A union has accused Arts Council England of failing to enforce union standard wages on the projects it funds. “What is the point of having a policy if it isn’t being enforced?” says Paul Fleming, head of the Equity Theatre Workers Union. (more…)
Artforum eulogizes the late dealer Katherine Mulherin, who passed away suddenly this month. “Katharine was a champion of the hoser, the scamp, the outsider,” writes artist Lex Vaughn. “She was working-class nobility, and it showed in some of her curations” (more…)
The Pérez Art Museum Miami has received a major gift of art from the American South, with 26 artists joining its archives for the first time. The collection of 46 pieces comes from Los Angeles–based collector Gordon W. Bailey.“These great artists . . . are still underrepresented in our nation’s museums, and have so much to offer in the understanding of the human impulse to create,” says PAMM director Franklin Sirmans. “Here in Miami this gift will further elucidate the work of our region and highlight one of our city’s greatest artists, in Purvis Young, who has been part of the collection since 2005.” (more…)
The Louvre, the most visited museum in the world, will require a reservation for all visits by the end of the year, an attempt to alleviate overcrowding at the museum. “Reservations smooth the entry for the public throughout the week,” says Vincent Pomarede, deputy general administrator of the Louvre. “Until now a reservation system has not been obligatory (but) we will put in place an obligatory reservations system, as many other museums have done, and, by the end of the year, all visitors will have to reserve.” (more…)
A 17-year-old boy is being held in custody for attempted murder after throwing a French child off the balcony of the Tate Modern. “Tate is working closely with the police,” the museum said in a statement. “All our thoughts are with the child and his family.” (more…)
Dealer Joseph Nahmad has plead guilty to two charges of assault after being arrested for assaulting his girlfriend Georgia Barry. “This is in the context of a considerable beating — banging her head against a wall,” prosecutor John Fairhead said. “Both parties drank to excess and she on two occasions says she was tipsy.” (more…)
Price gains over the last six years for works by women artists at auction have seen price gains of about 72.9 percent on average, compared with just 8.3 percent for works by men, a group at Sotheby’s reports. “The value of art is changing,” says Sotheby’s Michael Klein. “The value of female art is changing even more.” (more…)
Dealer Dennis Yares will take over Mary Boone’s former space in Midtown, Art News reports. Boone had occupied the space since 2000, and closed this past year as she prepared for her prison sentence for tax evasion. (more…)
Portugal has seized a trove of contemporary artworks, including pieces by Joan Miró and Piet Mondrian, from businessman José Berardo, who offered the works as collateral for a debt which totalled nearly €1bn (£920m). (more…)
British art dealer Timothy Sammons has been sentenced to 12 years in jail for defrauding his clients over sales of masterpieces by Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall. “When brokering the sales of high-priced, one-of-a-kind paintings, Timothy Sammons had lying, scamming, and stealing down to a fine art,” said Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance after the sentencing at New York State supreme court. (more…)
London-based dealer, publisher and art world veteran Karsten Schubert has died, aged 57. The dealer was instrumental in the advancement of the YBA movement. “At the time of his death, Karsten Schubert continued to nurture a roster of important artists—Rose English, Tess Jaray, Ann-Marie James and Alison Wilding—at the company’s current space on Lexington Street, Soho,” a gallery statement says. (more…)
Shirin Neshat is curating an exhibition in New York this autumn of Iranian women artists at the High Line Nine galleries. “As well as individual focuses, there are strong communal themes in the show,” Neshat says. “These works contribute significantly to the contemporary art world at large, but the lives and artistic visions within each work reflect aspects of Iranian history, which has determined the destiny of Iranian lives, including that of the artists.” (more…)
Apple has announced plans for a series of augmented reality projects with work by Nick Cave, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, and Cao Fei, among others. “Today at Apple offers a window into the creative arts made possible by our products and customers,” said Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s senior vice president of Retail + People. “We hope attendees are inspired by the incredible AR creations in the [AR]T Walk and in-store installation, and we can’t wait to see what our visitors learn to create in the [AR]T Lab.” (more…)
The New Yorker has a piece on Jackson Pollock’s Mural, an eight-by-twenty-foot painting completed in 1943, which has been on a continuous world tour since 2014. The piece charts both the piece’s path around the globe, and the process in the work’s creation. (more…)
Gagosian Gallery is set to open a show this fall of works by Chinese master Zao Wou-ki, capitalizing on the artist’s recently hot market in the West. (more…)
Art News has a piece today on gallerist Mitchell Algus, and the recent business-problems that might cause the long-standing and ground-breaking gallery to shutter.“He was like a fairy godmother for us,” says artist Betty Tompkins. (more…)
Five Parisian galleries will open spaces in a new four-building arts complex in the suburb of Romainville, an 11,000-sq m industrial venue named Komunuma. Among the galleries are Air de Paris and Jocelyn Wolff. (more…)
A drawing by Egon Schiele has been found in a Queens thrift store, estimated at $100,000 to $200,000. “If you look at the way this girl is lying on her back, and you look at the foreshortening both on the rib cage and on her face, and the way you see that little nose pointing up—think about how difficult that is to do,” says Jane Kallir, the world’s foremost Schiele scholar. “There are very few people in the history of art who can draw like that.” (more…)
The Guggenheim Museum has received an endowment from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to establish a conservation fellowship to preserve, care for, and research the photography in its collection. “We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Mapplethorpe Foundation and applaud its commitment to the long-term research and stewardship of the Guggenheim’s growing photography collection,” says director Richard Armstrong. “This endowment allows the Guggenheim to create a professional fellowship program, instilling conservators and curators with the knowledge to safeguard our collection for future generations.” (more…)
A piece in the NYT this week asks if the transgressive character of Robert Mapplethorpe’s images have lost their power in the modern age of image distribution. Mapplethorpe “was a pretty good commercial photographer who photographed things people weren’t accustomed to seeing in mixed company,” according to John Szarkowski, MoMA’s influential photography director at the Museum of Modern Art. “It’s not photographically interesting.” (more…)
A new study on activist and about climate change points to art’s effectiveness as a form of activism, specifically when the works offer hope for the future. Effective works “have the potential to retell the stories of climate change in a way that activates the slumbering potential in our societies,” say Laura Kim Sommer and Christian A. Klöckner of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. (more…)
Damián Ortega has won ICA Miami’s first sculpture prize. which includes fabrication of a new commission installed in the ICA’s Sculpture Garden and $15,000. “We see this as a wonderful place to honor the achievement of an artist who has innovated with sculpture throughout their career,” says Alex Gartenfeld, the museum’s artistic director. “Damián has been an artist who has consistently reinvented the form of sculpture, considered the role of the work in public, and experimented with materials and forms, perhaps like no one else of his generation.” (more…)