The annual Condo gallery exchange project has announced the lineup for its next iteration in London, with Société, Misako & Rosen and 25 other galleries from around the globe coming to the British capital.   (more…)

The heirs of investment banker Kurt Grawi, are demanding the city of Düsseldorf hand over a 1913 painting of foxes by Franz Marc that they claim was taken from Grawi as Nazi loot. “My husband’s family had to sell everything of value in Nazi Germany in order to pay for the discriminatory and confiscatory charges on Jews and for the costs of their emigration,” says Ingeburg Breit, Grawi’s Hamburg-based daughter-in-law. “That is how the painting was lost.” (more…)

Artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto has been hired to redesign the lobby and interior entrance of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C.  “The lobby was always thought of as a light box by [original designer Gordon] Bunshaft,” says Museum director Melissa Chiu. “We gave Sugimoto the opportunity to think of the Hirshhorn not just as a museum space but also as a public space.” (more…)

W Magazine has an interview with designer Miuccia Prada this week about her recent collaboration in Miami with Carsten Höller, and her passion for collecting.  “It’s difficult to summarize a life interest in a few words, but, of course, art has been part of the search and truth in my life,” she says. (more…)

The NYT spotlights a new exhibition project in Antwerp, a disused brewery taken over by dealer and designer Axel Vervoodt. “It’s about creating the best place for art,” he says. “I fell in love with the distillery building. Industrial architecture is real, and it just wants to be useful. It’s very spiritual, intimate and religious, but I don’t know what religion.” (more…)

San Francisco has announced the shortlist for a series of installation commissions on Treasure Island, with Ai Weiwei, Antony Gormley and Hiroshi Sugimoto among those being considered. (more…)

Beth Rudin DeWoody gives the New York Times a tour of her new project, The Bunker Artspace, which has made its home in West Palm Beach. “I’m just a hopeless and perpetual collector and I know I’ve overdone it,” DeWoody says, “but it’s just very hard for me to say no.” (more…)

Damien Hirst is featured in a lengthy profile this week in The Times of London, as he looks back at his exhibition in Venice this year, and its reception. “I only ever did one show where I got slagged off and I agreed with it and felt terrible,” he says. “I think you’ve got to be in a strong position to deal with the barrage of negative press.” (more…)

Michael Krebber is featured in the latest installment of a Bloomberg series spotlighting young artists with strong market potential this week. “I find the group of collectors who buy his work are incredibly devoted,” says adviser Eleanor Cayre. “This group only seems to be getting larger and larger, particularly now as we’re seeing many museums and institutions joining the fray.” (more…)

The Tate Modern is embracing works dealing with forced migration and sexual brutality in its new Tanks space, unveiling a pair of works by Emeka Ogboh and Amar Kanwar. “You also want your art shown properly and Tate can do that,” Ogboh says of his monumental piece. (more…)

Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go (Installation View)

Almine Rech Gallery, one of Paris’s foremost galleries, opened its first New York location more than a year ago on the Upper East Side, bringing with it a unique program that mixes a strong artist roster with a consistently adventurous curatorial project.  For its most recent venture, the gallery has brought together key figures from the canon of 20th century Western art for Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go. Adapting its title from a line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the exhibition investigates ways artists use text as an allegorical element. Serving as a chronological and thematic starting point to the exhibition is Être ou ne pas être, Picasso’s 1912 painting considered as one of the foremost examples of appropriation of text in modern painting. Declaring “to be or not be” in French with gouache on paper, Picasso not only pays homage to one of the most emblematic texts ever written, but he also questions the mimetic essence of a painting. Can a painting of words serve to depict an image? (more…)

Clearing Gallery has opened a new space in New York City, setting up a second location at 43 East 78th Street. “We have private dealers, galleries, and museums around, so it’s a super location,” says gallery owner Olivier Babin. “As much as Bushwick is off the beaten path, this is in the center of everything. I mean, we’re across the street from the Carlyle!” (more…)

A new study finds that few American art collectors sell their works once they have purchased them, the New York Post reports. “Collectors don’t apply the same principles to buying art that they would to a typical investment portfolio of stocks and bonds,” says John Mathews, head of private wealth management and ultra-high net worth at UBS Americas. “It is important, however, to institute management structures to ensure their legacy remains protected, correctly valued and insured.” (more…)

The Getty has survived a week of chaotic wildfires, keeping its collection intact while flames raged around the museum by wetting the surrounding hills with water and closing off all air intake valves. “By putting all these bells and whistles in, we are able to wet down our hillsides, close intake valves and keep smoke and debris out,” says Linda Somerville, assistant director of insurance and risk management for the J. Paul Getty Trust. (more…)

The Frick Collection has acquired its first work since 1991, a 7-feet-tall portrait of Prince Camillo Borghese by François-Pascal-Simon Gérard, Artforum reports. “The last opportunity the Frick had to purchase a major French School painting was nearly thirty years ago, with the acquisition of [Jean-Antoine] Watteau’s Portal of Valenciennes,” director Ian Wardropper says. “Today, it is deeply rewarding to have the rare opportunity to bring to the museum such an important work as this one, a historic portrait we feel would have compelled Henry Clay Frick. While the portrait has been shown in Rome, it has never been seen publicly in America.”

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Dutch aristocrat Baron Willem van Dedem’s donation of four Old Masters paintings will go on view at the UK’s National Gallery this week. “We are honored that the National Gallery acknowledges the quality and rarity of these four paintings that our father and grandfather collected over a period of more than 50 years,” says the baron’s son, Frits van Dedem. “It gives us great pleasure that the gallery has decided to showcase these extraordinary works of art with the public.” (more…)

China has lifted an 11-month ban on South Korean art that was the result of a U.S.-installed anti-missile system in the country. “It is not surprising that exchanges in art are affected by political issues. Diplomacy and politics are always stronger than art and culture. What was surprising was that, this time, the ban and embargo were so strong and visible,” says Eun Yong Kwon, a visual arts planner at the Korean Arts Management Service in Seoul. (more…)

Artist Carsten Höller will build one of his signature slide works at Bonn’s Bundeskunsthalle next year, Art Newspaper reports. Höller, who has built several of these slides at various museums around the globe, has billed this one as “an efficient, environmentally friendly and time-saving means of transport.” (more…)

A group of artists have signed an open letter to Documenta, offering alternatives and critiques of the exhibition’s profit motives and economic structure. “We are compelled to write to propose an improved structure for Documenta that does not prioritize revenue above all other priorities, and defends its future artistic and curatorial autonomy and progressive political mission,” the letter reads. (more…)

Enrico Castellani, via Art Observed

Enrico Castellani, one of Europe’s pioneering avant-garde artists in the year’s following WWII, has passed away at the age of 87 in his home of Celleno, Italy, near Rome.  Castellani was a relentlessly inventive and creative painter, having worked closely with a number of groups and collectives including Cobra group, Group Zero, and the Neo-Concrete artists in Brazil.   (more…)

A group of over 100 artists, writers and critics have signed an open letter condemning Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “We reject Trump’s collusion with such racist manipulation and his disregard for international law,” the letter reads. “We deplore his readiness to crown the Israeli military conquest of East Jerusalem and his indifference to Palestinian rights.” (more…)

Spanish law enforcement has seized a selection of paintings and artifacts  from the Lleida Museum in Catalonia this week, continuing fierce tensions in the region over Catalonia’s attempted independence from Spain. “Aragonese authorities have a great interest in recovering pieces in Catalan museums, but have no desire to recover other objects from Sijena that are, for instance, in the Prado in Madrid,” says Santi Vila, Catalonia’s former cultural minister. “Why? For political reasons.” (more…)

A conflicting report in the Wall Street Journal notes that the buyer of the da Vinci piece last month at Christie’s is actually Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, noting that another prince served as a proxy buyer for the work.  The news comes as the Louvre Abu Dhabi has claimed that it will be showing the piece in its museum. (more…)

A new amendment to the Republican tax bill would strike artist residences from qualifying low-income housing. Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican senior senator from Kansas, changed language in the bill shortly before it was signed this past week. (more…)