Collector and dealer Adam Lindemann is suing real estate mogul Aby Rosen to break his lease on the Venus Over Manhattan space at 980 Madison Avenue in New York, asserting he can no longer due business there due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Is it only the tenant’s responsibility when the tenant can’t use the space as intended or may never be able to?” says Errol Margolin, the gallery’s lawyer. “When you have a gallery opening, you have 500 people. If you have social distancing, how can you have 500 people in the future?” (more…)

Workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art are seeking to unionize, Art Newspaper reports.  “The PMA serves the people of Philadelphia, and it must emerge from the Covid-19 crisis as a safe, accessible and equitable place where all can engage with the arts,” the group of organizers said. “For this to be possible, working people must have a seat at the table in museum decision-making.” (more…)

The Tate has cancelled the 2020 edition of the Turner Prize, replacing it with a little £100k fund to help support struggling artists during the pandemic.”The practicalities of organizing a Turner Prize exhibition are impossible in the current circumstances, so we have decided to help support even more artists during this exceptionally difficult time,” says Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson.  “I think JMW Turner, who once planned to leave his fortune to support artists in their hour of need, would approve of our decision.” (more…)

Museums are beginning to open again in the U.S., with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston leading the way. “It’s good to be out of the house,” says one visitor. “I’ve been looking for something uplifting, something beautiful.” (more…)

The UK has appointed Neil Mendoza as Commissioner for Cultural Recovery and Renewal, overseeing the country’s response to the coronavirus’s impact on the arts. Mendoza previously led a review of England’s museums three years ago, offering recommendations on how to further bolster the arts institutions in the country. (more…)

Austrian culture minister Ulrike Lunacek has stepped down after fierce criticism of the government’s arts-sector pandemic response.  “This is not worthy of one of the richest countries in the world,” she said of the current state of the country’s artists. (more…)

Damien Hirst has an interview in The Guardian this week, as he charts his experience during lockdown, and how it has affected his work. “I used to listen to music a lot when there was more activity and people,” he says of his experience working alone. “The paintings are going more successfully, which is really strange. Maybe it’s my focus, maybe that’s why I’m not playing the music. I’m kind of getting lost in the paintings.” (more…)

Los Angeles City Council has approved a measure to redirect developer fees to into emergency arts grants, the LA Times reports.  “This includes tiered grants of between $500 and $2,000 for individual artists, with the highest amounts reserved for artists who are full-time freelancers, and therefore “more vulnerable in an economic downturn,” The COVID-19 Emergency Response Program text reads. (more…)

A look at unemployment and income data by FiveThirtyEight shows that the U.S. arts sector has suffered a contraction of over 54% since the beginning of lockdowns. (more…)

The Guggenheim is closed, but its installation of blossoming tomatoes, part of its last show before lockdown, Countryside, The Future, is still growing, yielding pounds of fruit each week from an installation on Fifth Ave.  “This tomato-growing module couldn’t just be turned off with the lights,” says curator Troy Conrad Therrien. “We brought the exhibition to the street, and the street is still accessible.” (more…)

Heading off logistical and safety concerns surrounding COVID-19, the Venice Biennale has postponed its next two editions, moving its architecture show to next year, and the next iteration of its art exhibition to 2022.  “I hope that the occasion will mark a new celebration of togetherness,” says curator Cecilia Alemani, “a new sense of participation and communion.” (more…)

A group of mayors from major US cities have appealed to Congress for more funding support for the arts. “This is about individuals—artists and cultural workers alike—whose livelihoods are being threatened if not already irrevocably impacted,” the letter reads. “This is also about the soul of our communities: It is the arts that make each of our communities unique. And it is the arts that will help our communities survive and thrive economically.” (more…)

Valentine Uhovski, former CEO of Paddle8, is being sued for alleged misuse of company funds in the days before the online auction house declared bankruptcy. (more…)

MoMA has cut its budget by $45 million, seeking to reduce its operations in the face of coronavirus.  “We will learn to be a much smaller institution,” says Glenn Lowry.  (more…)

Tech entrepreneur and Napster founder Sean Parker is embroiled in a dispute over a Peter Paul Rubens work he purchased at Christie’s, after the seller attempted to cancel the sale.  “A consignor sought to cancel a completed auction sale and following repeated attempts to settle the matter amicably, the matter was submitted to arbitration,” a Christie’s spokesperson said. “The arbitrator ruled that Christie’s complied with its contractual obligations and that the successful bidder had lawfully acquired the painting. Christie’s is now seeking to confirm the arbitration award in federal court to conclude this matter, and transfer the painting to the buyer and the significant sale proceeds to the consignor.” (more…)

LA Times critic Christopher Knight of  has won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. The committee praised Knight for “demonstrating extraordinary community service” and for “applying his expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the LA County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s mission.” (more…)

The Royal Academy of Art will press on with its plans for a Marina Abramović survey, Art News reports, opening the show in 2021. “We have almost 80 percent of the show ready,” Abramović said. “I have never been more ready in my life. So, now I have an entire year to rethink or change things,” which she hopes will make for “the best show of my life.” (more…)

Sotheby’s is moving forward with its marquee New York sale this June, and will feature Roy Lichtenstein’s White Brushstroke I (1965), estimated at $20-$30 million. “This is Pop at its most profound core” says David Galperin, head of Sotheby’s contemporary art auctions in New York. “White Brushstroke I is an icon of Pop Art, capturing in a single painting the rupture that this movement invoked in an entire generation of postwar picture-making.” (more…)

A piece in the New York Times charts how the impacts of the coronavirus might alter the face of future art events like Biennials. “We’re going through something we have never seen,” says Manuela Moscoso, curator of the Liverpool Biennial. “Coronavirus arrived in several waves: first the virus, and then all the different realizations of what it means.” (more…)

The Willem de Kooning Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Teiger Foundation, and the Cy Twombly Foundation have partnered on a grant project to supply $1,250,000 in aid to Tri-State non-salaried workers in the visual arts who have experienced financial hardship from lack of income or opportunity as a direct result of the COVID-19 crisis. (more…)

Christo’s plan to wrap the Arc de Triomphe has been delayed until 2021, the artist’s studio announced on its website. “Thirty-five years after Jeanne-Claude and I wrapped the Pont-Neuf, I am eager to work in Paris again to realize our project for the Arc de Triomphe,” the artist says. (more…)

Germano Celant, the Italian curator who coined the term “arte povera” and enervated the landscape of post-war contemporary art, has passed away at 79 of COVID-19-related causes. Celant was instrumental in pioneering the Italian post-war landscape, and worked for years at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Fondazione Prada in Milan. (more…)

BP will not judge this year’s portrait award at London’s National Portrait Gallery, The Guardian reports.  “The judging panel is refreshed each year to ensure new perspectives are brought to judge the entries,” says a gallery spokesperson. “The gallery and BP jointly agreed not to have a sponsor representative on the judging panel this year.” (more…)

The art world is getting back to business in Seoul, as galleries open with new measures in place to protect against COVID-19. “I wouldn’t say things are totally back to normal,” says gallerist Passion Lim of Lehmann Maupin. “But it’s a start.”  (more…)