John Currin gets a profile in GQ this week, with the artist holding court on a range of topics from his taste in cars to his style of painting.  “I sometimes think I’m trying to paint like I am Sean Connery,” he says, “but the closest I’ll ever get is Clint Eastwood.” (more…)

Amy Sadao is stepping as director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Art News reports.  “I fulfilled and surpassed all of my goals, so this is the perfect time to think about my next step,” she says. “This is the right time for me to be able to write, research, and conduct interviews with people I admire, and it’s the right time for the ICA. I’m excited to see where ICA goes from here.” (more…)

The altarpiece of Saint Catherine by Jacopo Tintoretto, formerly owned by David Bowie, has been returned to Venice, after Belgian collector Marnix Neerman purchased the work and loaned it to the Palazzo Ducale. (more…)

Brazil’s National Museum, which was ravaged by fire last year, is aiming to reopen a wing in 2022 for the bicentennial of Brazilian independence. “The Louvre’s director should visit the museum next year, when we will seek to deepen conversations around possible donations,” says Denise Pires de Carvalho, the dean of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). (more…)

Olafur Eliasson is interviewed on CNN this week, as he discusses his views on climate change and his vision of how artists might be able to help increase the speed of response. “I’m afraid we can’t wait for them to do the work for us. Because they are not going fast enough,” he says of politicians working on the crisis. (more…)

Over $8 billion was spent last year to build a total of 148 new museums worldwide, according to the third yearly Cultural Infrastructure Index published by AEA Consulting this past week.  “We have been looking for indicators that suggest peak cultural infrastructure investment has been reached,” the report notes, “but the number of announced projects has remained remarkably stable over the past three years and the number of completed projects has increased each year over the same period.” (more…)

LA’s loved Ooga Booga Store has closed up shop, and will operate online, as well as through a pop-up at The Hammer  Museum through the end of the year.  The closure was announced on Instagram yesterday. (more…)

Sterling Ruby’s work in fashion gets a New Yorker profile this week, as he recaps his recent work and the encouragement he’s felt during his venture into making clothes. “The dealers were so mad at me,” he says, going on to describe his show with Raf Simons. “Everybody was standing up, cheering. At that moment, I thought, Fuck being an artist—this is wonderful.” (more…)

The New York Times celebrated Labor Day yesterday with a piece documenting the work and contributions of various creative laborers, including dancers, performers and frame manufacturers. “The frame sort of needs to disappear,” says Bill Schunk, who makes frames with his wife Rose Pappalardo at Frames New York. “If you’re noticing the frame, maybe something is wrong.” (more…)

Artist Conrad Shawcross has an interview in Art News this week, as the artist reaps praise for his show at Saatchi Gallery celebrating the raw energy of rave culture. “I have a personal connection to it because I experienced it and enjoyed it when I was younger,” he says. “I have a love of it, from a personal perspective.” (more…)

Two names have come out in support of the sale of works from the di Rosa Foundation, including one from Gloria Marchant, the widow of di Rosa collection artist Roy De Forest. “There are many works of Roy’s in this collection, but not often on display,” Marchant writes. “If some were sold to help continue the di Rosa, it would be like Roy giving back the generosity and support Rene gave him. It is the time for artists whose lives were touched by him, as Roy’s life was, to step up too.” (more…)

Artist Nicholas Party gets a profiled in the NYT this week, and talks about his creative, often surreal takes on the gallery dinner.“It all teetered on the brink of being debauched — there was an aura of decadent Rome,” says Alanna Heiss, the founder of MoMA PS1 and director of the arts nonprofit Clocktower Productions, “but my feeling is you can be as silly as you want as long as it wakes people up to thinking.” (more…)

Atlanta-based philanthropists Doris and Shouky Shaheen will donate a selection of Impressionist works to Atlanta’s High Museum, including pieces by Monet and Matisse. “Their collection is really a godsend,” says director Rand Suffolk. “It’s the kind of blessing that we would not be able to orchestrate on our own.” (more…)

Richard Serra is interviewed in the NYT this week, as he prepares to open a series of shows in New York. “If you’re are dealing with abstract art, you have to deal with the work in and of itself and its inherent properties,” he says of his work. “The focus is mainly on mass, weight, material, gravity and so on.” (more…)

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art will put Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room―My Heart is Dancing Into the Universe on permanent view at the museum.  “Yayoi Kusama is an incredibly important figure in art, and her ‘Infinity Rooms’ are really something special,” says Alejo Benedetti, an assistant curator at the museum. “We like to have as much of the collection on view as possible. It seems natural to have it permanently on view.” (more…)

Orazio Gentileschi’s The Finding of Moses will potentially be acquired by London’s National Gallery, Art Newspaper reports. The work is currently on from Graham Kirkham, the founder of the DFS sofa company, who is looking to sell a selection of his works. (more…)

A group of museum heads speak with the Art Newspaper today, as the magazine explores how the recent protests and ousters at museum boards might change charitable giving at museums in the future. “We have not developed a list of acceptable industries or investment strategies or unacceptable ones,” says Daniel Weiss, the president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Rather, we take a look at individuals we’re working with in a holistic way in order to get a sense for who they are, what are their motivations for working with us, what their background is.”  (more…)

Art News has a piece today charting the varied connections between Jeffrey Epstein and the art world, including his place as a board member at the New York Academy of Art, where he met one of his victims, artist Maria Farmer. “I just kept telling Maria, ‘You’ve got to get out of there. You’ve got to get out of there,’” says Eric Fischl, a mentor to the young artist. (more…)

Nan Goldin and members of P.A.I.N., her activist group founded to combat the opioid crisis, have been arrested outside Governor Cuomo’s Mansion in New York. “I came here to tell you today that good luck and good fortune are not very good health management strategies,” said Jaron Benjamin, an activist from Housing Works. “There are too many people in New York City dying of overdoses.”  (more…)

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, the Sharjah art collector is pushing for 50-50 gender partiy in artists shown at the Sharjah Art Museum. “In US museums, only 13 per cent of the art on display is by women,” says Al Qassemi. “If you’re thinking pre-20th century, I understand, because women didn’t have the same opportunities as men. But in the 20th century, there is no excuse not to have equal representation.” (more…)

Jeff Koons’s controversial installation of his sculpture Bouquet of Tulips in Paris will move forward, and is set to open by the city’s Nuit Blanche on October 5th.  Costing €3.5m, the installation is financed by French and American sponsors. (more…)

A new art fair, Future Fair, is set to open May 7th to the 9the next year during Frieze New York, will bring together 36 galleries and pay them a percentage of the fair profits.  “Coming from a gallery background, I have a huge amount of respect for the work galleries do and the risks they undertake,”  founder Rebeca Laliberte says. “I felt immediately that a model that focuses on the needs of the gallery in this way was really, really exciting.” (more…)

Collector and NY Academy of Art Founder Stuart Pivar speaks of his longtime friendship with Jeffrey Epstein for a piece in  Mother Jones this week.“Jeffrey was profoundly sick,” he says. (more…)

Gustave Caillebotte’s Iris Bleus, Jardin du Petit Gennevilliers, has been acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). It has been the subject of an ownership battle for several years. “We know from letters that this work was part of an active dialogue he had with Monet about gardening,” says Caroline Shields, the AGO’s associate curator and head of European art.  (more…)