The Center for Persecuted Art, an institution focusing on works labeled “degenerate art” by the Nazi Party, among them Emil Nolde and Kurt Schwitters, opened this week inside the Kunstmuseum Solingen. Much of the work still bears markings from Nazi handling, including red marks and tags. (more…)

The New York Times reports on a Caravaggio painting, stolen in 1969, which is back on view as a multi-layer digital copy. Nativity With St. Francis and St. Lawrence was unveiled this weekend in the Palermo oratory it was originally stolen from. The duplication was made primarily using past slide photographs and some plate-glass negatives, making the task all the more impressive. (more…)

Artist Cynthia Daignault burned one of her own paintings during the Art Basel proceedings last week, initiating a new series of works which are intended to be destroyed.  “The idea was that all pieces will eventually be destroyed,” Daignault says.  “Everything will die eventually. These just announce the date of their destruction, which in some ways is a proactive role on the painting’s part by choosing the date that it will leave the world.”  (more…)

Both Almine Rech and White Cube Gallery are planning on opening New York outposts, the Art News reports.  Almine Rech is eyeing a “project space” proposal on the Upper East Side, while White Cube is still looking for space. (more…)

The New York Review of Books has published an essay by writer Colm Tóibín on the late work of Francis Bacon, taken from the artist’s catalog for his exhibition at Gagosian in New York this fall.  “There is a restlessness here that we also find in Beethoven’s late chamber music—a feeling that Bacon might begin again, that he is searching for some way to make images that he knows will only be possible for artists of the future, if they are even possible at all,” Tóibín writes. (more…)

The New York Times Style section has an article this week on the fashionable, yet functional, footwear choices of gallerists at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach.  “A few years ago, there was this thing that everyone was wearing sneakers to try to look cool,” dealer Sean Kelly recalls.  “I think sneakers are fine for installation, but British men pay a lot of attention to footwear; and I think when you are trying to stand on a booth for hours and look elegant for clients, you need a shoe. Sneakers don’t cut it.” (more…)

An article penned by NASDAQ staff this week warns of increasing speculation in the current art market, and points to signs that a cool-off is on the way.  “The art market has grown dramatically in the past decade. It’s great for artists and museums. But tastes change and the market changes. [Art] valuations right now are very high. We are going to see a cooling-off period,” says Dan Desmond, head of the Blue Rider Group of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. (more…)

A French court has reversed a decision against Max Ernst scholar Werner Spies, who was previously fined for authenticating what was ultimately proven to be a fake by art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi.  “The author of a catalogue raisonné who expresses an opinion outside of a determined transaction cannot be charged with a responsibility equivalent to that of an expert consulted in the context of a sale,” the court stated in its decision. (more…)

Claes Oldenburg is in Interview Magazine this month, sitting down with Barbara Rose to discuss his practice, and his early creative years as a child.  “As a child, I started my own country, which was called Neubern. It was located in the South Atlantic. I did the documentation of Neubern in great detail,” he says.  “I drew everything that was there, all the houses and all the cars and all the people. We even had a navy and an air force. I spent a lot of time drawing.” (more…)

Amar’e Stoudemire is interviewed in Bloomberg this week, as the NBA Star makes a push to consult and advise fellow players on how to begin collecting art.  “We’re going to educate the rest of the sports world how important it is to collect art, and how important it is to connect with emerging artists who are going to be great, but no one knows they’re going to be great yet,” he says. “Five years from now, it becomes triple the amount, and now you have a gold mine on your hands.” (more…)

Jerry Saltz writes on the Jim Shaw exhibition this week, putting the artist’s work in the context of the generation of painters that followed him, and emphasizing his impact on the work of the early 1990’s.  “Even if he wasn’t able to make it to the blue-chip promised land that awaited many of these other artists, Shaw blew open the doors of painting. And the New Museum has made it even easier to see how pivotal Shaw is by going the extra mile,” he writes. (more…)

Knoedler Gallery and former director Anne Freedman has settled one of the lawsuits over its sale of a false Willem de Kooning for $4 million, the Art Newspaper reports.  “We are pleased to have resolved the case with Howard, and we feel very good about the upcoming De Sole trial,” says Freedman’s lawyer Luke Nikas. (more…)

Artnet joined Trevor Paglen last week in Miami, as the artist took a group of collectors and art world insiders on a deep sea dive off the coast of Florida to see the massive Internet cables running across the Atlantic Ocean.  “’When we talk about ‘the Internet,’ we talk in abstract terms like “the cloud” and “cyberspace,”‘ Paglen says to the group, all in wet suits, before we strap on our air tanks. The Internet is not just in the air, he says, but rather travels along the cables we’re headed to see,” writes Artnet’s Brian Boucher. (more…)

A group of 29 U.S. Congressmen have signed a letter demanding that German officials accelerate the restitution process on Nazi-looted art, underscoring U.S. opinions that the nation may be dragging its feet.  “The importance of these issues to Holocaust survivors and their families worldwide cannot be overstated,” the letter says. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal profiles artist Robert Ryman and his family, including his three sons, all of whom are artists, as he prepares to open his retrospective exhibition at Dia:Chelsea.  “I don’t think a family of artists like this exists anywhere else in history,” says Arne Glimcher. (more…)

Andrea Rosen is now representing Simon Fujiwara, following the artist’s first one-person exhibition in New York at the gallery in 2013.  “I am always impressed by the way his work is able to simultaneously hold both content and mystery,” Rosen says. (more…)

Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills will launch an exhibition by Alex Israel and Brett Easton Ellis as part of the gallery’s Oscar-week exhibition early next year, featuring large-scale paintings by the artist adorned with text by Ellis.   (more…)

The reinstated Edvard Munch Award was given to Camille Henrot this week during a presentation event in Miami Beach, giving the artist a prize of nearly $59,000 and a solo exhibition at the Munch museum.  “There is always some dimension of challenge in the work that I do, which sometimes I regret because it is really difficult,” she says. “But, I’m more interested in the experience of making work than the final object, and I would like to continue experimenting and challenging myself.” (more…)

Collector Martin Margulies is profiled in the New York Times this week, as he opens a new show of works at his museum, and reflects back on his long work as a collector.  “He lives and breathes art,” says David Leiber, a director at the David Zwirner Gallery.  “From Pop through to the present, he’s put together a kind of unrivaled collection.” (more…)

Frieze London has announced Swiss curator Raphael Gygax as the new curator for its Projects section.  Gygax currently serves as Curator at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich. (more…)

The exhibitor list for the 2016 edition of Material Art Fair has been announced, continuing its focus on young, experimental galleries while tripling in size this year.  “The layout is super important because it won’t replicate any other art fair,” says co-founder Daniela Elbahara.  “It will be quite different and a little bit like a labyrinth.” (more…)

Billionaire Paul Allen’s Pivot Art + Culture space in Seattle is closing this March, with plans to use the space only occasionally as a gallery, flying in the face of previous plans to turn the exhibition space into a broadly-focused year-round art center. (more…)

The Nahmad Family is currently facing a lawsuit from the estate of a Paris dealer claiming that the family owns a Modigliani work formerly seized by the Nazi’s from the collection of Oscar Stettiner.  The suit claims that the Nahmad’s are allegedly holding the painting through a shell company called the International Art Center.  “This is one large enterprise that is a scheme to move these things around, and they are all alter egos for one another,” says lawyer Joel M. Aurnou, who represents the estate. (more…)

Hauser Wirth and Schimmel is set to open this March, featuring a show of female sculptors, the LA Times reports, including Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Yayoi Kusama, and others.  The show is inspired by gallery founder Ursula Hauser.  “I come from the museum world, where it’s always best to start with what’s in a collection, with the history of an institution and build out from there,” Schimmel says. “This came from a real personal recognition that these are artists who [Ursula] deeply related to, but were under-appreciated.” (more…)