A work attributed as a copy of a Botticelli, currently held in a Welsh Museum, has been identified as an original by British art historian Bendor Grosvenor. “Despite all the overpaint, parts of it reminded me of Botticelli’s most famous painting, The Birth of Venus,” he says. “I’m now convinced that Botticelli played an important part in its production, and am delighted it has once more gone on public display.” (more…)

The newly discovered Artemisia Gentileschi at auction this week has broken the artist’s sales record, selling for nearly â‚¬4.8m on Wednesday.  “The interest in older paintings is growing,” says Matthieu Fournier, director of the department of old masters at Artcurial. “For the first time, we are seeing contemporary art collectors migrate towards classical art.” (more…)

Nicole Eisenman has joined the roster of Hauser & Wirth, Art News reports.  “It is a dream come true that a collaboration is possible,” says partner Marc Payot. (more…)

The massive storm surge in Venice has caused substantial damage to property, but has not caused damage to works of art in museums and in the Biennale, Art Newspaper reports. We are essentially unable to protect ourselves”, said the engineer Pierpaolo Campostrini, one of the procurators at The Basilica of San Marco. (more…)

Frieze LA has released the info on its 2020 L.A. fair, Art News reports. Running from February 14 to 16, it will return to the Paramount Studios lot.“I look forward to seeing how the curators will interweave international artists into this year’s program, expanding conversations around what is unique about L.A. as a context and constellation of creative communities,” says Bettina Korek, executive director of Frieze Los Angeles. (more…)

As Yvonne Rainer revives her 1965 work Parts of Some Sextets, she looks back at her career, and considers her way forward at 84. “I wanted it to have a very strict structure,” she says of the work. “I left it to the mechanics of the strategy that I had laid out and to hell with aesthetics and choice.”  (more…)

Venice is facing some of its worst flooding on record, leading many to wonder once again about the future of the city’s art and architecture, particularly as flood barriers supposed to be completed in 2011 are still not erected. (more…)

Moscow’s museums will share a massive open storage center in the city’s southern district of Sosenskoe.  The museums hub will span 70,000 sq. m, making it larger than the Winter Palace of the State Hermitage Museum. (more…)

Urs Fischer gives Architectural Digest a tour of his Los Angeles home, which includes an impressive art collection, including a tailor made installation by artist Peter Regli.  “Peter was working a lot with marble in Vietnam, and I invited him to do a project here,” he says. “Back then there was just a brown dirt hill with a few trees. I told him, ‘Do whatever you want.’” (more…)

Chinese president Xi Jinping has voiced support for repatriation of the Elgin marbles to Greece. “Not only do I agree [with their repatriation] but you also have our support,” he said in a statement. “We, too, have our own [treasures] outside the country and are doing everything we can to get them home.” (more…)

New software will allow museums to analyze a number of different data points on its collection, particularly gender balance.  The program is designed “to learn together to improve,” says María José Magaña, president of the developers, Spanish advocacy nonprofit Mujeres en las Artes Visuales. (more…)

Dealer Inigo Philbrick has had over $13 million in assets frozen by the British government.  “I’m aware of the news of the litigation against Inigo Philbrick and his company in Miami,” says former employer Jay Jopling. “Over the years I have acquired a number of artworks through Mr. Philbrick, so this news is both a shock and a cause of serious concern to me.” (more…)

Lynn Hershman Leeson gets a profile in the NYT this week, as she prepares a new work focused on data collection and online surveillance. “It’s such a perverse, pervasive, invisible system that people don’t understand,” she says.  “It’s very easy to forget that we’re being watched on the internet. We’re living in a time where there needs to be real literacy in terms of data and technology and our relationship to it.” (more…)

A newly discovered piece by Artemisia Gentileschi will go up for auction in Paris next week, carrying a base estimate of €600,000-€800,000 that some think will easily be smashed. “The story of Artemisia is just like that story [of Lucretia] except that Artemisia decided on another outcome for her life,” Matthieu Fournier, director of the department of old masters at Artcurial, says. (more…)

Arts Council England is facing criticism after leaving an Eduardo Paolozzi outside of a train station during renovation, placing it in the middle of a building site. “The plan for Euston station is such a radical renovation, they won’t be finished working there for eight years,” says Toby Treves, a former Tate curator and trustee of the Eduardo Paolozzi Foundation. “They’re knocking down the two towers immediately outside the entrance, which is where the sculpture’s sited. The main thing is, it ought not to be in the middle of a building site.” (more…)

A piece in Art Newspaper this week details how France has done little to repatriate African art after strong calls for the move in the Sarr-Savoy report. “Returning material to its homeland is never a simple process. Rather, it is part of a larger web of exchange and cooperation, one primarily built on relationships,” writes reporter Alexander Herman. “Those relationships neither begin nor end with restitution, which is only one part of a much larger story.” (more…)

Hank Willis Thomas’s work Unity has been installed in Brooklyn this week, receiving a profile in the NYT. “This sculpture is a homage to, and celebration of, the unique and multifaceted character of the borough of Brooklyn,” he says. “The spirit of Brooklyn has always been about upward mobility and connection to roots.” (more…)

Lonnie G. Bunch III, the newly appointed secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, gets an interview this week in Art Newspaper, and discusses his strategy for the future of the museum system. “Some of it is finding the tension between tradition and innovation. If 29 million people come to the Smithsonian every year, that means millions more will never get here,” he says. “And so, thinking about how effectively we reach outside of Washington. And then crafting the virtual Smithsonian [online], which gives people traditional access to our collections and expertise, but also lets them view the Smithsonian through the lens of innovation, race or American identity.” (more…)

Art collector Egidio Marzona has purchased an abandoned castle, formerly the home of a Nazi propagandist and designer, near the German city of Naumburg to host a design academy. “In this place where we will remember the darkest chapter of our history, we will push back against pressure from the right and populism,” says Arne Cornelius Wasmuth, who will oversee the project. “This ‘uncomfortable monument’ should become a centre for free exchange and an international, liberal breeding-ground for innovative ideas.” (more…)

The National Galleries of Scotland and its comprising galleries will no longer accept sponsorship funds from British Petroleum, citing a “climate emergency.” “We recognize that we have a responsibility to do all we can to address the climate emergency,” the institution said in an online statement. (more…)

The young boy thrown from an observation deck at the Tate Modern can now move his legs, CNN reports. “We can now bring him outside in a wheelchair to breath fresh air. It’s tiring for him but he really likes it, of course,” his family reported. (more…)

Steve McQueen’s show of portraits Year 3 students in the U.K. get a profile in The Guardian, and how he hopes his work will change conversations around race and identity in the art world and abroad.  “I remember going to the National Portrait Gallery and the only black people I saw there were the guards,” he says. “Art school was my liberation, that was where I could achieve my goals and realize myself. That opportunity should be offered up to every single kid and they can go off in whatever direction they want.” (more…)

A report in Art Newspaper finds that a number of missing art cases may implicate international diplomatic representatives and embassy officials, including work missing from the Venezuelan embassy in DC. “The problem is that for the past two decades in Venezuela, there has been no accountability,” says dealer and adviser, Alex Stein, who used to head Sotheby’s Latin American department. “Not many art professionals are fully aware of all the art in the hands of governmental institutions, and communists ruling the country nationalize a few thousand private companies and banks. It’s hard to trace the assets because there is no public record of what was there in the first place.” (more…)

The Centre Pompidou outpost in Metz, France has tapped Italian curator and historian Chiara Parisi as its new director. “Parisi was unanimously chosen by the jury,” Jean-Luc Bohl, the president of the Metz Métropole local authority, says. (more…)