The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has made 250,000 works from its huge collection available for free online viewing or free download.  The museum’s impressive collection of Dutch Masters and 17th Century European works will now be available for all to view online and download for use. (more…)

An arrest has been made in connection with the theft of a trailer housing works by Matisse and Chagall earlier this year, the LA Times reports.  Robert Michael Slayton was taken into custody when the trailer was found, stripped, in his backyard, with $120,000 worth of art still in his possession.  Some works remain missing. (more…)

Marian Goodman has been awarded the 2016 Leo Award by Independent Curators International, honoring her “groundbreaking support of contemporary art.”  “Last year, ICI marked its 40th anniversary, a milestone that Marian Goodman Gallery will celebrate just a year from now,” said Renaud Proch, ICI’s Executive Director. “Today, we’re proud to honor Marian Goodman for her steadfast support of so many of the artists who move us, impact society, and help us make sense of the world in which we live.”  (more…)

The Spanish Civil Court has ruled that the Salvador Dalí Foundation has no legal standing to protect the artist’s image, the Art Newspaper reports.  The decision backs up previous decisions in Spanish courts, which found that the foundation did not have grounds to defend the artist’s image rights. (more…)

The Artist Pension Trust, a mutual fund founded on and maintained with the donations of a group of artists including Mark Bradford, Nina Beier, Daniel Arsham, and Rob Pruitt, among others, has made its first payout, following a $452,085 private sale of works from its collection. (more…)

The Guardian takes a tour of the recently completed but still unopened Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, which has been forced to remain shuttered during Greece’s fiscal woes.  “In difficult moments like this, you need hope,” says Renzo Piano, who designed the space. “Making a good building is an important civic gesture. It makes you believe in a better world.” (more…)

Ben Patterson, via Art News

Ben Patterson, an early Fluxus member, musician and composer, has passed away at the age of 82 at his home in Wiesbaden, Germany.   (more…)

Thaddaeus Ropac has committed himself to a an exhibition space in the London neighborhood of Mayfair, following concerns over the loss of businesses after the Brexit.  “However bad [the Brexit situation] is, London is the quintessential centre of the art world, I am absolutely committed to it,” Ropac says. (more…)

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has received a major gift of contemporary work from the collection of Keith and Katherine Sachs, currently on view at the institution.  “One day, I had one important work by Robert Gober to work with, the following day I had six,” says curator Carlos Basualdo. “This allows you to tell more interesting stories, and more stories in general.” (more…)

W Magazine profiles 22-year old collector Michael Xufu Huang, a co-founder of Beijing’s private M Woods museum, as he finishes school and continues his work in building out his collection.  “In the beginning, you buy with your ears,” he says. “You get really excited when people sell you stuff. Now, I’m very careful.” (more…)

The New York Times reports from the arts community in Lahore, Pakistan, charting the violence and unrest that has come to factor heavily in the work of those educated at the city’s National College of Arts.  “The confusion is a kind of blessing because there is no consensus,” says artist Quddus Mirza. “India has this thing about Indianness. Here, there is no identity.”   (more…)

The WSJ reports on the success of New York City’s new ID program, which has resulted in 400,000 new yearlong memberships to major city arts institutions, a point that also sees these institutions engaging with communities they had long sought out but struggled to connect with.  “It’s not just an issue of how many people are going to buy memberships. It’s how many people are going to retain a relationship to the institution,” says the city’s  Cultural Affairs Commissioner, Tom Finkelpearl. (more…)

Christie’s head Jussi Pylkkanen is interviewed in the Art Newspaper this week, as he reflects on his company’s path through the next decades and beyond.  “Staying relevant, making sure the contemporary side of the business is in good order and reaching out to the younger audience of 35 and under… we used to send a catalogue to a few hundred people; now, a video on YouTube can be viewed by hundreds of thousands,” he says. (more…)

A landmark report by the Commission for Looted Art in Europe has uncovered evidence that the German government had frequently given Nazi-looted works back to the families of Nazi officers rather than their rightful owners, and had covered up this practice for decades.  The report points to a trove of works returned to Henriette Hoffmann-von Schirach, the daughter of photographer and close friend of Adolf Hitler, and wife of Baldur von Schirach, who was condemned at Nuremburg for crimes against humanity.   (more…)

Frieze London has announced its planned events and curated sectors for the 2016 edition of its annual fair in Regents Park.  For its 14th edition, the fair will feature over 160 galleries, its annual projects sections, and a new section called “The 90s,” organized by Geneva-based curator Nicolas Trembley to reflect on important installations and projects from that decade. (more…)

Author Douglas Coupland is searching for a Vincent van Gogh lookalike, with the person most closely resembling the artist winning a $5,000 prize.  “I’m learning that most people have someone in their life who looks like Vincent van Gogh,” Coupland says. “It could be your next-door neighbor. It could be a guy at work. It could be you.” (more…)

Rachel Whiteread has installed a new installation on Governor’s Island, an immense, cast-concrete cabin that sits just at the edge of the island.  “I wanted to have something that was very humble but had a sort of idea of solitude and showed the city from a different angle,” Whiteread says. “I like the idea of being there on your own with the Statue of Liberty and the site of the former World Trade Center over the water.” (more…)

Loïc Gouzer is the subject of a profile in the New Yorker this week, as he discusses some of the curated projects he has run at Christie’s and his perspective on the selling exhibition.  “If you start putting works around another work, they give each other meaning,” he says.  “Each of the works are in dialogue, and they help each other.” (more…)

Jenny Holzer will install a site-specific work on the cliffs of Ibiza this summer, the Art Newspaper reports, created in conjunction with a pair of shows the artist is opening on the island.  “Holzer will undertake her first site-specific commission on the island. Using raw materials from the Ibicencan countryside and coastline, she will engrave poems on cliffs, monumental boulders and on bedrock,” a statement reads. (more…)

The Whitney Museum will stay open seven days a week during July and August, the institution announced today.  It will also be open late into the evening on Fridays and Saturdays, allowing visitors to view their current exhibitions through 10 pm. (more…)

Sotheby’s has announced that Benjamin Doller will take over as the chairman of Sotheby’s Americas, effective immediately.  Dollar has worked with the company for over 35 years, and has recently served as the company’s Vice Chair for the Americas.  “The auction world is an evolving space, and I thrive on change,” he said in a statement.  “Sotheby’s its embracing that evolution in everything it does, which makes this a particularly exciting time to be a part of this business.”  (more…)

Anish Kapoor has designed for the performance of Tristan and Isolde at the English National Opera.  “My sculptures are deeply rooted in orientating the body, in putting one in a frame of a certain kind of looking and thinking,” he says.  “I think that’s religious. It’s often processional and intentionally philosophical, too. That’s what Wagner is about, too.” (more…)

Spain’s Guardia Civil has released the inventory of works seized from collector Benito Amor, totaling over 10,000 pieces of art and antiques, including an alleged fragment of Jesus’s cross.  The collector had been arrested over several counts of theft, and questions remain as to the provenance of many of these works. (more…)

The New York Times charts the numerous challenges to galleries and museums in the face of rising rents and immense auction prices, and the solutions some art taking to sustain themselves.  Gavin Brown’s new exhibition space in Harlem is profiled alongside new spaces in the Lower East Side, the Meatpacking District, and elsewhere. (more…)