The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles has named Sandra Jackson-Dumont, current chairman of education and public programs at the Met as its new director and CEO. “We want the Lucas Museum to be a vital resource for our community and we believe Sandra will help us achieve that goal,” says founder George Lucas. (more…)

Fashion designer Marc Jacobs will have a number of works from his collection on sale at Sotheby’s in New York next month, as the designer looks towards a new era in his journey as a collector. “I’m not Marie Kondo,” he says. “I didn’t decide everything must go. I thought about my role as an art collector…and I just felt it’s time to give myself this window to start again.” (more…)

Artist Phil Collins has pulled his work from a show at MoMA PS1 in solidarity with protests against mass incarceration. “This decision is an expression of solidarity with the millions of human beings currently held in cages in U.S. prisons and jails, with their communities and loved ones, and with friends, colleagues, organizers, and campaign groups working tirelessly to call out, resist, and counter the social violence perpetuated by the prison system,” he said in a statement. (more…)

Director Martin Scorcese discusses a project he never realized during the 1980’s in the most recent episode of the Director’s Guild podcast, a biopic based on the life of Amedeo Modigliani.  “It never came off,” he says. “I couldn’t get the financing in the 1980s. Then he went with [directors Brian] De Palma and [Sidney] Lumet, so it’s a whole other thing.” (more…)

The Guardian has a piece this week on the fires threatening the Getty in LA, and how the museum now prepares for the possibility of a nearby blaze. “We think about fire prevention 24/7,” says Communications VP Lisa Lapin. (more…)

Pace has hired Amelia Redgrift as the gallery’s first senior director of global communications and content, marking its own attempts to enter the world of editorial. “Through direct access to artists and in-depth research projects, Pace’s curators—alongside the gallery’s longstanding directors—have become experts on the program and are in some cases the living authority on individuals within the roster,” she says. “We want to leverage this knowledge base to produce engaging editorial with and on behalf of our artists.” (more…)

Marina Abramovic gets an interview in The Believer this week, speaking on her work and her experience of Slavic culture in her home country and abroad. “Don’t have nostalgia. Don’t ever look the past. We only have to live in present and for future,” she says. “Especially if you’re an artist—you grow up there with restrictions, then you come somewhere else and there’s no restrictions and you become kind of lost because you don’t know how to deal with freedom.” (more…)

A long-running lawsuit over cardboard frames on a Martin Kippenberger triptych has ended after an LA court rejected an almost $100 milllion bad faith claim against insurance company XL Specialty.  “I think what you are looking at here is an attempt to use an insurance policy like an ATM machine,” says defense lawyer Gregory Michael MacGregor. (more…)

MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary space is set for a re-imagination, with a focus on performances and installation, as well as “festival-like open events such as conventions, summits, readings, idea fairs, concerts, screenings, dance, as well as group, family, and community oriented activities.” “We can at once pay homage to uniqueness of MOCA’s foundation and the routes of the building as The Temporary Contemporary, while also pivoting towards the future and providing a space for cutting-edge contemporary art,” Klaus Biesenbach says. (more…)

A painting recently attributed as a work by Cimabue sold this week in France for $26.8 million, with gallerist Fabrizio Moretti winning the work. “I bought it on behalf of two collectors,” he said of the purchase. “It’s one of the most important old master discoveries in the last 15 years. Cimabue is the beginning of everything. He started modern art. When I held the picture in my hands, I almost cried.” (more…)

Gallerist Ronald Feldman, an early champion of artists like Joseph Beuys and Chris Burden, has left his position as director of his gallery for health reasons. “He is so passionate about championing ideas-based work, and advancing and creating platforms for artists that truly engage with the widest range of social issues and political causes in our world,” says his son, Mark Feldman. “He supported artists who were really groundbreaking and willing to take risks.” (more…)

The influential Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago is closing, Art News reports. “After 18 years as art dealers, we’re retiring,” the gallery announced in a statement online. “It’s voluntary and positive and we’re ready to take on fun and creative projects whatever they might be.” (more…)

Charles F. Stewart has been named the new CEO of Sotheby’s, with Tad Smith taking a role as senior adviser, Art News reports. “I have known him for many years and have been impressed by his appetite for innovation, taking smart risks, and challenging the status quo,” says Sotheby’s new owner Patrick Drahi. “He has a proven record of driving growth and is ideally positioned to create value for Sotheby’s clients and our outstanding team.” (more…)

A series of paintings of drag queens and trans women by Andy Warhol will go on view next year at Tate Modern, The Guardian reports.  “I had heard there might be these paintings in existence and I met the people who own them now and I went to visit them and it was quite the most remarkable thing,” says Gregor Muir, a Tate director and co-curator. “They were mostly in storage and it was just very beautiful and exciting to pull out these paintings and handle them and start to look through each and every work.” (more…)

Benjamin Genocchio, former director of the Armory Show, has moved to a position as director at large for Shoshana Wayne Gallery. “I’m tremendously honored to be joining Shoshana Wayne Gallery, one of the oldest most prestigious galleries in Los Angeles with a 35-year history, as they embark on a new chapter with a custom-built 5,000-square-foot exhibition space set to open early next year,” he says. (more…)

New York Magazine’s architecture critic Justin Davidson and art critic Jerry Saltz debate the new MoMA  building this week in the magazine, discussing its merits and drawbacks. “I love that for the first time ever, you can get lost at MoMA,” Saltz says. “As with the Met, we may begin to tell ourselves our stories rather than being subjected to the old bullying ‘Cézanne begat Picasso who begat Duchamp who begat everything post-1979′ line.” (more…)

A piece in the New York times charts recent challenges faced by the Mayor’s Office as it rushes to build a range of new monuments across the city in the face of protest and criticism from scholars, community boards, and more. “There needs to be more Council oversight and an intentional reform of the process,” says Todd Fine, president of the Washington Street Historical Society, “especially before this battery of new monuments advances.” (more…)

A brush along the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles is nearing the Getty, and has been nicknamed “The Getty Fire” according to the LA Times. The fire has burned over 500 acres of land. (more…)

The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx will host a major Yayoi Kusama exhibition next year, including paintings and sculptures of flowers, and one of the artist’s “Infinity Rooms.”  “The more we researched her, the more we got excited about these stories we could tell here at the garden,”Karen Daubmann, the NYBG VP says. “We’re writing a story about Kusama that most people don’t know.” (more…)

Japanese collective teamLab, will open new spaces in Shanghai and Macao according to Art Newspaper. “When teamLab started it struggled to get opportunities inside Japan. It has always been the overseas galleries and art communities that have supported teamLab,” says founder Toshiyuki Inoko. (more…)

Art News profiles the challenges ahead of the new Haus der Kunst director Andrea Lissoni. “Dr. Lissoni has a very imposing legacy to live up to,” says artist Adrian Piper. “Okwui Enwezor [searched] for high-quality, cutting-edge art in every culture, every country, every community, and every artist’s studio, regardless of gender, so-called ‘race,’ ethnicity, geographical location, or art world connections.” (more…)

Mary Margaret “Moo” Anderson, a collector of modern and contemporary works who gave the bulk of her collection if 20th-century American art to Stanford University, has passed away at 92. “Moo Anderson will forever be remembered for her love of art, but also for her love of sharing art,” says Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. “She opened her home so that students could have that same experience of looking and learning about art. We are so deeply grateful that Moo and Hunk trusted Stanford to be stewards of their remarkable collection and enable people of all ages to experience it on a daily basis.” (more…)

Teresita Fernández is profiled in the NYT this week, as she opens a major survey at the Perez Art Museum Miami. “People are very seduced by their own image and the exercise of looking for themselves,” she says of her work. (more…)

Shirin Neshat gets a spotlight in the LA Times this week, as she opens new work in the city. “All of these things made their way into my work: fear, vulnerability, being an outcast,” she says of her new video work. “Every woman in my film is an outcast, they are rebellious, they are running away.” (more…)