The Met has announced Andrea Bayer, current Jayne Wrightsman curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of European paintings, as the new deputy director for collections and administration. “As curator in the department of European paintings, often working on projects that went across multiple departments, I know how rewarding it is to work alongside colleagues throughout the museum,” Bayer said in a statement. “I am thrilled to take on this new role, one which will allow me both to support the director and continue to collaborate with these colleagues on an institutional level.” (more…)

Jeff Koons has lost his court case regarding plagiarism of an add for French clothing brand Naf-Naf for his sculpture Fait d’Hiver. Koons must pay creative director Franck Davidovici a total of €135,000 for the work. (more…)

The LA Times has a piece on newly minted MOCA Director Klaus Biesenbach’s vision for his leadership at the museum, and the efforts he plans to spearhead while working at the museum. “As a museum, you have a civic responsibility, you have a role in society, you have to be courageous, you have to open up your doors to allow for dialogue,” he says. (more…)

Chris Dercon, who recently left his position at the Volksbühne Theatre in Berlin, will take a new position as president of the French government cultural body, Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand Palais (Rmn-GP), the orgaization that manages the Grand Palais and Musée du Luxembourg. “The ministry has opted for a new type of leader, an art historian who has always championed artists,” said Philippe Régnier, editor of Art Newspaper France. (more…)

The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston has reattributed a work in its collection to Diego Velázquez, citing recent research after a cleaning in San Antonio. “The first moment I saw it, I believed,” Katherine Luber, the San Antonio museum’s director, says. (more…)

Magazzino Italian Art Foundation in Cold Spring is establishing a new Research Center with some 4,000 publications accessible for study, as well as a new annual fellowship program, Art News reports. The first scholar-in-residence is Francesco Guzzetti, who recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University. “It is a true privilege to expand my research on Arte Povera and work directly with the art installed in the museum and the new Research Center library,” Guzzetti says. (more…)

Collectors Beverly and Donald S. Freeman have donated $4 million to the Dallas Museum of Art to fund the Freeman Family Exhibition Endowment, which will help fund one show a year. “This is an exciting moment in the museum’s history, and the Dallas Museum of Art deeply appreciates this generous gift from Don and Beverly Freeman,” says Agustín Arteaga, the DMA’s director. “They are longstanding patrons of the museum, including Beverly’s remarkable four decades as a valued DMA docent. We are grateful for this significant new gift and for their continued passion in support of our celebrated education programs.” (more…)

LA’s David Kordansky Gallery now represents Huma Bhabha, Art News reports. In a statement, Kordansky said he was “fascinated by her synthesis of artificial and organic materials, modernism and monsters, notions of the universal and the alien. Both topical and transcendent, her forms give unexpected—and unflinching—life to the figurative tradition.” (more…)

Two major works from the estate of Robert Indiana will hit the auction block this month, sold to help pay for his estate’s mounting legal fees and repairs to his former mansion in Maine. “Litigation is expensive, especially in New York,” says Indiana’s executor James Brannan. “If any papers so much as cast a shadow on a desk, they bill for it.” (more…)

Sadaharu Horio, one of the last living members of the Japanese avant-garde collective Gutai, has passed away at the age of 79. Horio worked experimentally for decades, using found materials like scrap metal, string, wood, roots, stones, and planks while he worked a day job in a factory.  (more…)

Kerry James Marshall says he is done making public art, following the controversy over the city of Chicago attempted a sale of a mural he did for a city library. “It just seemed like a way of exploiting the work of artists in the city for short-term gain in a really shortsighted kind of way,” he says. (more…)

Larry Bell is profiled in The Guardian this week, reflecting on his practice as he opens a major retrospective at ICA Miami. “It’s simply light trapped at the surface,” he says. “Where you see blue on the water, the gasoline is thinner than where you see red on the water, and all the colors are on the spectrum between the blue and the red.” (more…)

Art advisor Tobias Meyer is reportedly the seller behind Phillips‘ offering of an Andy Warhol Gun painting next week.  Estimated at $7 million to $10 million, it’s the most expensive Warhol offered during this month’s auctions in New York. (more…)

The court case between residents at a London development and the Tate Modern began this week, over whether the museum can permit visitors on an observation deck in its new building that provides clear views into the development’s apartments. According to Tate lawyer Guy Fetherstonhaugh the case ultimately seeks to “deny to the public the right to use the viewing platform for its intended purpose merely to give the claimants an unencumbered right to enjoy their own view.” (more…)

The National Trust in the UK is facing criticism after a show honoring Margaret Armstrong saw a number of her collection’s works featuring men covered up. “Sometimes it doesn’t work as we intended and we accept the feedback we have received,” the trust said. “We’ve had a mix of positive and negative comments. We’re going to look at it closely and it will be reviewed thoroughly.” (more…)

Art News takes a look at The Hill Art Foundation, the project of collector J. Tomilson Hill and his wife, Janine, a world-class collection of more than 400 works, valued at over $800 million that will go on view near the High Line. “Ideally, I want an artist who has done great work in every decade they have lived,” he says. (more…)

The Queens Museum in New York has hired Sally Tallant, the director of the Liverpool Biennial as its new director, the New York Times reports. “Her unique combination of local and global experience in the arts world made her the superlative choice for leading the Queens Museum, and for serving the borough’s distinctively international constituency,” says Mark J. Coleman, the museum’s board chairman. (more…)

The Chicago Public Library has withdrawn a Kerry James Marshall mural from the upcoming Christie’s Contemporary sale in New York. “I was swimming and thought ‘This is not what I wanted, given the city’s contributions to public art, and Kerry’s a friend and also a great ambassador for Chicago,’ ” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “I reached out to him and said, ‘Look, I don’t want this. If you’re not happy, I don’t want to go forward.’ ” (more…)

MCH Group, the Swiss-based firm that owns Art Basel fair, will abandon its regional fair business plan, selling its shares in Art Düsseldorf and the India Art Fair. “We must and wish to further develop our classical live-event competence into an integrated experience-marketing competence in the physical and digital fields,” says Hans-Kristian Hoejsgaard, the interim chief executive of MCH Group since September. (more…)

The Tate Britain is preparing to hold its first Vincent van Gogh exhibition since 1947, bringing 45 works in for a show that will make it one of the largest in the last several decades.  “I think our floors are more robust these days,” said director Alex Farquharson, referencing the 1947 show’s popularity, bringing so many people to the museum that the gallery floors were damaged. (more…)

Two Finnish Gallerists were arrested this weekend and ordered to pay 13 million euros for selling hundreds of forged artworks. Kati Marjatta Karkkiainen, 46, and Reijo Pollari, 75, were each found guilty of 30 charges of aggravated fraud.  (more…)

The Knight Foundation has unveiled the list of Detroit arts organizations that will receive funding from its new $20 million initiative, among them the Arts League of Michigan and Creative Many Michigan Inc.“Detroit is rewriting its narrative, and artists are leading the way,” said Victoria Rogers, vice president for arts at the foundation. “With our funding, we look to add to that momentum, supporting organizations big and small, as a way to build community through the arts.” (more…)

V&A East, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s future venue on the former Olympic site in Stratford has unveiled its initial plans. It will combine exhibition and research space. (more…)

Trevor Paglen has won the Nam June Paik Art Center Prize 2018. “It’s an honor to be awarded the Nam June Paik Art Center Prize. Nam June Paik was an incredible visionary, an artist who taught us how to see a rapidly changing world, and an huge inspiration to me personally. To be recognized in relation to Nam June Paik is truly one of the greatest honors I can imagine,” he says. (more…)