Contentious arguments at a meeting the New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission has delayed a vote on the new expansion of The Frick. “This is an incredibly respectful and sensitive proposal,” says LPC Chair Meenakshi Srinivasan. “Even as a mansion, there was always the intent that it would be a museum. The development at the site shows that there is a history of development, and this addition seems like the next logical step.” (more…)
The New York Times visits the sprawling studio complex of Shio Kusaka and Jonas Wood this week, showcasing the couple’s impressive art collection, and some of their favorite works. “We’re really into the Frimkesses, who are Los Angeles ceramists,” Wood says. “He threw these vessels, the ones on the top shelf, and she painted them. I’ve made drawings of paintings out of their pots and included them in larger still-life paintings.” (more…)
NADA will debut its first non-fair exhibition on Governors Island in New York this July, featuring work by artists represented by eight NADA galleries. “We look forward to amplifying NADA’s year-round programming by creating new opportunities to showcase contemporary art in fresh environments,” Heather Hubbs, the executive director of NADA, said in a statement. “It’s a unique opportunity for NADA to organize a show on Governors Island, and we’re excited to welcome visitors to this beautiful historic landmark, and to continue to collaborate with Governors Island in the future.”
The Guardian spotlights efforts to save Van Gogh’s sunflowers after X-Ray imaging showed the flowers’ light-sensitive paint was withering and fading. “It is very difficult to say how long it would take for the change to be obvious and it would depend a lot on the external factors,” said Frederik Vanmeert, a materials science expert at the University of Antwerp. (more…)
303 Gallery now represents artist Sam Falls, an artist working broadly across sculpture, painting, photography, and performance. Falls has shown at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and is currently showing in the Biennale of Sydney. (more…)
Hauser & Wirth now represents the estate of Günther Förg, Art News reports. “A critical component of our gallery’s mission is to serve as custodians of artists’ estates and stewards of their ideas and contributions,” says Iwan Wirth, the president of Hauser & Wirth. “We are particularly excited to work on furthering Förg’s reputation in Asia and the United States, and to develop internationally the great passion for the artist’s work that exists in his homeland of Germany.” (more…)
Urs Fischer, SoÌ„tatsu (detail) (2018)New York, Artworks © Urs Fischer, Photo Rob McKeever
Throughout the career of Swiss artist Urs Fischer, space and form have long worked in lock step with acts of repetition and iteration, allowing his myriad approaches towards studio process to create ever-evolving forms and bodies of work that change as much from piece to piece as they do series to series. For his most recent body of works on view now at Gagosian Gallery‘s uptown location, the artist takes this interest to a natural conclusion, creating a series of panel-based paintings that draw on a gradual evolution in the painter’s improvisations on single images. (more…)
The German Lost Art Foundation will begin developing guidelines for funding projects in provenance research for museums, collections and basic research, the Washington Post reports. The funding continues the organization’s attempts to provide restitution support for lost and looted art pieces. (more…)
The Guardian spotlights an ambitious and expansive body of performance works set to take place at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, organized by a group of artists including Jack Jelfs and Haroon Mirza. “It’s like the way people look at Stonehenge,” says the DJ Elijah, who is part of the project. “That could be like Cern 1,000 years in the future – maybe not even that far ahead. ‘Why were people smashing particles together to work out how the universe started?’ This is the biggest machine ever created, maybe nothing will ever be bigger. So it might be seen as a ritual site.” (more…)
A painting that sat for more than 100 years in the basement of the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo will be credited as a work by master Andrea Mantegna, placing its value at around $30 million. “It’s a wonderful surprise,” says Dr.Keith Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings at the Met. “An absolutely top-quality work by one of the defining artists of the early Renaissance.” (more…)
The New Yorker has a piece on the infamous battle between Rudy Giuliani and Chris Ofili over the artist’s The Holy Virgin Mary, which the then-mayor sought to have removed from a show at the New Museum, and which has now been acquired by MoMA. “When we acquired the work and put it in front of our committee, it looked like it had descended from Heaven,” MoMA curator Laura Hoptman says. (more…)
German minister of culture Monika Grütters has announced plans to increase the nation’s arts funding by approximately $353 million. Grütters feels the budget sends “a strong signal that culture is the foundation for our open and democratic society.” (more…)
A piece in the LA Times this week notes the surging popularity of Nigerian art on the international market, and the institutions springing up to cater to a thriving market. “There’s a generation of young, vibrant artists of Nigerian or African origin who have felt that the gallery infrastructure in West Africa is not sufficiently developed for them to connect with the international art market from their home base,” says Tokini Peterside, founder of the Art X Lagos art fair. “For generations, when it comes to exporting its cultural capital and so many other things, Africa has had to go overseas.” (more…)
The Art Dealers Association of America announced today that the 2019 edition of its Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory will once again open during the last week of February, following its trend towards opening before the crowded Armory Week in New York. “In 2018, the caliber of the presentations was individually, and collectively, very strong, and we continued to hear unsolicited feedback from collectors, museum directors, and curators that the Art Show is their favorite fair,” says Andrew Schoelkopf, organization president. “We aim to reach the same high bar every year, if not surpass it, and part of that is to maintain the fair’s longstanding place in the art world calendar and the singular setting, location, and accessibility provided by the Park Avenue Armory.” (more…)
A recent lawsuit over the works of the late Robert Indiana has shed a light on the recent absence of the artist’s work from the art world, claiming that a caretaker had shielded the artist while reproducing his works. “They have isolated Indiana from his friends and supporters, forged some of Indiana’s most recognizable works, exhibited the fraudulent works in museums, and sold the fraudulent works to unsuspecting collectors,” a lawsuit filed last week by Morgan Art Foundation Ltd. in Federal District Court in Manhattan reads. (more…)
Stephanie Pereira will serve as the next director of the New Museum’s art, design, and technology incubator, NEW INC, the museum has announced. “We are incredibly proud of the accomplishments of NEW INC led by Julia, our brilliant first director,” says cofounder Lisa Phillips. “Stephanie’s creative business acumen, entrepreneurial spirit, and passion for community building will help shape the next chapter of growth for NEW INC.” (more…)
Hauser & Wirth will stage an ambitious show of the works of the late Jack Whitten, who passed away earlier this year, in Los Angeles, Art News reports. The show will feature a range of his works including his storied tributes to fellow artists and writers. (more…)
Damien Hirst’s preserved shark in formaldehyde has been installed above the bar at the Palms Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. “That’s the whole point of art in general,” manager John Gay says. “It evokes different emotions. That’s something we’re excited about with the whole collection. Art is personal. We like that it stirs different reactions and attention.”
Chicago art dealer Richard Gray, long a cornerstone of the city’s arts scene, has passed away at the age of 89. Gray cultivated and supported a range of artists over the course of his life and work, including Alex Katz, Theaster Gates, and David Hockney. “The reality is, sooner or later—but not so much later—it’s all going to be all over for me, and I accept that. I know it,” Gray said in 2007. “It doesn’t change one iota my ability to continue, every day, to be active and involved and committed, to gain from everything around me, what people are doing—artists, musicians, family.” (more…)
Installation view of Ellsworth Kelly: Black & White Works at The FLAG Art Foundation, 2018. Photography by Steven Probert.
Organized by Ellsworth Kelly’s long-time life partner photographer Jack Shear, Black and White Works at the FLAG Art Foundation sheds light on the pioneer colorist’s paintings using primarily black and white, a body of work occupying one fifth of his entire repertoire. Coinciding with the Blanton Art Museum’s unveiling of Kelly’s monumental 2,715 square-foot architectural work Austin, which also introduced a new path in the late artist’s expansive career, the exhibition proposes a fresh approach Kelly’s legacy. Containing sculptural experimentation and geometric curiosity, the works on view demonstrate his unending interest in pushing the boundaries of abstract precision, architectural balance, and optic illusion within the limits of two seemingly opposite and mute colors. Contrasted with the artist’s signature exuberance and his equally precise monochromatic color palette, the works Shear brought together both evoke characteristics from Kelly’s most iconic while and challenging the viewer to expand their interpretation and appreciation of his larger oeuvre. (more…)
MoMa has announced the acquisition of 324 works on paper by ninety-seven artists from the holdings of Merrill C. Berman, a Rye, New York–based investor who amassed a collection of 20,000 early twentieth-century works on paper. “By representing crucial figures—often women and artists from lesser-known geographies—missing or underrepresented in our collection, this extraordinary body of work is especially welcome as the museum continues its commitment to diversifying modernism’s narratives with its forthcoming expansion in 2019,”says Christophe Cherix, the MoMA’s chief curator of drawings and prints. (more…)
The Nahmad family has purchased Pablo Picasso’s Fillette à la corbeille fleurie (Young Girl with a Flower Basket) (1905), which sold at Christie’s New York last week for $115 million. The confirmation came as part of an announcement that the piece would go on view for a show at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris this fall. (more…)
The Corcoran Gallery of Art will give away the remaining 11,000 works in its collection to the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, the U.S. Supreme Court, and 10 Smithsonian Institution museums. “Having three anchors, where the bulk of the collection legacy of the Corcoran could be accessed, seemed like a great balance,” says Corcoran board chairman Harry F. Hopper III. (more…)
Attempts to move a Bernini sculpture has led to a missing right ring finger of his subject, St. Bibiana. “After this incident we have much to reflect on, as art historians, which you are becoming,” says Professor Giovan Battista Fidanza, who discovered the damage. “We know that moving works of art is always a huge stress for them.” (more…)