Andrea Fraser gets the profile treatment in the NYT this week, as she looks at an art world that has adopted and implemented activist practices that seem to echo her pioneering work during the 1980s.  “I’m on three boards and two councils, so it feels like I’ve gone to seed or something,” she says. “But it’s sort of the part of the evolution of what I do and institutional critique — realizing that you also have to step up.”   (more…)

Starting in 2020, New York non-profit Artadia will significantly expand its grant-making programs, providing funds to artists based in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Houston. “Funds are fantastic, but it’s really about validation—being told that your work matters,” Carolyn Ramo, Artadia’s executive director says. “Our goal is to celebrate these artists in the cities they live and work and also create a national conversation around their practice.” (more…)

In an unexpected twist, this year’s Turner Prize will go to all four artists nominated, after the group asked to be judged as a collective.  The gesture, a show of solidarity amidst a fractious election season, was praised by many.  “In coming together and presenting themselves as a group, this year’s nominated artists certainly gave the jury a lot to think about,” says Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain. “But it is very much in the spirit of these artists’ work to challenge convention, to resist polarized world views, and to champion other voices. The jury all felt that this made the collective a worthy winner of the Turner Prize.”  (more…)

A Paul Gauguin work made during his time in Tahiti has sold for €9.5 million (about $10.5 million) at a Paris auction.  The work had previously been on loan to the Met, and was sold to “an international collector.” (more…)

David Hammons gets a profile in the New Yorker this week, as the artist prepares his monumental installation outside the Whitney.  “I had met David, but I didn’t really know him,” says president Adam. “He was looking at the river, so I went over and said, ‘You know, Gordon Matta-Clark did his famous pier cut right down there.’ David didn’t say anything, but a few days later we got a small drawing by him in the mail, with no explanation, no message of any kind.”  (more…)

Protests turned violent outside the Hong Kong Museum of Art just one day after the museum reopened, with police firing tear gas onto crowds nearby.  “It was all peaceful and we walked towards Hung Hom. Then the police blocked the road and we had to head back here, and now we just got tear-gassed for no reason,” said one protester. (more…)

Byron Kim has won the Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize, an award given annually to mid-career American painters. “It was really surprising,” the artist says.  (more…)

A piece in The Guardian this week notes museum-goers increasing dissatisfaction with the crowds of visitors at museums, as many start to give up on trying to see shows.  One visitor describes a visit to London’s National Gallery as “like being in a nightclub. You couldn’t even see the pictures – you were being pushed around by the crowd. It was scary.” (more…)

Artist Michael Rakowitz has spoken out against the relationship between MoMA and “toxic philanthropy,” requesting that his work in a MoMA PS1 be paused.  “It is not the artists who need to depart,” reads a protest statement, “it is museums’ dysfunctional and abusive relationship to toxic philanthropy that should go away.” (more…)

Artist Anne Hardy has erected the Christmas decorations at the Tate Britain this year, rendering an apocalyptic landscape outside the museum. “It is a challenging site but the gift of it is that it [Tate Britain] is an amazing object,” she says. “I work with found materials a lot in my work and I thought that was the way to approach this – as a found object. What could it become that it isn’t now?” (more…)

Sotheby’s has named a recently rediscovered Rubens work as a star in its Old Masters sale next month. “It’s a sweet spot of Rubens’s career,” says Otto Naumann, senior vice president of Old Masters at the auction house. “He’s determined to impress. It’s got raw energy to it. He’s working with a very loaded brush to make everything very three-dimensional.” (more…)

The Tate Modern’s Frances Morris gives an interview with The Gaurdian this week, as she discusses her Sunday routine, and her occasional jaunts to the museum when not working. “I like going as a punter, she says, “but when you know all the people working it’s impossible to be invisible. Sundays are perfect for people-watching in the exhibitions. I love to see how people interact with our galleries. I don’t have time to during the week.” (more…)

Art News taps Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, the Message is Death as the most important work of the decade. “I began to learn that what I was manipulating was not the images but the space the juxtaposition of the images was opening up, or disrupting,” Jafa says of his work. “Think about a river: the river ain’t the bank and it ain’t even really the water.”  (more…)

The Rubell family open their new exhibition space in Allapattah this week, and talk to the Miami Herald about the new space’s vision. “The word ‘museum’ indicates a public space,” says Mera Rubell. “We wanted everyone to understand it’s a public space, and people know exactly what a museum is. If you walk like a duck and talk like a duck, maybe you are a duck, right? (more…)

A piece in SCMP charts the development of the K11 Musea, a massive cultural-retail destination opening in Hong Kong. “Our firm has the experience, and we’ve done mixed-use projects that involved intensive collaboration before, but this was by far the most complicated building I’ve ever worked on,” says architect Forth Bagley about the project. (more…)

Perrotin is moving its Hong Kong exhibition space to the Kowloon neighborhood.  “The move has nothing to do with the umbrella [anti-government protests],” Perrotin says. “This is an earlier project which came to a head when we decided to open a large space in Shanghai [late 2018] where we can organize several shows at the same time.” (more…)

Artist Tal R has won a court case against watch designers who wanted to cut up the artist’s work to make a collection of watches.“We hope it will mark the end of this case and that it will mean that Tal R and his fellow artists may avoid similar disputes in the future,” says the artist’s lawyer, Jørgen Permin. (more…)

David Zwirner has a piece in Art News this week, discussing his vision of a thriving Hong Kong art market despite the widespread protests in the city. “I had a gallery in New York after September 11, and though the world came to an end, I really felt that people very much appreciated our effort to bring culture into that moment. I feel that’s what’s happening now in Hong Kong,” he says. “The art market is very much alive and well.” (more…)

Academic staff at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art have gone on strike over “income and borrowing invested in property and other capital assets rather than on the human resources that are the foundation of student learning,” Art Newspaper reports. (more…)

Artist and musician Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) will create a new sound installation at the Brooklyn Museum, after meeting and working with Dubai’s The Third Line.  “I gave him my card, and thought nothing of it,” says gallery co-founder Sunny Rahbar. “The next day, he comes back to the gallery, and asks, ‘Do you want to do this with me?’” (more…)

Art Basel‘s parent company has cancelled Art Basel Inside, a three-day event slotted to run next year in Abu Dhabi. “Art Basel Inside in Abu Dhabi in February 2020 was always an ambitious project on quite a short timeline,” a statement from the company reads. “Despite a lot of excitement for the project, support from our partners, and incredibly hard work by the team, we were not able to move forward with Art Basel Inside.” (more…)

Roger Cardinal, a writer and critic who helped coin the term “outsider art” while working with Jean Dubuffet, has passed away at age 79.  “A lot of outsider art rotates around issues of personality, of asking who I am, which means going deep into the inner self of an individual,” he once said. “So this kind of research could be dangerous, provocative, and damaging to you in such a way that you may never be able to write a book again.” (more…)

Keith Sonnier gets an interview in Art News this week, reflecting on his early work and his life growing up in Lousiana.  “I sought out unusual people,” he says. “It was part of my nature. I think when you grow up in the middle of nowhere and you do nothing all day but sit up in a chicken tree and watch birds, you don’t have much else to do.”  (more…)

Ai Weiwei has joined the board at the Public Art Fund, alongside jewelry designer Ellen Celli, art collector Andrea Krantz, and financier Ruthard Murphy. “As we think about the future of art in public space, it is essential that our board leadership reflect all the aspects of our mission,” says Nicholas Baume, the group’s director and chief curator in a statement, “and we’re thrilled that these four thoughtful, passionate, and engaged members of our community will work with us to further our vision to present boundary-breaking art experiences to all, for free.” (more…)