The New York Times reports that Ernst Neizvestny, the sculptor who famously debated Nikita Kruschev on aesthetics at a Moscow exhibition, has passed away at the age of 91.  Neizvestny confronted the former Soviet head over an exhibition in 1962, and discussed the arts for some time, arguing in favor of his own modes of abstraction and technique, ultimately impressing Kruschev.  “You’re an interesting man — I enjoy people like you — but inside you there are an angel and a devil,” Kruschev reportedly told him.  “If the devil wins, we’ll crush you. If the angel wins, we’ll do all we can to help you.” (more…)

Pitchfork speaks with Tom Sachs this week, as the artist breaks down his work with Frank Ocean on the recently 40-minute music video piece Endless, in which Ocean constructs a massive staircase piece by piece.  “You see each stair being stacked on top of each other onto a central steel column that’s welded and bolted to the ground,” he says.  “So there’s a transparency to the building that is the same as the transparency in the music.” (more…)

The SF Chronicle has a piece this week on the conditions for the donation of the Fisher Collection to SFMoMA, noting that the donation of the collection ultimately requires upwards of 60% of the museum’s space to show works from that collection, limiting the space provided for the museum to show other works, or even place works in conversation with the Fisher collection.  . “What Don was offering was, on the one hand, extremely generous … but Don wanted something that I felt we couldn’t offer him … a kind of curatorial control over what got shown,”Director Neal Benezra says.  “I felt that, as generous as this offer was, our integrity would be at risk,” Benezra said, “because the museum really needs to control, from a curatorial point of view, if nothing else, how art is presented in our building.” (more…)

The Antarctic Biennale has announced an open call for artists, offering a chance for any interested artists aged 18-35 to apply for an opportunity to show on “the last pure continent on the planet.”  “It’s as if Jules Verne, Charles Darwin, and Leonardo da Vinci have banded together and invited their best and brightest colleagues to examine what will be created from the discoveries that await us,” says editor and curator Matthew Drutt. (more…)

The Art Newspaper has more information on the lawsuit between dealer Fabrizio Moretti and David Zwirner, noting that the dispute is over a recent Jeff Koons Gazing Ball work, which was repeatedly sent to different buyers, harming its value in the process.  “It’s a shocking level of indifference to customers that is frankly surprising for a dealer who has a buyer who paid $2m,” Moretti’s laywer John Cahill says. (more…)

The NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale has received a gift of over 100 contemporary works from David Horvitz, chairman of the museum’s board of governors, and his wife, artist Francie Bishop Good.  The gift includes pieces by Cindy Sherman, Ana Mendieta and Cecily Brown, among others. (more…)

A number of high-profile curators, among them former Musée National d’Art Moderne head Jean-Hubert Martin, are supporting a new art collection platform offering works for under $10,000.  The site, named Collectionair, organizes curated online exhibitions of work offered for sale.  “Our online exhibitions [which run for 40 to 60 days] are organized by curators from around the world, that come highly recommended by our advisory committee, and select 20 to 30 works,” says founders Olivier Varenne and Valerie Konde. (more…)

An article in The Creators Project charts the difficulties in contemporary conservation for works made from perishable materials, including pieces which are now too fragile to be shown.  “They are not exhibited and are archived in museum graveyards solely for research purposes,” says conservator Glenn Wharton. (more…)

The Brooklyn Museum is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, embarking on a year-long series of projects and exhibitions including focuses on work by Marilyn Minter and Georgia O’Keefe, among others.  “The project recognizes feminism as a driving force for progressive change and takes the transformative contributions of feminist art during the last half-century as its starting point,” the museum said in a statement.  “[It] then reimagines the next steps, expanding feminist thinking from its roots in the struggle for gender parity to embrace broader social-justice issues of tolerance, inclusion, and diversity.” (more…)

The podcast 99% Invisible profiles the quiet impact of photographer Lucia Moholy, wife of László Moholy-Nagy, on the history and reputation of the Bauhaus, as her documentation photos of its grounds and works became a central element of the school’s preservation and reputation.  The piece goes on to trace Moholy’s conflict with Walter Gropius over the ownership of the original prints. (more…)

The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation has launched an interactive database of public artworks and sculptures spread across the five boroughs, allowing interested and intrepid users to search for works and find their locations throughout the greater New York City area. (more…)

An analysis by the Art Market Monitor finds that Steven Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management has cut its stock in Sotheby’s by two thirds, and speculates whether the Point72 sold these holdings to Taikang during its major buy of stock earlier this summer.  Point72 purchased these shares during the auction house’s price collapse in December and January, and would have made a 50% increase on their price with the sale. (more…)

The Washington Post looks back at the break-up of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and its College of Art & Design two years after its separation went underway, reflecting on the lasting impacts and intense feelings it still brings to the surface.  “The agreement is gravely flawed. There’s no form of public accountability,” says former Corcoran curator Linda Crocker Simmons. “The city lost a major entity. It was a living organism that worked. It was not perfect, but it had its place.” (more…)

Harvard University is launching a database to organize and exhibit over 32,000 works of art and items from the Bauhaus.  “We wanted to create a central place to organize the Harvard Art Museums’ Bauhaus materials to help students, scholars, and the public find their way through the collections and discover new artists and objects,” said Robert Wiesenberger, a curatorial fellow at the Busch-Reisinger Museum. (more…)

The New York Times speaks with Nan Goldin and a number of fellow artists on the impact of her landmark work, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and analyzes its relevance in an age of near-constant image sharing.  “I think she captures the human condition,” Klaus Biesenbach says.  “Show me the social media stream of anybody running back and forth today on the streets who really captures the human condition.” (more…)

Construction on the Luma Arles cultural campus in the south of France, a project headed by pharmaceutical heiress and collector Maja Hoffmann, is underway, as its central Frank Gehry-designed building rises above the grounds.  “We are creating a place where artists, thinkers, scientists—as well as doers and actors of the economic world—can gather and work together on new scripts for the world,” Hoffman says. (more…)

Nick Cave is profiled in the New York Times this week, as he prepares to open a new show at MassMOCA, and reflects on the culture of violence against African Americans.  “I’m a black male. The moment I step outside of the privacy of my space, I am viewed differently,” he says. (more…)

The New York Times published a peculiar article this week on the dispute between dealer Mary Boone and actor/collector Alec Baldwin, who claims the dealer sold him a copied version of a Ross Bleckner work rather than the original piece he had his eyes on.  “By the time Alec Baldwin paid for the painting and it was delivered to him, he should not have misunderstood what he purchased,” Boone’s lawyer, Ted Poretz said. (more…)

The NYT writes on the new large-scale projects by JR installed across Rio, and profiles the artist’s recent work there in conjunction with his ongoing engagement with the city.  “In Brazil, everything’s possible — it’s really hard, but it’s possible,” he says. (more…)

Plans to demolish a small warehouse complex in London’s Hackney Wick that remains home to over 100 artists studios and businesses, among them the studios of the Chapman Brothers, Gavin Turk and Conrad Shawcross, have raised considerable protest and resistance.  Known as Vittoria Wharf, the space was long considered to have one of the highest percentages of artists per square foot in Europe, and was seen as a “safe haven where people can enjoy the relatively small privilege of being able to get on with their work and collaborate with their neighbors without the fear of having to be moved on,” the Art Newspaper quotes an anonymous resident. “That is until now.”  (more…)

Hypebeast has an a piece on Tom Sachs this week, summarizing the finer points of the artist’s practice and output in the past years.  Featured works include the artist’s infamous 10 Bullets studio orientation video and his recent Tea Ceremony exhibition at the Noguchi Museum.   (more…)

CNBC takes its turn at an analysis of the struggling market this week, noting the failure in confidence of many top investors and collectors to offer their top works at sale, although Fine Art Group Founder Philip Hoffman sees a change in the future.  “There is a huge amount of cash sitting in deposit accounts and there is a lot of interest in finding the right work of art.” (more…)

Spencer Finch will install a miniature redwood forest at MetroTech Commons in Brooklyn, courtesy of the Public Art Fund.  “Through both a scientific approach to gathering data—including precise measurements and record keeping—and a poetic sensibility, Finch’s works often inhabit the area between objective investigations of science and the subjectivity of lived experience,” says associate curator Emma Enderby. (more…)

The New York Times has a piece on Sotheby’s recent $89 million profit for the second quarter of 2016, analyzing its approach to the Taubman estate sale and other recent market trends.  “Guarantees on masterworks have generally proven to be attritional to earnings, but in the past they did buy market share,” says adviser Neal Meltzer. “Winning the sale of the Taubman collection was vital to maintaining respect for the Sotheby’s brand.” (more…)