The New Museum has appointed Lauren Cornell, who recently co-curated the 2015 Triennial alongside artist Ryan Trecartin, as Curator and Associate Director, Technology Initiatives.  “Through her work at the New Museum and at Rhizome first, Lauren Cornell has been tracking the influence of technology on art and culture at large,” says Massimiliano Gioni, the Museum’s Artistic Director.  “In her new position, she will help the Museum take an even more active role in engaging with the present and the future.”  (more…)

A maintenance worker in Madison, CT has accidentally destroyed a bench created by New York City-based sculptor Jim Osman, valued at $10,000.  The work, which Art Observed previously stumbled upon during Bushwick Open Studios last year, was on view for the town’s Sculpture Mile contemporary art show, was taken apart and disposed of after the maintenance worker assumed it had been “left by skateboarders.”  “It’s kind of a big letdown,” Osman says. (more…)

The once rigid boundaries between commercial galleries and museum exhibitors are quickly diminishing today, The New York Times notes, as top galleries turn towards high profile museum curators to create historically and culturally resonant shows.  “I think galleries do it for prestige,” says John Elderfield, a former MoMA curator who has done independent work for Gagosian.  “It burnishes their image.  Of course, when one gallery does it, another one wants to do it.” (more…)

As London auction houses prepare for this week’s Impressionist and Modern sales, Bloomberg recaps the battles between giants Christie’s and Sotheby’s, and the aggressive stance on auction guarantees that have helped to define the massive prices achieved in recent sales.  “Our profit margin is good,” says Christie’s recently appointed CEO Patricia Barbizet. “Guarantees are risk management and offer an assurance to the seller.” (more…)

Gavin Brown’s Enterprise is finally leaving its Greenwich Village headquarters, and moving uptown to a former brewery on 126th Street in Harlem.  “In other cities people travel to see art,” Brown says.  “I’m not so far from the Upper East Side.” (more…)

Olafur Eliasson is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing some of his large-scale and ongoing projects, including his work on the ballet adaptation of the Jonathan Safran Foer work Tree of Codes in Manchester.  “On stage will be a mirror, and it will reflect the room. It’s a stretch to say that it puts the audience on the stage,” says Eliasson.  “However, they will be conscious of being visible there. But anyway, let’s see how it works.” (more…)

Takashi Murakami is the subject of the most recent “Lunch with the FT” Interview this week, joining a writer from the newspaper for lunch at the Kaikai Kiki Co. studios outside Tokyo, and discussing his role in a generation of artists investigating capitalism and its intertwined relationship with fine art, including his relationship to otaku subcultures.  “People say, ‘Oh, Takashi steals from our culture.’ But wait a minute. Our culture means my culture, too, right?” (more…)

Former MIT Lecturer and filmmaker Joseph Gibbons is the subject of a Washington Post profile this week, as the performer and artist awaits sentencing for a bank robbery he committed on New Year’s Eve last year.  “You never can tell if the character he is playing is actually him or a work of fiction,” says Vincent Grenier, a filmmaker and professor at Binghamton University. “For him, it’s been a fertile arena to play in the boundary between reality and fantasy.” (more…)

Sotheby’s is looking to break the record for the most expensive art auction in London this week, with an Impressionist and modern sale expected to top £203 million.  “The forthcoming sale offers a rich range of highly desirable works, including those that rank among the finest by Manet, Degas, Klimt, Malevich, Gauguin and Miro,” says Helena Newman, global go-chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art department. (more…)

Anish Kapoor’s Dirty Corner, the central installation at the artist’s recently opening Versailles Palace commission, has been vandalized with spray paint.  The work has already commanded harsh criticism for its subject matter and relationship to French history.  “It was lightly sprayed with paint,” says the estate management.  “The work is being cleaned.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper profiles the work of Zlot Buell, the art consulting firm that has earned a reputation for discretely advising tech entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley wealth in the contemporary art market, and notes the commonly assumed myth that tech collectors are interested in digital art.  “They look at a screen all day long; they don’t need to look at another,” Ms Zlot says. (more…)

The Art Newspaper notes the impact that the soaring price of the Swiss Franc has had on the market at Art Basel this year, pushing Switzerland’s high prices even higher, with prices about 15% higher than last year as a result.  “Even the bratwurst is unaffordable,” jokes Andreas Gegner of Sprüth Magers. (more…)

A rare Bernini sculpture that many historians had thought lost or destroyed has been acquired by the Getty Museum.  The marble bust of Pope Paul V will “become one of a handful of the most important sculptures in the Getty’s collection, no question,” says Director Timothy Potts. (more…)

The Art Newspaper sits down with Guggenheim Director Richard Armstrong to discuss a range of issues with the Guggenheim’s ongoing expansion plans in Finland and Abu Dhabi, including pressures to improve labor conditions through the sub-contractors working on the project.  “These are all questions that come under sovereignty; I feel unequipped to answer them,” Armstrong says.  “I can state our position: we are in constant dialogue with TDIC and other intergovernmental agencies. It really is top of my mind.” (more…)

Former banker Jonathan Weal is facing prison time after allegedly withholding information on his art collection during bankruptcy proceedings, a collection that included a work recently authenticated as a J.M.W. Turner seascape.  “Mr Weal was required by law to declare all property that he owns but failed to do so,” says prosecutor Klentiana Mahmutaj. (more…)

As the Broad Foundation prepares to open its Los Angeles Museum, its founders are on a major buying spree, buying about one work per week to bulk up its collection.  The museum already holds the world’s largest collection of works by Cindy Sherman, and is noted as having more Roy Lichtenstein works than anyone else outside the artist’s own foundation.   (more…)

Artist Marlene Dumas has been commissioned to paint an altarpiece for St Anne’s Church in Freiberger Platz, Dresden, replacing the current work, which was damaged in WWII.  “They are giving me a lot of freedom. I can choose the form. The theme is also open,” Dumas says.  “The only ‘restriction’ is that [my painting] should not be too depressing. It should offer some hope.” (more…)

The Smithsonian has acquired the complete records of New York Gallery OK Harris, the renowned downtown dealers who helped launch the careers of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Chamberlain, among others.  The collection of paperwork includes exhibition files, correspondence, and other documents from the career of Ivan and Marilynn Gelfmann Karp, the gallery owners. (more…)

Jake and Dinos Chapman are profiled in The Guardian this week, discussing their sprawling Hell installation, and the countless horrors occurring across its expanse of miniature figures, and the first draft of the work’s destruction in a massive warehouse fire.  “We heard the Momart warehouse was on fire and drove up to have a giggle because we thought it was full of other YBA art. Then we got a call saying Hell was in there,” Jake Chapman says.  “We just laughed: two years to make, two minutes to burn. A smart-assed journo phoned up and said: ‘Is it true that Hell is on fire?’ It was fantastic – like a work of art still in the process of being made, even as it burnt.” (more…)

This week, The Guardian looks at the fates of past years’ Serpentine Pavilion commissions, and their destinations after the work is taken down.  With most pavilions sold before they are installed, the article offers a look at the shifts in use and context as works appear in the gardens of Indian steel magnates, or used as a beachside restaurant in the Côte d’Azur in France. (more…)

Artist Bernar Venet’s Venet Foundation and Museum in Le Muy, France, is the subject of a New York Times profile this week, documenting the artist’s impressive collection of major American artists, including Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt, which the artist often secured through barters or purchases on “friend rates.”  “Our works had no commercial value,” Mr. Venet says of the works he often traded his own pieces for. “We produced more than we sold.” (more…)

Bloomberg looks at the popularity of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms among collectors, and its prominence in a number of major museum collections, including the recently opened Garage Center in Moscow.  “Russians loved Kusama,” says collector Inga Rubenstein. “The work is easy to understand because it’s so beautiful.” (more…)

Dasha Zhukova’s long-awaited Garage Center for Contemporary Art has opened in Moscow’s Gorky Park, designed by architect Rem Koolhaas from a repurposed Soviet-era dining canteen.  “We are very happy to work on turning the almost-ruin of vremena goda into the new house for garage,’ says Koolhaas. “We were able, with our client and her team, to explore the qualities of generosity, dimension, openness, and transparency of the soviet wreckage and find new uses and interpretations for them.” (more…)

Climate change activists have concluded a 25-hour long protest against the Tate Modern’s sponsorship by British Petroleum, writing messages and critics on the Turbine Hall floor after facing down a potential use of police force that was not acted upon.  “It’s a back-down,” says Liberate Tate member and writer Mel Evans. “Maybe it’s a sign of how much the groundswell of public opinion has shifted that the Tate doesn’t feel like they can shut down this discussion.”

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