President Trump has issued a proposed budget this week which would eliminate funding for the N.E.A. and N.E.H., stoking fears over his administrations attempts to end funding for the arts. “We are greatly saddened to learn of this proposal for elimination, as N.E.H. has made significant contributions to the public good,” says William D. Adams, chairman of the humanities endowment, in a statement. (more…)
The Art Newspaper puts a spotlight on The Mastaba this week, Christo’s over 40-year ongoing project seeking to build a massive structure made from 410,000 multi-colored aluminum barrels in the desert of the U.A.E. “My projects are about the real things,” he says, “The real wind. The real wet. The real dry. The real things. Not photographs. I don’t know how to use a computer. Not flat surface. Not propaganda. But the real things.” (more…)
W Magazine interviews Scott Rothkopf, Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks this week, as the curators finally open their iteration of the Whitney Biennial, a show that has earned almost universal praise for its confrontation of social and political conflicts around the nation. “For those people who expect that this show will be political at the expense of moments of great beauty, they’re going to be surprised,” Rothkopf says. (more…)
Rhizome has announced the artist list for the 2017 edition of its annual Seven on Seven conference, which pairs artists alongside developers and tech innovators to create new projects and programs. This year, the event will feature net art pioneer Olia Lialina, alongside Constant Dullaart, DIS, and more. “Every year with Seven on Seven, there’s this tension between having a grouping that stands together as a coherent whole and making sure each pair is right unto itself,” Rhizome artistic director Michael Connor says. (more…)
Kerry James Marshall is interviewed in The Guardian this week, as the artist’s touring retrospective Mastry opens at MoCA in Los Angeles. “My ambition was never to make a lot of money,” Marshall says. “It wasn’t to travel around the world. I was really just struggling to make the best pictures I could make.” (more…)
Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty has been named a “state work of art” by the Utah House and Senate, “an acknowledgment of the contemporary land art that is so unique in our state,” according to Rep. Becky Edwards, R-North Salt Lake. The work was honored alongside a series of ancient pieces of rock art spread around the Great Salt Lake area. (more…)
The Versailles Palace art exhibitions are shifting focus this summer, following the controversy over Anish Kapoor’s work in 2015. The organization will now embark on a group show approach opening this fall, and curated by Alfred Pacquement, former director at Paris’s Musee d’Art Moderne. (more…)
Theaster Gates is profiled in the New York Times this week, as the artist opens an exhibition of work at the National Gallery of Art in D.C. “It’s a super-interesting moment to be at the National Gallery, where the question of what it means to be an American, and what kind of American are you, has a new kind of resonance,” he says. (more…)
A.I. Friedman, an 80-year-old art supply store on West 18th Street is the next shop in a wave of art supply stores to go under in the current market situation, as increasingly high numbers of sales move to large retailers like Blick or online sellers like Amazon, and demand also seems to dwindle. “The average freshman art student at Parsons and Pratt is buying less than they used to,” says Blick CEO Bob Buchsbaum. (more…)
A group of protestors dumped 88 pounds of animal dung on the steps outside of the Palazzo Grassi this week, protesting Damien Hirst’s use of animals in his works. “It’s an insult to a city of art, of real art,” the group 100% Animalisti wrote in a statement. (more…)
The Musée Rodin in Paris will put a never-before exhibited work by the artist on view as part of an exhibition by Anselm Kiefer at the institution. The work, Absolution, features a series of plaster sculptures with a cloth draped over the top. “I think it will be a surprise to most visitors as few people know about the piece. It hasn’t been published or exhibited before,” says Christine Lancestremère, head of collections at the museum. (more…)
A new Zaha Hadid-designed luxury condo complex in Chelsea has set aside space to accommodate 15 galleries within its structure, with Paul Kasmin Gallery signing up as one of the first to take up space within the structure. “It is a completely new-to-market concept that [will] allow domestic and international galleries to showcase their collections while we take care of all of the mundane details,” says Greg Gushee, the executive vice president of Related property company. (more…)
Sotheby’s has opened a new gallery and office in Dubai, Artforum reports. “As our company evolves to meet the needs of every aspect of the art and luxury market globally, we’ve seen particular traction with our Middle Eastern clients,” says Edward Gibbs, Sotheby’s chairman for the Middle East. “Our Dubai office enhances our ability to serve our fast-growing community of clients across the region and is geared to broadening the scope of what we offer to a whole new audience.” (more…)
Artist Ai Weiwei is set to unveil his newest installation piece in Prague, a massive lifeboat complete with passengers meant to illustrate the actual risks and human toll of modern humanitarian crises. “There’s no refugee crisis, but only human crisis,” Ai said. “In dealing with refugees we’ve lost our very basic values.” (more…)
The New York Times reports on comments by Beatrix Ruf, director of the Stedelijk Museum, noting that the time may have come for museums to focus on more sustainable modes of growth and operation. “We always want as many people to see our exhibitions as possible,” she says, “but when we think specifically in terms of ticket buyers, that might have an impact on the decisions we make about quality.” (more…)
The estate of the photographer Jean-François Bauret has won its case in a French court against Jeff Koons, alleging that the artist plagiarized one of the Bauret’s photos for his sculpture Naked. Koons must pay $46,500 in fees and damages to Bauret’s estate. (more…)
A Turkish painter and journalist has been sentenced to two years in prison for painting the destruction caused by Turkish security forces in the Nusaybin district of the city of Mardin. Zehra DoÄŸan was covering the region for Kurdish news agency JINHA, and the Turkish government used the work to claim her connection to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which it labels a terrorist organization. “I was given two years and ten months only because I painted Turkish flags on destroyed buildings. However, they caused this. I only painted it,” she said. (more…)
Attendants at the Louvre have made good on their threats to strike, protesting poor management of the recently opened Vermeer show and the chaotic crowds that ensued. “It’s been a big mess,” says Françoise Pinson, the secretary general of a museum workers union. “The signage wasn’t good; the planning wasn’t good.” (more…)
Art advisor Lisa Jacobs has been ordered to repay $1 million she made off the sale of a Jean-Michel Basquiat work after a court set her fee at $50,000. “It was a textbook private art deal,” says Carter Reich of Nicholas Goodman & Associates, but nevertheless “puts private dealers and art advisers on notice to be careful.” (more…)
Private sales continued to grow against auction sales for the secondary market, the newly published TEFAF market report has shown. “Buyers and sellers alike are seeking privacy and opacity in their transactions,” says head researcher Rachel Pownall. (more…)
Recent research into cave paintings in southwest France has uncovered approaches to figuration similar to the late 19th Century technique of pointillism. “Imagine the first time a human convinced someone else that a line, or a group of lines is an animal,” says Randall White, an anthropologist at New York University, who led the research. “Today we live in an extremely visual culture, and we digest and interpret, on the run, a million different kinds of illusions that we take to be reality.” (more…)
The Mosse Art Research Initiative, a new project by the Freie Universität Berlin in partnership with German museums, university researchers and the descendants of publisher Rudolf Mosse, has been founded to aid in the research and return of Nazi-looted artworks in Germany and abroad. The group will coordinate among parties to facilitate locating and securing works, continuing efforts by the Mosse family to aid in broader restitution projects. (more…)