The final show staged and prepared by curator Okwui Enwezor before his death will open as the 15th edition of the Sharjah Biennial.  The show, “Thinking Historically in the Present,” will open in the United Arab Emirates in March 2021.  “Everybody’s looking back at art history, trying to rewrite the narrative of what we’ve been told,” says curator Hoor al-Qasimi, who serves as president and director of Sharjah Art Foundation. (more…)

Two of Berlin’s most important art awards, the Hannah Höch Award and the Hannah Höch Förderpreis have been awarded to Monika Baer and Natascha Sadr Haghighian, respectively. Haghighian represented Germany this year at the Venice Biennale. (more…)

The LA Times notes drastically increased rents at the Santa Fe Artist Colony, one of LA’s oldest and studio spaces. “The SFAC has been on our radar for some time,” said Adrian Fine, director of advocacy at theLos Angeles Conservancy. “We’d certainly been aware of potential changes down the road. Every time there’s a change of ownership, there’s a risk.” (more…)

The Australian Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale will go to sound artist Marco Fusinato, Art News notes.  Fusinato’s work regularly centers around perception and tactility, including various ways of making listeners . “feel” sound. (more…)

Artist Glenn Kaino is collaborating in a new project with athlete Tommie Smith, famed for the Black Power salute he gave during the 1968 Olympics. “The category of that time was status quo,” Smith says. “Back in 1968, the need was for young people, especially young black men, to take a stand on issues which had not been touched before.”

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The National Gallery of Canada has tapped Kitty Scott as deputy director and chief curator. “It is exciting to have Kitty Scott return to the National Gallery of Canada at a moment when we are re-engaging with our mandate in new, bold ways,” says director and CEO Sasha Suda. “Kitty’s depth of experience, both nationally and internationally, and her future-forward vision for building collections and programs will enable us to resonate with our audiences across Canada and the world.” (more…)

Following several days of closure due to savage wildfires, the Getty has reopened.  The institution had shuttered as the hills nearby were covered in brushfires. (more…)

RoseLee Goldberg gets a profile in the WSJ this week as Performa 19 opens in New York. “To me it’s the catalyst for the avant-avant garde,” says Goldberg of her programming. “It hasn’t been about commerce or about making sure we can make money back on the productions. It’s about the artists and the ideas that emerge.” (more…)

Bloomberg has a piece on Patrick Drahi and his purchase of Sotheby’s, speculating on how his strategies with previous takeovers might shake out at the auction house. “It’s obvious that you don’t manage an auction house the way you manage a telecom carrier,” says Frederic Ichay a technology lawyer. “Auction houses typically take years to establish long-lasting bonds with families that have art works to sell and families that could be buyers. That’s the heart of the business.” (more…)

London’s Roundhouse has turned down a £1m grant from the Sackler Trust, showcasing the increasing pressure institutions are facing over their patrons. “We are enormously grateful for the trust’s support over the years, but we have made a decision not to accept the donation at this time. To do so risks distracting from our work with young people, and that’s our priority,” a spokesperson said. (more…)

The British Museum has been labeled the world’s largest receiver of stolen goods, The Guardian reports.  “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display,” says Geoffrey Robertson QC. (more…)

Discovery of a vulnerability to powerful winds has once again delayed the reopening of the Rothko Chapel.  “This is a simple matter of stewardship,” says executive director David Leslie. “I don’t like to use double negatives, but we cannot not do it. … If a weather incident hit the walls at just the right angle, you could lose the chapel. A wall could collapse.” (more…)

MoMA is preparing for the next rotation of its collection come May 1st, with plans to showcase new artists and bodies of work as part of its new programming efforts.“We will do more special shows from our own collection,” says Ann Temkin, chief curator of paintings and sculpture. (more…)

A tape of Lou Reed demos featuring songs based on the writings of Andy Warhol has been discovered at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. “This tape is Lou Reed working out what he does best,” says Cornell music professor Judith A. Peraino, “which is figuring out the character of his song, telling the stories, being as brutally honest as he is in many of his writings.” (more…)

The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York has elected Jon C. Iwata as chair of its board of trustees. “I so look forward to working with Jon in his new role as chair, building upon his work to date with museum branding and audience-building to position Cooper Hewitt as the platform for all things design,” says museum director Caroline Baumann. “I extend a warm welcome to Crystal who brings with her a wealth of experience and knowledge in design, global business and branding, technology, and philanthropy.”

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Tom Finklepearl has left his post as the commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.  “With my great colleagues at the agency, fellow commissioners across City government, and terrific support from the Mayor and the First Lady, we’ve been able to make record investments in our city’s cultural community,” Finkelpearl said in his statement. “We’ve insisted that a more diverse cultural workforce will make stronger cultural institutions. We’ve infused hundreds of millions of dollars in the cultural sector, with a focus on getting more of it to historically underserved areas. And we’ve brought the arts into City government itself, trusting artists to help creatively address civic issues.” (more…)

Doris Salcedo has been named winner of the $1 million Nomura Art Award, the first-ever edition of the award from the company, which will now be given annually to one artist. “Producing projects capable of honoring the experience of victims of violence requires a large investment in time and organization, sometimes with many collaborators,” she said. “Because of this award, I am now able to move ahead much more quickly than I had expected with a project that is important to me, and that I hope will touch many people.” (more…)

The U.S. Justice Department has struck a deal with financier Jho Low, in which it will recover over $1 billion taken from the 1MDB in investment fund.  “We were pleased to help negotiate this historic resolution in order to preserve the tremendous value of assets involved,” says Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey said in a statement. “It is one of the largest civil forfeiture settlements in U.S. history and represents a voluntary return of each and every asset claimed by DOJ.” (more…)

The city of Paris is preparing to construct a temporary venue to host exhibitions and events while the Grand Palais undergoes its three-year renovation. “We are going to work with Unesco run by Audrey Azoulay [the former French culture minister], which is one of Paris’s most beautiful and little-known buildings. It was designed by Marcel Breuer, Bernard Zehrfuss and Pier Luigi Nervi and houses the best work by Takis [Aeolian Signals, 1993],” says Culture Chief Chris Dercon. (more…)

LACMA and the Yuz Museum in Shanghai have teamed up with Qatar Museums (QM) in Doha as part of a new arts collaboration and exchange, which will develop exhibitions and curatorial projects between institutions. “Together, we are experimenting with new and innovative ways to share the collections and programs from Lacma, Yuz, and QM with a larger global audience,” LACMA Director Michael Govan said in a statement.  (more…)

An unsigned painting discovered in a French chateau have led to speculations that the work is a depiction ofItalian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, painted by Leonardo da Vinci. “Just because it says so in the archives does not mean it’s true” cautions Anne Gerardot of the local archives office. (more…)

A nearly identical copy of Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi has been placed on view on at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Turin, Italy.  The copy was painted by painted by the German-Turkish artist Taner Ceylan. “Re-creating another Salvator Mundi in a slightly different size gave me the opportunity to dive into the technical qualities and spiritual layers of this controversial painting,” the artist said. “This was not easy. This process of painting gave me the chance to come very close to the Renaissance era.” (more…)

Artist Hito Steyerl has lodged a protest against the German government’s support and sale of arms to Turkey, calling for all institutions receiving state funds to no longer show her work. “I am sick of my work being deployed to detract attention from the German state’s tacit agreement with displacement, ethnic cleansing, and warfare, and to lend it an aura of tolerance and inclusivity,” she said in a recent performance. (more…)

Critic Christopher Knight of the LA Times has called out the Desert X Biennial’s partnership with Saudi Arabia as “morally corrupt” in a new piece for the paper. “A diverse cosmopolitan culture cannot function without free expression,” he writes.  “In Saudi Arabia, however, apostasy is punishable by death. Unless artists are willing to make their host’s state control of expression an explicit subject of their work, those who participate cannot escape compromise from the polluted context.” (more…)