The ICA Philadelphia will be the first museum certified by Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), a New York-based organization pushing for sustainable economic relationships between artists and exhibiting institutions. “Our partnership with W.A.G.E. helps to set a new standard in the museum field, one that ensures equitable environments for the artists with whom we work,” director, Amy Sadao, said in a statement.“We’re proud to be the first museum to join this diverse group of arts and culture institutions across the U.S. who are certified, and hope that it will encourage other museums to do the same.” (more…)

Art News has a piece exploring the firing of Helen Molesworth at MOCA in-depth, seeking to understand what the museum’s claims that she had been “undermining the museum.” The piece explores a series of public statements and quotes by the curator that were critical of MOCA and its programming choices.  “Everything that happens in museums is a microcosm of what happens in the world,” she says in one quote.  “I’ve been told that I have lot of ‘swagger’—code: gay, code: black. I have been told: Do I have to look at everything through the lens of identity politics?” (more…)

Joan Jonas gets a feature in The Guardian this week, as the artist opens her retrospective at the Tate Modern. “When I use a myth or a story or a literary text in my work, I often extract particular passages from a larger narrative that resonates with me,” she says. “In performance, the audience hears the text, recorded in advance or recited in real time, in fragments, and sees components – such as movements, props, drawings and video – that may relate only indirectly to the text. I don’t change the language, but rather I change the context, which opens up the text to different possibilities of meaning. I don’t illustrate; I juxtapose.” (more…)

A 1929 Marc Chagall painting of the Eiffel Tower in Paris is being sold by the National Gallery of Canada at Christie’s this May in New York, and will be used to pay for new acquisitions.  “Filled with an air of sensuous, passionate romance, Marc Chagall’s La Tour Eiffel (estimate: $6-9 million) encapsulates the wonderfully poetic style that emerged in his oeuvre during the 1920s and 1930s,” the auction house said in a statement. “It was during this period that he experienced unprecedented period of happiness, stability, comfort and professional success amidst.” (more…)

A rare Vincent Van Gogh painting which formerly hung in the collection of Elizabeth Taylor will go to auction this May at Christie’s in New York, expected to sell for $35 million. “I’ve always felt that I am merely a caretaker for the extraordinary objects I’ve received,” the piece quotes Taylor. “You can’t possess radiance, you can only admire it.”  (more…)

Artist Sheila Hicks gets a profile in the New Yorker this week, as she reflects on her work and gives a tour of her studio. “You see the junk all over my studio?” she says of her cluttered studio and the practice that emerges from it. “It’s like drawing or sculpting with the scissors.” (more…)

Former Art Basel fair head Magnus Renfrew is launching a new art fair, Taipei Dangdai, set to coincide with next year’s Taipei Biennial. “With Hong Kong, I was proud to be involved in organizing a fair that asserts itself as a global fair for the region and will remain so,” Renfrew says. “There is a big gap between Art Basel Hong Kong and other fairs in the region, in terms of quality and how they are progressing. It’s necessary to have other fairs that have real quality and don’t necessarily aspire to be the global fair for the region.”  (more…)

Artist Anthea Hamilton is interviewed in The Guardian this week, as the artist prepares a work for the Tate Britain’s Duveen Commission. “Well, I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about the work yet, I’d have to check,” she says drily. “But no, it’s not intimidating. The architecture is obviously very powerful but if you take that as a given, it’s not an issue.” (more…)

Paul Allen will be selling a $35 million Willem de Kooning painting at Art Basel Hong Kong through Lévy Gorvy, Bloomberg reports. “This sale is part of normal course of business for a collector like Paul,” said Alexa Rudin, a spokeswoman at Allen’s Vulcan Inc. (more…)

Tracey Emin has a new installation project in Sydney, installing small works around a section of the city. “I’m being gentle,” she says. “I’m not being domineering, I’m not being macho. I’m not using ego. I’m literally integrating within what’s already here. I really do think that there are a lot of public art projects that are just so ego-based, that take over everything.” (more…)

Amy Sherald, the portrait artist behind the acclaimed Michelle Obama official portrait, is now represented by Hauser & Wirth. “I have never seen portraits painted like this,” Marc Payot, a partner and vice president of Hauser & Wirth, says. “I believe the singularity of Amy’s approach is in itself a major achievement.” (more…)

The Cooper Union will return to free-tuition scholarships for all students over the course of the next ten years, Art News reports. “The return to full-tuition scholarships must be aligned with a sufficient endowment and reserve to weather the financial challenges of ever-rising costs, volatile markets, and economic uncertainty. This plan is designed to accomplish that,” the school said in its announcement of a schedule to return to its storied tuition program. (more…)

The Broad Museum in Los Angeles has acquired a new Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirror Room, its second from the Japanese artist. The museum announced the acquisition, as well as purchases of a Mark Bradford mural and a series of pieces by Sherrie Levine.  (more…)

Ai Weiwei is in the Art Newspaper this week, as the artist opens a massive sculpture depicting refugees in a long canoe at the Sydney Biennial.  The show continues his advocacy and interest in the current humanitarian crises regarding immigration. (more…)

The Giacometti Institute will open in Paris this June, The Guardian reports, bringing a number of rarely seen works by the artist to exhibition, alongside a replica of his studio. “He was not interested at all in money, in glory. But I think he would have liked to see his work acknowledged,” says Catherine Grenier, the institute’s director. “He would find it very amusing. In his time the dominant strand was abstraction and [his art] was considered outside the trend. Nowadays he’s one of the most respected and the most important … of all his generation. He would be happy with this.”  (more…)

The Condo gallery exchange project has announced its first edition in Sao Paolo, featuring 8 galleries including Carlos/Ishikawa and Simon Preston.  The event will open April 7th in the Brazilian city.

Anna Harding, the chief executive of Space studios in London, has called for London to defend against the city’s skyrocketing rents, less it lose its position of prominence as a hub for the art world.  “Lack of affordable living and working space for low-waged people in London is forcing many to reconsider their future in the capital,” she says. “Increasing rents underpin the story of artists living and working in London, and the challenges of affording a studio and making work have worsened considerably.” (more…)

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon has removed a video by Adel Abdessemed depicting a string of chickens set on fire, after vocal outrage by activists. The response is the second time in a year that protests have resulted in the removal of work from a major museum, after the Guggenheim pulled works last year from a show on Contemporary Chinese Art.  (more…)

Vogue profiles artist Camille Henrot’s recent ventures into fashion with a series of clothes and scarves she designed for the Swiss Institute booth at Independent NY last week.  “What was so special and fascinating about working on scarves was that I was thinking of the drawings as seen from multiple dimensions on the body—wrapping around a person but also folding onto itself—and how the wearer would make the drawing evolve,” she says. (more…)

Julian Schnabel is interviewed in the New York Times this week, as he prepares a show at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, and reflects on his shared view of painting and surfing. “It’s like paddling out in big surf. There’s a wall there, and you are a certain size and the sea is a certain size and these paintings are a certain size,” he says. “It happens so quickly you just want to relive that and be in that sensation again. Painting for me is like that. The joy of just doing it and being lost in the experience of that is compelling to me.” (more…)

A group of Münster residents are working to raise €1.2 million to buy artist Nicole Eisenman’s Sketch for a Fountain, which was installed this summer for the city’s Sculpture Projects Münster. “The work is a very political statement and we want to make a stand for tolerance and respect,” artist Sylvia Silbernagel says of the work. “We are trying to win over local businesses as ambassadors.” (more…)

Guards at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. are complaining of a hostile work environment, including confrontational management and chronic understaffing. “They treat us like we’re bad people,” says one guard, Albertus-Hugo Van den Bogaard, a 65-year-old Army veteran. “People are intimidated. They will not make much noise.”  (more…)

MOCA’s Philippe Vergne has fired his chief curator Helen Molesworth, an almost unprecedented move among large museums the signals a major shake-up at the institution that has many wondering about internal turbulence at the organization. “I think you have made a terrible mistake” artist Catherine Opie reportedly told Vergne upon hearing of the decision. (more…)

Damien Hirst is profiled in the New York Times this week, as the artist looks back on his show in Venice. “I won’t be rushing to do something like that again,” he says. (more…)