The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art will put Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room―My Heart is Dancing Into the Universe on permanent view at the museum.  “Yayoi Kusama is an incredibly important figure in art, and her ‘Infinity Rooms’ are really something special,” says Alejo Benedetti, an assistant curator at the museum. “We like to have as much of the collection on view as possible. It seems natural to have it permanently on view.” (more…)

Orazio Gentileschi’s The Finding of Moses will potentially be acquired by London’s National Gallery, Art Newspaper reports. The work is currently on from Graham Kirkham, the founder of the DFS sofa company, who is looking to sell a selection of his works. (more…)

Wangechi Mutu will soon open an exhibition of work at the Met, which will go on view outside the museum facing 5th Avenue. “It’s a way of bringing in contemporary art and engaging with our collection that is perhaps more bold and more playful than before,” says director Max Hollein. “Any sculpture on the facade of a building of this kind has a custodial nature, and I think these will be very different custodians than you would expect.” (more…)

A group of museum heads speak with the Art Newspaper today, as the magazine explores how the recent protests and ousters at museum boards might change charitable giving at museums in the future. “We have not developed a list of acceptable industries or investment strategies or unacceptable ones,” says Daniel Weiss, the president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Rather, we take a look at individuals we’re working with in a holistic way in order to get a sense for who they are, what are their motivations for working with us, what their background is.”  (more…)

Art News has a piece today charting the varied connections between Jeffrey Epstein and the art world, including his place as a board member at the New York Academy of Art, where he met one of his victims, artist Maria Farmer. “I just kept telling Maria, ‘You’ve got to get out of there. You’ve got to get out of there,’” says Eric Fischl, a mentor to the young artist. (more…)

Nan Goldin and members of P.A.I.N., her activist group founded to combat the opioid crisis, have been arrested outside Governor Cuomo’s Mansion in New York. “I came here to tell you today that good luck and good fortune are not very good health management strategies,” said Jaron Benjamin, an activist from Housing Works. “There are too many people in New York City dying of overdoses.”  (more…)

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, the Sharjah art collector is pushing for 50-50 gender partiy in artists shown at the Sharjah Art Museum. “In US museums, only 13 per cent of the art on display is by women,” says Al Qassemi. “If you’re thinking pre-20th century, I understand, because women didn’t have the same opportunities as men. But in the 20th century, there is no excuse not to have equal representation.” (more…)

Jeff Koons’s controversial installation of his sculpture Bouquet of Tulips in Paris will move forward, and is set to open by the city’s Nuit Blanche on October 5th.  Costing €3.5m, the installation is financed by French and American sponsors. (more…)

A new art fair, Future Fair, is set to open May 7th to the 9the next year during Frieze New York, will bring together 36 galleries and pay them a percentage of the fair profits.  “Coming from a gallery background, I have a huge amount of respect for the work galleries do and the risks they undertake,”  founder Rebeca Laliberte says. “I felt immediately that a model that focuses on the needs of the gallery in this way was really, really exciting.” (more…)

Collector and NY Academy of Art Founder Stuart Pivar speaks of his longtime friendship with Jeffrey Epstein for a piece in  Mother Jones this week.“Jeffrey was profoundly sick,” he says. (more…)

Gustave Caillebotte’s Iris Bleus, Jardin du Petit Gennevilliers, has been acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). It has been the subject of an ownership battle for several years. “We know from letters that this work was part of an active dialogue he had with Monet about gardening,” says Caroline Shields, the AGO’s associate curator and head of European art.  (more…)

Jason Moran is interviewed in Vogue this week, as the musician and artist talks about his upcoming show at The Whitney, which will re-create a series of New York jazz clubs inside the museum.  “A lot of cultural weight is in these spaces, but somehow they can also go undocumented,” he says of these overlooked spaces. “Revolutions happened on those very humble stages.” (more…)

A piece in the New Yorker profiles Vija Celmins and the artist’s life and work, including her story of her escape from war-torn Europe to the States during the 1940’s. “My biggest nightmare was losing hold of my mother’s hand, and never seeing her again,” she says. “It wasn’t until I was ten years old and living in Indiana that I realized being in fear wasn’t normal.” (more…)

Claiming that German society has become intolerant of refugees, Ai Weiwei is leaving his home in Berlin for Cambridge. “Europe was a civilised, modern society which was supposed to uphold humanism, democracy, freedom and human rights,” he says. “Europe may no longer remain Europe beyond geography.” (more…)

Entertainment unions have published an open letter decrying the decline in arts journalism and its impact on the creative industries.  “Having a properly funded arts media is vital to supporting theatre, film and TV productions, ensuring that we celebrate the UK as a centre for the creative industries and to encourage people to get involved in the arts either as writers, directors, producers, performers, behind the scenes workers, patrons and audience members,” the letter reads. (more…)

This fall, Christie’s in New York will auction off more than 260 pieces of art and design from the collection of philanthropist and theater producer Terry Allen Kramer. The collection “reflects the spirit of adventure and sense of fun she was legendary for, spanning the best of modern art from the late-19th to mid-20th centuries,” says Max Carter, the head of Christie’s Impressionist and modern art department. (more…)

The Venice Beach compound once owned by artist and sculptor Billy Al Bengston is on sale at $5.495 million, the LA Times reports.  (more…)

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art is in the process of acquiring the papers of Andrea Rosen Gallery, and will catalog its contents. “The day that I started the gallery—even though I was quite young—I was very clear that a large part of its responsibility was to create archives that were as complex and as thorough as possible for each of the artists we worked with and represented,” she says. Read more at Art News. (more…)

New York dealer Simon Preston, who will become a senior director at Pace, leaving his eponymous LES gallery. “Primarily, my role is to develop new artist relationships—bring new artists to the program, to create more contemporary programming,” he says. (more…)

Andrew Kuo and dealer Pascal Spengemann are profiled in GQ this month for their ongoing clothing collaboration, creating bootlegged homages to Marc Chagall and Claude Monet, among others. “My memories of the Met store and museum shops growing up in New York were a big part of my experience with art, not necessarily the actual object,” Kuo says. “Like my mom wearing a Marc Chagall shirt all summer. It’s less cynical and more emotional, I think, to kind of dredge up all of these memories of your experiences with art and reframe it as something affordable, fun, whatever.” (more…)

The Guardian profiles recent trends towards showing works in collectors and artists’ homes. “Last year we exhibited a work that was a kind of ecosystem, stretched out over the floor of our living room,” says artist Isobel Atacus. “There was was a block of ice melting through an unfired clay disc into a bowl below and the sediment water was pumped into a tank. It was a beautiful piece to live with for a few days.” (more…)

The British Museum will bring hundreds of thousands of stored artifacts currently to a new £64m storage and research facility in Berkshire, UK, the Art Newspaper reports. The move comes as an effort to make more of its collection publicly accessible. (more…)

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver has selected Nora Burnett Abrams as its new director. “They want to continue in the direction we have been heading,” she says of her selection, calling it a “vote of confidence.” (more…)

British museums and art galleries saw a 6% increase in attendance last year, recovering from several years of dropping numbers.  “It’s not surprising to see our museums and galleries returning to the top spot, confirming England’s position as a cultural hub,” says VisitEngland Chief Executive Sally Balcombe.  (more…)