topping the list for the first time since 2009.  “Obrist’s project is perfectly suited to a globalized, networked age,” the magazine writes.  He is trailed by Documenta 14 curator Adam Szymczyk and Iwan and Manuela Wirth.

The Art Newspaper spotlights the arrival of over 100 Modernist masterworks of the Sergei Shchukin collection at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the first time this many of the works from the renowned Russian collection have been shown together outside the country.  “All curators working on the Modern period dream about staging a Shchukin exhibition,” says Anne Baldassari, former director of the Musée Picasso in Paris. “It’s one of the great pioneering collections that has never received a comprehensive presentation.” (more…)

NADA will move its annual New York edition to March in 2017, aligning the event with the Armory Show, and taking place at the Skylight Clarkson North, a venue at 571 Washington Street in Hudson Square.  “NADA is always looking for new ways to bring contemporary art to the public on behalf of our international exhibitors and membership base,” says executive director Heather Hubbs. “We’re looking forward to this venture with Skylight Clarkson North, and returning to the west side for our sixth edition of NADA New York in March. (more…)

Dealer David Nahmad has claimed ownership of one of the works targeted for seizure in the collection of Malaysian billionaire Jho Low, stating that the work, a Claude Monet waterlily piece, is actually in his possession.  “My painting has been solely owned and possessed by me since its purchase up to the present time,” Nahmad said in a court statement. (more…)

Marina Abramovic is profiled in New York Magazine this week, as the artist turns 70, and reflects back on the course of her life and career.  “I am one of the few people who don’t have secrets,” she says. “All of my secrets, I made performances out of them, or theater pieces.” (more…)

Ann Freedman, former director of the Knoedler gallery, has settled another of the 10 cases against her for selling forged works, reaching an agreement with collector Frank Fertitta, owner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.  This case is the eighth to reach a settlement. (more…)

Artist Yayoi Kusama is set to be preserved in wax at Madame Tussauds Hong Kong, the Art Newspaper reports, part of an “artistic themed zone” with the Japanese artist at the center.  “I hope everyone who passes through Madame Tussauds Hong Kong can fully embrace the positive energy evoked by the zone,” Kusama said in a statement. (more…)

Inverleith House at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh will cease using its space for art exhibitions in the wake of budgetary constraints.  “These are hard financial times for everyone, and we couldn’t afford to sustain it, and at the moment we have to focus on our core programs, which are botany and horticulture.” (more…)

Rumors are circulating that artist Sterling Ruby is collaborating with designer Raf Simons again, this time for Calvin Klein, where Simons was recently hired as chief creative officer.  Ruby has reportedly been spotted several times at the Calvin Klein offices, and has worked with Simons on several capsule collections in the past.   (more…)

Jérôme Bel is profiled in the New York Times this week, as he prepares his new performance at MoMA, featuring a group of MoMA employees performing in the museum atrium.  “I’m more interested in human beings than in objects, obviously,” he says.  “A human being is so complicated, especially a dancing human being, especially a nonprofessional dancer.” (more…)

The New York Times reports on the lawsuit between Wall Street trader Andrew Hall and professor Lorettann Gascard, who allegedly sold Hall a number of forged paintings attributed to Leon Golub.  Hall is suing for the $676,250 paid for the works, but Gascard and her son seem to have disappeared, leaving no indication of their location. (more…)

Artist Kader Attia has won this year’s Prix Marcel Duchamp, the â‚¬35,000 prize recognizing groundbreaking work in the field by a French artist.  The artist’s work is currently on view at the Centre Pompidou in Paris alongside his fellow nominees, Yto Barrada, Ulla von Brandenburg and Barthélémy Toguo in its exhibition spaces. (more…)

Marianne Boesky is now representing Sanford Biggers, the gallery announced this week.  Biggers will be featured prominently at the gallery’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach this December.  “Sanford’s work is powerful in its formal acuity and its ability to convey an intricacy and depth of meaning,” Marianne Boesky said in a statement. “Approaching his subjects with a distinct awareness of history and contemporary socio-political currents, he creates art that is intellectually, psychologically, and emotionally compelling. It moves us to connect, and engage with personal and societal truths.”  (more…)

Kerry James Marshall is the subject of a lengthy profile in the New York Times this week, as the artist prepares to open his retrospective at the Met Breuer.  “When you talk about the absence of black figure representation in the history of art,” Marshall says, “you can talk about it as an exclusion, in which case there’s a kind of indictment of history for failing to be responsible for something it should have been. I don’t have that kind of mission. I don’t have that indictment. My interest in being a part of it is being an expansion of it, not a critique of it.” (more…)

The Uffizi Museum in Florence has reopened its doors following an ambitious renovation aimed at improving the flow and space of the various exhibition galleries at the museum, where major pieces by Botticelli and other Renaissance masters hang side-by-side.  “The idea is to give emphasis to every single one of the 38 works in these galleries, and not concentrate everything on the few fetishized, iconic super-masterpieces,” says director Eike Schmidt. (more…)