A piece in Art News this week notes the recent fundraising successes at MOCA, and Klaus Biesenbach’s vision for the museum. “I think the future of MOCA is getting back to serving art and serving community—that’s the message,” says artist and board member Catherine Opie. “It’s all about opening up the museum and what MOCA stood for when it started. I think people are feeling really good about everything. I’ve been trying to take a beat from people I know, people that work inside the museum, as well as the perspective outside of MOCA. I have to say that, so far, everyone’s been giving the thumbs up.” (more…)

A survey finds that museum holdings in the U.S. tend overwhelmingly towards white males, with men making up 88% of collection holdings nationwide. The survey breaks down collection data across a range of datasets and reports.  (more…)

Aras Amiri, a British Council employee accused of spying for the UK, has been sentenced to a ten-year prison sentence in Iran. “We are very concerned by reports that an Iranian British Council employee has been sentenced to jail on charges of espionage,” the UK Foreign Office said. “We have not been able to confirm any further details at this stage and are urgently seeking further information.” (more…)

The collector couple Emily and Mitchell Rales were the buyers of Lee Krasner’s The Eye is the First Circle (1960) last week at Sotheby’s, which set a record of $11.7 million for the artist.  WSJ reporter Kelly Crow broke the news on her Instagram. “We weren’t sure we’d get it,” Rales told her. “We’re so happy.” (more…)

The Guardian has a piece on the Savitsky Museum in Nukus, Uzbekistan, which holds a collection of avant-garde masterpieces rescued from the Staling regime in Russia.  The works were taken by Igor Savitsky, an electrician who fled Russia with the works in tow. (more…)

The NYT looks at the redesign of the Hirshhorn Museum Gardens and the plans in place for Hiroshi Sugimoto to rework the design. “This is what we’re seeing again and again,” says . Charles Birnbaum, the founder and president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation. “It’s really about having more open spaces to accommodate more people and more programs.” (more…)

The NYT has a piece on Robert Mnuchin this week, following the dealer’s winning bid on a $91 million Jeff Koons that made the work the most expensive price for a living artist. “It was an intense business,” he says of his past career at Goldman Sachs. “It was very competitive and I was successful at building relationships with serious institutional people, that I could work for them and myself at the same time. That I could serve as their agent and be their principal. And I think I’ve carried that over somewhat into this.” (more…)

Following a $10 million donation by MOCA board president, Carolyn Clark Powers, the LA Museum is planning to eliminate general ticket fees. “I think many of us are at a point where we understand that museums should not be ivory towers,” Klaus Biesenbach says. “MOCA should feel like a public library where you can go and have access to culture.”  (more…)

New York’s Alexander Gray Associates will host a series of shows centered around single works in a barn upstate this summer, Art News reports.  The project will kick off with a show of Harmony Hammond’s Bandaged Grid #5 (2016). “Certainly, with the environment that we’re in right now, there’s so much noise, and there’s a big emphasis on spectacle,” Gray says. “We’re interrupting that really fast-paced rhythm of looking.” (more…)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will no longer accept gifts from members of the Sackler family linked to the maker of OxyContin. “The museum takes a position of gratitude and respect to those who support us, but on occasion, we feel it’s necessary to step away from gifts that are not in the public interest, or in our institution’s interest,” said Daniel H. Weiss, the president of the Met. “That is what we’re doing here.” (more…)

Czech Culture Minister Antonin Stanek will resign following protests over his dismissal of Jiri Fajt, the director of Prague’s National Gallery. “This is not acceptable in a 21st-century democracy,” said Marion Ackermann of the Dresden State Art Collections. “Fajt has been one of the best ambassadors for the Czech Republic. He has put so much energy into creating an international network and we all admire him enormously. This will cause a big rupture—it’s a great shame.” (more…)

Now, a British Court of Appeals has rejected an appeal by collector Rudolf Staechelin to overturn a $10 million commission to Simon de Pury and his wife Michaela for the $210 million sale of Paul Gauguin’s 1892 painting Nafea Faa Ipoipo? (When Will You Marry?).  “It is regrettable that for the first time in my long career in the art market, I was forced to take legal action against anyone, and in this case, a childhood friend. . . . I look forward to continuing to put all my energy into my activities in the world of art and philanthropy,” de Pury said in a statement.  (more…)

A group of Six Titian masterpieces will go on view at London’s National Gallery for the first time together since 1704, The Guardian reports.  “They rank amongst the most significant paintings of the 16th century and the all-time great visual statements on the themes of love and death,” says Matthias Wivel, the National Gallery’s curator of 16th-century Italian paintings. (more…)

Activist group Indigenous Womxn’s Collective staged a protest against Whitney Vice Chair Warren B. Kanders this week over his rol in the production of military supplies.  “Indigenous people and other people of color are violently under attack by Warren Kanders’s manufactured weapons of terrorism,” the group said in a statement read to attendees. “You, the Whitney, is harboring a terrorist who profits from violence against brown bodies. You want our art, but not our people.”  (more…)

The Museum of Modern Art has hired Lanka Tattersall as a curator in the drawings and prints department. “With its unparalleled permanent collection, MoMA is an extraordinary place from which to build and question our understandings of art in our time,” Tattersall said in a statement. “I eagerly look forward to supporting artists by bringing their inventive, challenging and generative works and ideas to the museum.” (more…)

A piece in the NYT discusses the market behind the works on view at the Venice Biennale, and the collectors who seek out works on view at an event proffered as free of commercial impetus.  “Art and the market are always connected, but maybe in the past there was too much of a market,” says collector Patrizio Sandretto Re Rebaundengo. (more…)

A piece in the LA Times this week notes the challenges the LACMA renovation’s new concrete walls will pose for the mounting of work. “Faith in concrete’s sober virtue reminds me of all the cooing back in 2008-2010 over “column-free space” in Renzo Piano’s LACMA designs for BCAM and the Resnick Pavilion. Wide-open, uninterrupted interiors without pesky ceiling supports were touted as representing curatorial freedom and artistic respect — the liberty to subdivide interior museum space in whatever way might best flow from the art being shown,” writes Christopher Knight. “Yes, but: Art installation budgets roughly tripled when BCAM and Resnick opened, several people with direct knowledge of the column-free plan told me. Earthquake-zone building codes guide construction of those temporary interior walls. The structural demands approximate those for permanent walls — including their expense.” (more…)

The Guardian has a lengthy piece on Lee Krasner this week, touring her Long Island home and reviewing some of the abstract works she made after the death of her husband, Jackson Pollock.  “It’s mind-boggling,” says Helen Harrison, director of the artist’s Springs home. “Straight away she does this wonderful, colourful, upbeat work. Painting was her antidote to grief.” (more…)

Collector Jorge Pérez has established the CreARTE Grants Program, giving $1 million in grants to support arts and culture programs in Miami-Dade County.  “We wanted to create a fund to provide more funding for innovation, passion, creativity, and collaboration in the arts,” Pérez said. “Artistic endeavors are economically hard. We want to create opportunities for artists to pursue their careers that helps narrow the gap.” (more…)

The estate of Robert Indiana has filed suit to stop reproduction of his works, including his iconic LOVE and HOPE works, arguing that the licensing agreements for those works ended when he passed away. “We’re giving them notice that we are terminating the agreements, and this requires the judge to let us amend our pleading down there (in New York),” says attorney James Brannan. “We are hopeful the judge will do it. We are early enough in the case that I think we can.” (more…)

Wildenstein & Co. is being sued for allegedly selling a fake Pierre Bonnard painting in 1985, the Art Newspaper reports.  “If Wildenstein reviewed the catalogue raisonné and discovered that the Bonnard Painting was not listed there, its failure to advise the Trust was a material omission that operated as a fraud on the Trust,” the case notes. (more…)

The NYT interviews a group of artists on the politics of the current Whitney Biennial, and how they see their work relating to the problems currently roiling both the museum and institutions nation wide. “So many things feel unchangeable because of history, or politics,” says Calvin Marcus. “I try to get people to question their daily surroundings, and hope that art helps recalibrate.” (more…)

A piece in the NYT this week charts the ongoing political challenges museums are facing from the public over board decisions and ethics. “In practical terms, museums are on the spot,” writes Holland Carter. “Even without expansion bloat, they’re too expensive and unprofitable to be fiscally self-sustaining. Government art support in the United States is less than meager (and would be zero if the current administration had its way). Which leaves private, frequently corporate, money to lean on, and the good possibility that some of that money is tainted.” (more…)

Painter Thomas Nozkowski, whose abstract paintings, drawings, and prints create swirling, otherworldly effects, has passed away at the age of 75, Pace Gallery confirmed. “Tom was a great, innovative painter and a wonderful friend,” gallerists Arne and Marc Glimcher said in a statement. “He leaves a space that cannot easily be filled; but what an incredible gift he has been to all of us. He added brilliance to every life he touched, and his work changed the way we all see the world.” (more…)