LA Times critic Christopher Knight has won the $50,000 Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation’s lifetime achievement award.  “He was always the one who chose the important things and wrote in detail and beautifully,” says Executive Director Susan C. Larsen. “The most outstanding thing about his career, that lifts him and distinguishes him across the country, is his fearlessness. He’s not afraid to tackle the issues everyone talks about.” (more…)

Bloomberg reports that David Geffen was the buyer of David Hockney‘s The Splash at Sotheby’s last week. “Everyone was thinking about Brexit,” says gallerist and former auctioneer Brett Gorvy. “No one wanted to consign unless there was a financial situation that guaranteed security.” (more…)

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The Cooper Hewitt’s ouster of director Caroline Baumann is profiled in the NYT this week, as some point to controversy behind her wedding and a perceived conflict of interest in her work with a wedding dress designer. “I know the circumstances of the investigation that led to Caroline’s dismissal and I must say I am appalled that this was its conclusion,” says philanthropist and Cooper Hewitt Board Secretary Judy Francis Zankel. “I have been working with her long enough to know without a doubt that she has been unfairly accused and unjustly judged.” (more…)

Artist Dawoud Bey gets a profile in The Guardian this week, as he opens a retrospective at SFMoMA. “What I hope to create is work that makes it apparent that black people exist not only in a social world,” Beys says at the press preview for the SF Moma opening, “but they also have rich interior lives as human beings.” (more…)

Artist Pyotr Pavlensky is once again facing possible imprisonment over his recent stunt leaking a politician’s sex tape. “[Candidate Benjamin Griveaux] despises his constituents,” the artist says in a statement. “He was the only candidate to use his family to promote a political image. He told a big lie; he began his campaign with a big lie.” (more…)

The LA Times has a piece this week on the closure of the Marciano Foundation, noting issues with unionizing labor alongside organizational breakdowns and a lack of internal structure. “[Maurice Marciano] didn’t really know how expensive it is to run his own private museum,” says an unnamed source. “He did it in a very generous, very first-class generous way.” (more…)

Clément Chéroux, senior curator of the photography center at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, is heading to MoMA’s to serve as the museum’s chief curator of photography. “It was a pleasure to work at SFMOMA for three years and to have the support of a fantastic Bay Area photo community,” Chéroux said in a statement. “I am very excited to be part of the energy of the new MoMA and to work with the team and collection to develop great projects.” (more…)

Billionaire Mark Pincus, founder of online gaming firm Zynga, has pledged $3 million to James Turrell’s Roden Crater project. “The project itself feels, to me, like modern-day pyramids,” he says. “The ambition and scale and scope of it is something that has the potential to be something that people, many generations from now, will be able to experience and get something amazing from—maybe something beyond what we can imagine today.” (more…)

A piece in Art Newspaper asks why so many private museums are already shuttering. “It’s more fun building a museum and a collection and opening it than running it,” says Adrian Ellis, the founding director of AEA Consulting. (more…)

Oil and ranching heiress Anne Marion, founder of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico has passed away at the age of 81. “Anne Marion was one of the most generous, admirable, and inspirational people I have ever known,” says Marla Price, director of the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, where Marion was an active benefactor. “Her great leadership and generosity to the museum has continued until the present, and her loss is heartbreaking for everyone involved with the Modern.” (more…)

Russian provocateur and artist Pyotr Pavlensky, whose prior stunts involved setting the doors of a Russian security organization aflame, has taken reportedly taken responsibility for interfering in the Parisian mayoral elections, leaking compromising sexually graphic videos of candidate Benjamin Griveaux online. “He is someone who is always playing up family values, who says he wants to be the mayor of families and always cites as examples his wife and children. But he does the opposite,” Pavlensky is quoted. (more…)

Yayoi Kusama will stage another major show of her Infinity Rooms at the Tate Modern this May, the museum has announced.  The show will feature two such works as well as documentation of early performance pieces by the artist.  (more…)

Fast Company has a piece on the renovation of the Rothko Chapel in Houston and a look at the space’s improvements. “The Chapel was built with a vision that brought together modern art and a sacred space to promote human unity, solidarity, justice and peace,” says Christopher Rothko, Opening Spaces chairman and the artist’s son. “The universality of this vision is very relevant for us today and I believe will remain so for generations to come.” (more…)

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Artist Amoako Boafo criticizes Stefan Simchowitz over the collector’s attempt at flipping one of his works at auction tonight at Phillips. “Now he wants to make profit from it,” he says. “It’s only sad. The painting is so recent.” (more…)

A piece in the Art Newspaper this week documents a series of court cases around gallery-artist splits, noting the various ways and legal issues around the break of a business relationship in the art world. (more…)

Artist Luchita Hurtado gets a profile in the WSJ this week, as she finds a more responsive market for her work. (more…)

Residents of the luxury flat next to the Tate Modern, who sued over the the museum overlook’s vantage point into their apartments, have lost their court appeal.  “These properties are impressive, and no doubt there are great advantages to be enjoyed in such extensive glassed views, but that in effect comes at a price in terms of privacy,” the ruling judge stated. (more…)

As part of its summer show Automania, MoMA will park a series of cars in its outdoor sculpture park.  The exhibition will include a series of automobiles in the museum collection never shown before. (more…)

Barbara Kruger is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing her work and the contemporary moment. ”There are moments of recognition and significant changes but we’re living at a time where global white grievance is rampant,” she says, “and there is also a reaction against those symbolic changes. In these brutal and threatening times, I believe it necessary to vote strategically – to push back against the emboldened tide of white grievance and vengeance-driven populism.” (more…)

Collector Pamela Joyner is interviewed in Art Newspaper this week, discussing her collection and her passion for the works she owns. “My favorite part of the response is when I go to the museum and encounter really young people interacting with the art,” she says. “So in the first venue where we opened, I will never forget a school group of about 40 kindergarteners sitting on the floor looking up at my Mark Bradford waterfall painting. They were not squirming–it was like their mouths were dropping. It was just adorable: They were very orderly, asking questions. (more…)

Blain Southern is closing all of its current spaces, after several high profile departures.  “Despite the support of dedicated gallery staff, I deeply regret that I have been unable to secure the gallery’s future long term,” says Harry Blain. “I want to thank all the artists, collectors, institutions, museums, staff and everyone who has worked with the gallery over the last decade.” (more…)

A piece in Art in America this week looks at how museums are working to make their collections more accessible to the blind.  The piece details various naming strategies and techniques for describing and representing works. (more…)