Cornelia Parker has an interview in The Guardian this week, discussing her work, vision, and thoughts on changing her citizenship to Germany. “ I’m thinking of applying for German citizenship because I’m half German. I don’t like feeling not part of Europe,” she says. “I don’t want to be a little Englander.” (more…)

Police are searching for a group of 5 people who stole a portfolio of photographs from Fergus McCafferty Gallery in Manhattan.  (more…)

The Art Gallery of Ontario has contracted Selldorf Architects, Diamond Schmitt and Two Row Architect to lead the design phase of AGO Global Contemporary, the museum’s proposed expansion project. “A project with global impact requires an international perspective, grounded in this land and this city,” says Director and CEO Stephan Jost.  (more…)

Japanese multimillionaire Yusaku Maezawa will sell the Basquiat piece he purchased six years ago for the estimated price of $70 million this May at Phillips. “I believe that art collections are something that should always continue to grow and evolve as the owner does,” he said in a statement.

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Russian artists Kirill Savchenkov and Alexandra Sukhareva will withdraw from the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, leaving the national pavilion closed during the exhibition this year. “There is no place for art when civilians are dying under the fire of missiles, when citizens of Ukraine are hiding in shelters, when Russian protesters are getting silenced,” they wrote in a statement. (more…)

Sohrab Mohebbi will take over as director of SculptureCenter, where he previously served as curator. “We look forward to working with Sohrab to achieve a dynamic vision for SculptureCenter that we saw emerging in his curatorial work with our institution. He brings an energy, perspective, and deep understanding of global cultural movements from his extensive collegial relationships with artists and institutions worldwide. Mohebbi is uniquely qualified to lead us into an exciting new phase as we deliver on our mission to lead the conversation on contemporary art,” said SculptureCenter board chair Carol Bove. (more…)

A hotly anticipated program offering New York artists $1000 a month in guaranteed income has opened applications. “There are guaranteed income programs that have been launching across the country, many of them pilots to understand if this work has been working,” says Sarah Calderon, the executive director of the program Creatives Rebuild New York, which is driving the project. (more…)

The Hole has opened a new space in LA, just in time for Frieze, and will stage a “live” first installation this Tuesday, opening and hanging the works in the gallery during the scheduled opening reception of its first show. (more…)

A piece in the New York Times notes that a number of collectors who made millions in crypto and NFTs are now competing for traditional, physical artworks on the secondary market. “The art market is always looking for a new territory to expand into and the NFT world is like the perfect gateway drug,” says Natasha Degen, chairwoman of art market studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “Anyone involved in a market like NFTs that is so volatile and speculative would have an easy time transitioning to the art world where those same dynamics occur.” (more…)

Ai Weiwei has sparked outrage after posting a video likening vaccine mandates to authoritarianism. “For or against the vaccine should be individuals’ autonomous decision, made for themselves and according to their social interaction, so society does not have the right to make vaccine compulsory,” he says. “I had vaccines myself but I can completely identify myself with those who do not want to get vaccinated. If individuals are forced to be vaccinated through social pressure and public opinion, it will be a very dangerous social tendency.” (more…)

Tomás Saraceno gets a NYT profile this week, as he prepares to open a show of work at The Shed. “He’s not afraid of scale,” says close friend Olafur Eliasson told me. “Ten meters, 20 meters, 30 meters — it doesn’t matter. He could scale things up easily. The other thing was how to work together. As architects, there is a division of labor. As soon as you’re not good at something, you find someone who is and have him do it, asking when you don’t know how to solve it. An artist goes down into the hyperlocal. A great architect is able to take a helicopter view.” (more…)

Kimberly Drew has joined Pace Gallery as Associate Director. “I am thrilled by the opportunity to join Pace’s team,” she says. “Over the course of my career, I’ve always been driven by opportunities to work alongside artists and in support of bringing new audiences to the world of contemporary art. Pace is a space that is vast in its offerings and always adapting and innovating. I look forward to the many lessons I will learn during this next chapter.” (more…)

Damien Hirst has been accused of forgery by the English artist and writer Joe Machine, who claims the artist ripped off his own cherry blossom paintings. “I saw Hirst’s cherry blossom paintings and, for a moment, I thought I was looking at my own paintings,” Machine says. “I was doing my cherry blossom paintings years before his.”  (more…)

A piece in Vanity Fair reports on a recently uncovered ring centered around creating forged George Condo drawings.“George is a celebrated, world-famous artist, and it is unfortunate but unsurprising that an artist of his caliber would be the subject of attempts to benefit from his success in an illegitimate way,” says Cristopher Canizares, partner at Hauser & Wirth. (more…)

A study by the U.S. Treasury has ruled that further regulation around money laundering in the art world is not needed. “We have found that while certain aspects of the high-value art market are vulnerable to money laundering, it’s often the case that there are larger underlying issues at play, like the abuse of shell companies or the participation of complicit professionals, so we are tackling those first,” says senior overseeing official Scott Rembrandt. (more…)

Cecelia Alemani speaks with Art News this week, discussing her curatorial vision for the 2022 Venice Biennale. “I love the idea of overcoming the centrality of man and then becoming earth, becoming machine, becoming nature. These are certainly the leitmotifs of the show,” she says.  (more…)

Pace Gallery has merged with Kayne Griffin, and will open a flagship in Los Angeles. “Los Angeles has always been magnet for artists, and its position as a center for world-class contemporary art has been growing stronger,” says Pace president and chief executive Marc Glimcher. “For the past five years Maggie and Bill have been our de facto partners in LA. After some serious conversations, we decided to make that partnership official. Besides running our Los Angeles operation, Maggie and Bill will be an integral part of our global team as we continue to reimagine and reinvent Pace for the future.” (more…)

Artist Theaster Gates gives The Guardian a preview of his Serpentine Gallery Pavilion design, set to open this summer. “Coming out of Covid, I thought how nice it would be to have a place of quietude,” he says. “It’s a place for people to be with their thoughts and rest, a sacred chapel where you can sit and be reflective. It should give you the ability to touch your inside self.” (more…)

A group of artists in Berlin are protesting the use of the public Tempelhof Park as the site of private exhibitions. “The city should decide what happens there, and this really wasn’t a democratic decision,” says photographer Tobias Zielony. “I think the main question is: how did this two-year contract come into being?” (more…)

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is launching an ambitious multivolume catalogue raisonné for its namesake artist, available online and free for all to access. “There is this kind of messiness to Rauschenberg’s career, and we didn’t want to artificially clean it up,” says Julie Blaut, senior director of curatorial affairs at the organization. (more…)

President Biden has reversed the prior rule on public art commissions for public buildings put in place by President Donald Trump, which had stipulated that only “historically significant Americans or events of American historical significance or illustrate the ideals upon which our Nation was founded,” could be considered. (more…)

A piece in the NYT notes the Uffizi Gallery’s new focus on contemporary art. “The Uffizi very rarely in the past had contemporary art exhibitions,” says director Eike Schmidt. “It was seen as intruding on these sacred halls.” (more…)

Frieze Los Angeles has cancelled a public sculpture show in Beverly Hills Park amid shipping delays and labor shortages caused by Covid-19. “We have determined that we do not have sufficient artworks to realize a full-scale public-sculpture installation,” fair spokesperson Belinda Bowring says. (more…)

Christie’s has an impressive Lucian Freud portrait of his former lover Janey Longman for its March sales in London, expected to fetch between £10 million–£15 million ($13.4 million–$20 million). “The dexterous handling of the paint sumptuously brings every detail of the sitter’s body into sharp focus,” Katharine Arnold, head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s Europe, said in a statement. “The gentle framing of her pose within the composition seems to invite the viewer closer still, a witness to this moment of contemplation.” (more…)