A piece in the SF Chronicle looks at California’s major increase in budgeting for the arts. “When we look the 2021-22 budget, the words that come to my mind are, ‘This is historic. It’s bold. It’s unprecedented,’” says Ron P. Muriera, board president of Californians for the Arts. (more…)

The UK Government will move forward with a 50% cut to funding for arts and design courses, Art Newspaper reports. “Devaluing the arts disempowers us as a society leaving us poorer, both culturally and economically. Arts education provides not only a place for teaching, but also essential centers of research,” says artist Sarah Kogan. (more…)

Artist Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden redesign has gotten approval. The design had faced some pushback, but was accepted on its more attentive unification of museum grounds, and its increased exhibition space. (more…)

46 culture nonprofits have been tapped for a $30 million program from Bloomberg Philanthropies, aimed at supporting technology to stabilize and thrive their offerings in the wake of the pandemic. “I think now we’re really taking the time to see what we can do that has longevity,” says Heryte Tequame, assistant director of communications and digital projects at the Queens Museum, and a fellow in the project. “And not just being responsive, but really being proactive and having a real future-facing strategy.” (more…)

A long-lost Van Gogh watercolor has resurfaced in Japan, the Art Newspaper reports. The work’s movements over the years have been somewhat difficult to track, but was purportedly purchased last year by collector Katsushige Susaki. (more…)

A Dutch portrait of a vegetable seller has undergone a two-year restoration, removing the smile from the figure’s face that seems to have been added in the years after the work was completed. “The frame was flaking and very dirty,” says conservator Alice Tate-Harte.“The painting had a very yellow varnish on it and dirt layers … there was an awful lot of overpainting on it too, so it wasn’t the beautiful object it could be.” (more…)

Artist Peter Saul has a profile in the New York Times this month, as he discusses politics, art, and his career. “I’ve always been a kind of isolated person,” he says. “I thought it was a great, luxurious thing to not have to deal with people. It’s a bad sign, mentally, but I seem to be OK. I mean, who knows? Maybe not, really. Don’t care. As long as I have a beautiful woman, I’m satisfied. I don’t need to talk to five other people.” (more…)

A Mexican man has been arrested for allegedly selling fake works by Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, “As alleged, Angel Pereda attempted to sell forgeries of artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, among others, as genuine,” says Manhattan U.S. attorney Audrey Strauss. (more…)

The Siberian industrial center of Norilsk, consider one of the “most depressing cities in the world,” will get its own art museum, Art Newspaper reports. The Arctic Museum of Modern Art “will focus on an Arctic theme and will inspire global reflections not only on Norilsk but the north of Russia as a whole,” says Natalia Fedianina, the director of the Norilsk Museum Exhibition Complex. (more…)

As protests roll through Cuba, the Art Newspaper looks at the group of artists, including Tania Bruguera, who have been protesting against the government in hope of change for years. “People just got tired of being afraid,” Bruguera says, “they realized that this government only cares about staying in power.” (more…)

Land artist Nancy Holt’s archives have been acquired by the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives for American Art. “The depth of historical material solidifies Holt’s position as a pioneer of the movement, revealing the complex research and organizational labour involved in realizing her works, while her writings, interviews and correspondences demonstrate how Land Art was as much a discursive and media practice as a sculptural one,” says Jacob Proctor, the Smithsonian’s Gilbert and Ann Kinney New York Collector. (more…)

Damien Hirst gets an interview in The Guardian this week, as he unveils a series of new paintings. “I think the idea of being a painter has always appealed to me,” he says. “I suppose it’s that old story of Turner being strapped to a mast during a storm so he could paint it – it’s a romantic thing.” (more…)

A stolen Sigmar Polke painting has been found in a Mainz apartment. Details surrounding the work’s theft have “not yet been conclusively clarified” according to German police. (more…)

The newest iterations of London’s Fourth Plinth installation have been announced, with a sculpture by artist Samson Kambalu, based on a 1914 photograph of the preacher and advocate for African independence John Chilembwe. The work will go on view in 2022, and will be followed in 2024 by a sculpture by Teresa Margolles that features the faces of 850 trans people, an “anti-monument” as the artist describes it, which references the violence and cultural erasure  against trans individuals worldwide. (more…)

Long-missing paintings by Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso have been found in Greece, after their disappearance from Greece’s National Gallery in 2012. “Two and a half months later, the Gallery heals its greatest wound, the wound of 2012,” Lina Mendoni, Greece’s Minister of Culture and Sports, says. “The work of the great painter, a gift to the Greek people, returns to a new Gallery that has nothing to envy from the respective museums of other European capitals.” (more…)

James Cuno will step down from his position at the head of The J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles. “It has been my honor to serve this tremendous organization, and to play a small part in expanding its mission to broaden and deepen our understanding of the human experience through the visual arts,” Cuno says of the Getty in a statement. (more…)

Jim Shaw has moved on to Gagosian, finding a new home after Metro Pictures announced its closure.

The Pompidou has tapped Laurent Le Bon, president of Musée Picasso in Paris, as the its new president. Le Bon will oversee the museum’s new outpost being built in Jersey City.  (more…)

The Guggenheim Bilbao is crowdfunding €100,000 to restore Jeff Koons’s sculpture Puppy.  “The museum has chosen to enlist the collaboration of society to ensure that this beloved and representative work will remain in great condition for the next 25 years,” a museum statement reads. (more…)

After delays, Christo’s ambitious wrapping project for the Arc de Triomphe will launch in September. “More than a year after Christo’s death, Paris is continuing the work of this great artist,” says Says Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo. “It is an opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to him and to defend our attachment to contemporary creation.” (more…)

Interpol has launched a new app to help identify stolen art.  “It’s a concrete tool for police and customs—and for museums and private individuals,” says Corrado Catesi, who heads Interpol’s Works of Art Unit. “It is not the panacea, but it can really help.” (more…)

Artist Dorothea Rockburne is suing her upstairs neighbor, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo over irreparable damage to a series of her early works, after Costolo’s leaky plumbing flooded into the artist’s loft. “I watched helplessly as the water poured down over the cabinet and onto my early work,’’ she says. (more…)

Phyllida Barlow has been awarded damehood during the Queen’s annual Birthday events in the UK, Art Newspaper reports. Ceramicist Edmund de Waal was also awarded a CBE. (more…)

Hauser & Wirth will open a second Los Angeles space in West Hollywood, the LA Times reports. “Since the beginning, we always thought of L.A. as a city where we would love to have more than one location,” says President Marc Payot. “We really expect L.A. to come back to its full bloom after the pandemic, and this is really the next step for us. It’s first and foremost a commitment to L.A.” (more…)