The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts has announced its first round of commissions in Los Angeles, among them a miniature golf course running through the city’s Skid Row neighborhood, which examines and underlines how zoning policy directly affects and reshapes cities.  “Zoning is something that is both totally fundamental to the way a city works and the way it feels and who gets supported and who gets booted from the city,” says artist Rosten Woo, one of the organizers of the piece. (more…)

The Art Newspaper notes the increased popularity of heritage French artists in recent years, in part based on attractive market prices, and a previous lack of institutional attention.  “In France, we don’t always do enough to celebrate our own,” Pompidou Director Bernard Blistène says. (more…)

Simon de Pury is the subject of a profile piece on NPR this week, offering some backstory on the auctioneer, and his strategy on building his former company, Phillips de Pury, into a force in the contemporary market.  “I didn’t have the means, the financial means to take on the two houses frontally. So we thought, let’s develop areas in which we become the best,” he says.  “So we thought we go to do contemporary art, emerging contemporary particularly, design and photography. And in these fields, we just become the best.” (more…)

Artists Space is leaving its Greene Street home, following its landlord’s decision to build a penthouse atop the building, a project that would cause considerable delays and interruptions to its exhibition schedule.  The space is looking to move “into a neighborhood where artists currently live and work, which has not been the case for a long time in SoHo,” says Director Stefan Kalmar. (more…)

Wim Delvoye has purchased a series of desert mansions in the Iranian city of Kashan, which he will use as exhibition and studio space.  “I’m not going to live for ever. Giving back means giving something to the art world, supporting the local art scene,” Delvoye says.  (more…)

A number of collectors are moving works out of the Geneva Freeport, after scrutiny and reforms have led to increased security and monitoring of the site’s contents.  The reforms were set off after an Amedeo Modigliani work was seized from the location’s vaults.  “Today, the image is still deteriorating,” David Hiler, president of the Geneva Free Ports, says of the company. “I don’t expect that things will improve quickly: this will take time.” (more…)

MoMA is embarking on an ambitious rehang of its permanent collection galleries for contemporary art, examining dialogues across various generations and disciplines.  “We’re all looking at new models and exploring what that can feel like and look like,” says Rajendra Roy, the museum’s chief film curator. (more…)

Glenn Lowry offers his opinion on the social and political agency of art in an interview with CNN this week, and examines how artists can shape perception of issues and crises, particularly the ongoing refuge crises.  “Their projects not only make us conscious of the scale and impact of the refugee crisis on those who are displaced,” he writes.  “They also remind us that this is not a new problem, and that migration is both a national and transnational issue.” (more…)

SFMoMA has opened its doors after a lengthy renovation and expansion process, totaling over $300 million.  The result is an ambitiously deep exhibition program showcasing the recent donation of the Doris and Donald Fisher collection. (more…)

LACMA has received two major donations totaling $75 million to help fund its new, Peter Zumthor-designed permanent collection building.  The funds came from Wynn resort co-founder Elaine Wynn and A. Jerrold Perenchio, who also donated a selection of paintings valued at $75 million.  “There has been quite a bit of work to get the project to this point,” Director Michael Govan says. “These two gifts together are the largest single pledge to a cultural institution in L.A.” (more…)

Fast Company looks at the ongoing debates over MoMA’s expansion plans, and the multiple adjustments made after strong response to the museum’s proposals.  “I think the reaction in the press was less directed against our curatorial experiment than an expression of the fear that MoMA was no longer going to have its architecture and design collection on show in dense and medium-designated spaces,” Martino Stierli, says the museum’s Philip Johnson chief curator of architecture and design. “This fear is unnecessary.” (more…)

Wolfgang Tillmans has spoken out ardently against the pending vote over the UK’s departure from the European Union, and has made a number of posters available on his site advocating against the “Brexit.” “I feel that we have reached a critical moment that could prove to be a turning point for Europe as we know and enjoy it – one that might result in a cascade of problematic consequences and political fall-out,” he writes. “Brexit could effectively spell the end of the EU. It’s a flawed and problematic institution, but on the whole it stands for a democratic worldview, human rights and favors cooperation over confrontation.” (more…)

Larry Gagosian is the subject of a lengthy profile in the Wall Street Journal this week, which profiles both his impressive empire of galleries worldwide, and his views on the market he wields such influence over. “I don’t think the art market is for everybody. Yeah, of course, we have a global gallery. But we’re like the one-tenth of the one-tenth of the one-tenth. OK?” he says. “Not just who’s buying but who’s really seriously engaged with art. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. I believe in the popularizing of art. But when you get right down to it, it’s a bit of an elitist world. Not just economically elitist—how many people read poetry?” (more…)

Francois Pinault has signed a 50-year lease on the Bourse de Commerce building in Paris, which will serve as the site of his €1.2bn collection. “It is great to have our captains of industry helping to fly our colors. With this and the Fiac art fair, Paris is regaining its place in contemporary art,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo says. (more…)

303 Gallery is returning to 21st Street next week, opening a new space designed by Foster + Partners. “The rare opportunity to build a gallery from the ground up made it possible for us to create a dynamic space for the artists,” says 303 founder Lisa Spellman. (more…)

Olafur Eliasson has given an interview in The Guardian this week about his Little Sun project, which has seen modest successes in its few years on the market.  “I was fortunate to enjoy a lot of exposure in that incredible resource-full part of the art world, where, let’s face it, there’s quite a bit of wealth,” he says.  “So on one side I felt privileged and yet I also wanted to see if I could test my creative muscle and make it useful in other situations. And, frankly speaking, I say that Little Sun is a work of art that works in life.” (more…)

Artist Maria Eichhorn’s current exhibition at the Chisenhale Gallery has given the institution’s employees five weeks of paid vacation, a piece which comments as much on labor rights and working conditions as it does on concepts of freedom and performance.  “My work for Chisenhale Gallery consists in giving time to the staff, the only specification is that there is no specification. Once the staff accept the time, once work is suspended, the artistic work can emerge,” the artist says.   “The employees are not assigned any tasks by me. They should do nothing other than not work for Chisenhale Gallery.”   (more…)

The Miami Herald looks at a peculiar case of tug-of-war for a Pablo Picasso work between a Manhattan collector and Miami dealer.  Socialite Wilma Tisch claims that her Picasso was stolen from her apartment in 2009, but was not noticed as missing until this year, while dealer Kenneth Handel claims he purchased the work in 2013.  “When are you too rich to notice that a Picasso is missing after eight years?”  Hendel says. (more…)

Artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman have founded their own Super PAC, For Freedoms, which will raise funds to promote and present political perspectives on major issues for the 2016 U.S. elections, and to“elevate and expand the dialogue that no longer exists in our sound-bite culture, its ‘gotcha’ tactics, or in its oversimplified conversations,” Gottesman says. (more…)

The Brooklyn Museum has embarked on an ambitious rehang of its galleries, including a changing focus on Egypt as an African empire, and changed selections for the European galleries.  “It’s very rare to have two encyclopedic museums in one city,” Director Anne Pasternak. “We get to be something different.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper notes efforts by both Gagosian and Lisson Gallery to extend their influence to Tehran, lending works to an exhibition in downtown gallery Ab-Anbar.  “The galleries were very cooperative; I think they are testing the waters,” gallery director Salman Matinfar says. (more…)

Cindy Sherman is featured in the New York Times this week, as the artist prepares to open a new show at Metro Pictures next week.  In her new works, Sherman presents herself in the guise of different aging starlets and celebrities.  “I, as an older woman, am struggling with the idea of being an older woman,” she says. (more…)

Cecelia Alemani, the director of the High Line’s Art program in New York, has been tapped to curate the Italian Pavilion at next year’s Biennale.  Alemani has run the High Line program since 2011.   (more…)

The Economist profiles the long-awaited publication of Francis Bacon’s catalog raisonné, which will be released on April 28th, the 24th anniversary of the artist’s death.  The five-volume collection is priced at £1,000 ($1,430), and features over 800 illustrations.   (more…)