An agent working for the Qatari royal family has been granted the right to question Pablo Picasso’s daughter and her son regarding the sale of the contested Picasso work Bust of a Woman.  Pelham Europe Ltd, working on behalf of the family, has been pushing for the right to interview Maya Widmaier Picasso about the work. (more…)

Ai Weiwei will open his first show in Greece this year, centering his work around the recent refugee crises in Syria and abroad.  “He’s up at 5am,” says Cycladic museum advisor Aphrodite Gonou of Ai’s visits to refugee camps in Lesbos. “It has completely changed his life.” (more…)

The Venice Biennale of Architecture will partner with the V & A Museum this year for an exhibition that will examine how historical sites may be preserved and protected during turbulent political crises, and how these sites may be made more flexible through the use of duplicates and copies to protect the original objects. (more…)

Wikimedia Sweden has lost a court case over its rights to exhibit images of public sculpture against the Visual Copyright Society in Sweden, saying that digitally shown images of public art and sculpture should be protected by copyright law.  “Such a database can be assumed to have a commercial value that is not insignificant,” the court said in a statement.  “The court finds that the artists are entitled to that value.” (more…)

The Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn and the Kunstmuseum Bern have announced joint plans to show a selection of works from the Cornelius Gurlitt trove, The Guardian reports.  The show will take on a “historically and scientifically contextualized framework.” (more…)

The Public Art Fund has announced its summer exhibition in front of New York’s City Hall, a selection of works based around Walter Benjamin’s essay On language as Such and on the Language of Man.  The show will feature the first public art piece by Tino Seghal. (more…)

The Whitney Museum is naming its new Meatpacking District building after collector and philanthropist Leonard Lauder, following a dinner last night at the museum where Lauder was also awarded with the inaugural Whitney Collection Award.  “Leonard Lauder is one of the greatest benefactors in the Whitney’s history,” says Director Adam D. Weinberg. “I cannot express how grateful we are to Leonard for his exceptional generosity, leadership, and devotion.” (more…)

Artist and performance poet Bobby Miller has filed a lawsuit against the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and a group of galleries for a total of $65 million, alleging that photos he took of the artist have been used without his permission or compensation for decades. (more…)

Following a decision by the Austrian government not to offer operation cost funding to the private Essl Museum, the institution has announced its decision to close July 1st.  “Sadly, this won’t be possible any longer,“ says collector Karlheinz Essl. (more…)

An Edvard Munch work stolen from an Oslo Gallery in 2009 has been recovered by Norwegian police, the Guardian reports.  Two men were arrested on suspicion of “handling stolen goods,” but not in connection with the actual theft. (more…)

The Centre Pompidou is planning pop-up exhibition sites in South Korea, Japan and China in the coming year, the Art Newspaper reports.  “Pompidou Centre is now a global trademark. The museum is ready to export all its activities: not only its works of art and temporary exhibitions, but also cinema programs, concerts, dance and other performances, activities for teenagers and workshops for children, and so on,” an unnamed source told the publication.  “No one in the world has such a complete package to offer.” (more…)

Klaus Biesenbach has been awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit by the German government, given in recognition of his “achievements that served the rebuilding of the country in the fields of political, socio-economic and intellectual activity.” (more…)

The New York Times traces the difficulties in selling a Jan Steen painting from 1660, once valued at $400,000, but now virtually unsellable based on its prior ownership by Dutch Nazi collaborator and war profiteer, Dirk Menten.  The article focuses in particular on the various issues that challenge both those seeking the return of paintings, and those seeking to sell works that passed through Nazi hands.  “Painting titles and attributions changed over time, so it can be hard to compare descriptions of what was stolen with pieces found years later,” writes Even Kahn, whose family owns the painting, and who has worked for years to nail down its provenance before the war.  “Allied soldiers and experts who sifted through loot after the war made mistakes or labeled canvases with vague terms like “nude portrait” and “landscape.” And every day, fewer survivors remain who remember their families’ collections. Legitimate heirs become harder to track down.” (more…)

Marina Abramovic is partnering with a group of filmmakers, including Alejandro González Iñárritu and Roman Polanski, to realize a series of short films focused around the death of opera singer Maria Callas.  The work is premised on the idea that Callas died of a broken heart, with Abramovic recreating the deaths of famous characters the singer played.  “It’s a very private subject, a woman dying for love,” Abramovic said. (more…)

A group of Columbia students are protesting the installation of a Henry Moore sculpture on the campus grounds, alleging that the work does not gel with the institution’s neoclassical architecture.  “I just don’t think this is the right place for it,” says one student. “It interrupts the architectural harmony.” (more…)

Oliver Barker and Mario Tavella have been named the new co-chairs of Sotheby’s Europe, following a string of high-profile departures in the past weeks for the auction house.   (more…)

The Valsuani foundry, known for rolling out bronze editions of Edgar Degas sculptures despite the artist’s well-documented distaste for the metal, has been ordered closed by a French court.  “Although the Valsuani foundry is unfortunately closing,” says representing lawyer Eric Buikema, “my client, the Degas Sculpture Project, remains viable and active in placing the Degas bronzes with appropriate collectors and in organizing museum exhibitions.” (more…)

The massive leak of papers uncovering the role of various parties in the creation and use of Panamanian shell companies this week prominently features collector Dmitriy Rybolovlev, particularly his bitter divorce from his wife, and his alleged use of Panamanian companies to withhold artworks and other property from her during court proceedings.  “The closer in proximity to a divorce when these people take these kinds of steps, the more likely these assets will eventually be set aside for marital fraud,” says Sanford K. Ain, a Washington D.C.-based divorce attorney. (more…)

Manifesta 11 has unveiled further details about the upcoming exhibition this summer in Zurich, including an expanded artist list, and a series of collaborations between artists and other laborers, including a project between Maurizio Cattelan and a Paralympic athlete, or French author Michelle Houllebecq, who will treat visitors in to a health evaluation in conjunction with a trained physician. (more…)

A Mark Rothko will hit the auction block at Christie’s this May in New York, with an estimated sales price set at upwards of $40 million.  The work is from one of the artist’s first exhibitions in Europe at Whitechapel Gallery.  “It was a seminal exhibition positioning Rothko as a leading figure of the Abstract Expressionist movement,” said Brett Gorvy, international head of Christie’s contemporary art. “The effect of these exhibitions in Europe was very important to his career.” (more…)

Ragnar Kjartansson is profiled in The New Yorker this week, as he reflects on his career, and on the evolution of his work.  “I don’t believe in the truth of art,” he says. “As my mother says, ‘Let’s not destroy a good story with the truth.’” (more…)

During one of the worst recessions in U.S. history, the nation’s museums spent almost $5 billion in expansions and new building projects, The Art Newspaper reports, noting that these investments may cause future financial problems for institutions spending capital on buildings that may be unsustainable.  “There is a tipping point where, instead of the building being a resource, it becomes something that requires resources,” says Mary Ceruti, the director of New York’s SculptureCenter. (more…)

Erwin Wurm and Brigette Kowanz will represent Austria at the 2017 Venice Biennale.  Wurm previously was tapped for the 2011 Austrian Pavilion, where he installed Narrow House, a quite narrow cottage within the space.   (more…)

Robert Mapplethorpe is the subject of a profile in the NYT this week, as Holland Carter charts the artist’s doubleheader retrospective at both the J. Paul Getty Museum and LACMA.  “Mapplethorpe had his own ideas of what makes art valuable. One was its role as witness,” he writes.  “‘Art is an accurate statement of the time in which it is made,’ [Mapplethorpe] said. And the Los Angeles survey is most persuasive when seen in that light…as a record of a radical personal and cultural history that retains some hint of what once made it provocative.” (more…)