Curator Peter Selz, who organized several major shows at MoMA before serving as the first director of University of California’s Berkeley Art Museum, has passed away at the age of 100. “Over the course of his tenure as our founding director, Peter transformed BAMPFA from a modest university art collection into the internationally renowned art and film institution it is today,” said Lawrence Rinder, BAMPFA’s current director and chief curator. “Generations of Bay Area art lovers have benefited from his insight, knowledge, independence, and boundless energy, and his legacy will reverberate across and beyond our museum for decades to come.” (more…)

David Berliner, the Brooklyn Museum’s president and chief operating officer, gives New York Magazine a tour of his office and the works he selected for its walls.   “I was inspired by Anne [Pasternak, his predecessor]’s office. It was gorgeous. So that was my point of departure.” (more…)

Frieze has unveiled its exhibitor lists for its London and Frieze Masters fairs, this fall in Regent’s Park from October 3 to 6. The show will feature a range of curatorial projects alongside its standard selections.  (more…)

The Met is commemorating World Refugee Day this year by covering artist Marc Chagall’s The Lovers, posing the question of a world where refugees were not welcomed from the violence and crises they fled. “The Met is newly aware of its responsibility to not have a neutral position,” says Sheena Wagstaff, chairman of modern and contemporary art at the Met. (more…)

Night Gallery in Los Angeles has added Han Bing, Robert Nava, and Brie Ruais. to its roster. “The gallery is thrilled to continue to support emerging artists,” says Brian Faucette, Night Gallery’s senior director. “As we head into our 10th season in 2020, we feel that these three artists, each with their own distinctive practices, will reflect that mission.” (more…)

Gagosian has hired Sebastian Cwilich, the co-founder of Artsy, as a part-time senior adviser, continuing a recent push towards tech first embrace by the hire of chief technology officer Gareth O’Loughlin, formerly the vice president of technology at Casper. “Gareth and Sebastian are both leaders in the field, with a broad range of skill sets and unique perspectives on technology, business strategy, and operations,” Larry Gagosian, the gallery’s founder, told ARTnews in a statement. “They will be great additions to the gallery, enhancing and expanding our innovative work.” (more…)

Marc Quinn’s upcoming installation for the NYPL is profiled in Forbes this week, as the artist collects blood from 10,000 people to create two sculptures, one with the blood of refugees and one with the blood of other donors. “It’s the type of thing you look at and say: ‘I can’t say which one I am, so I must be both,’” he says. “There’s no difference between them. They’re like a gateway, in a way. They’re about arrivals and departures.” (more…)

Almine Rech, will open in Shanghai next month, sharing a floor on 27 Huqiu Road with Lisson. “The decision to expand to Asia was a natural one for us, as we’ve long been interested in the Asian market and engaged with collectors in the region through our participation in art fairs, as well as institutional outreach, collaboration, and regular visits to the region,” says owner Almine Rech-Picasso. (more…)

Artist Lonnie Holley is interviewed in Artforum this week, speaking on his music and his vision for his broader body of work. “All my work, in any form, comes down to oneness,” he says. “The oneness is important: the oneness goes all the way down to this one universe that we believe in; this one mothership, our planet Earth, that we live in; this one mother that gave birth to us and that we should respect; and then that one gray spot that we’re going to after we are dead and gone.” (more…)

Robert Therrien (Installation View), via Art Observed

Robert Therrien, an artist whose impressively-scaled sculptures of banal objects and everyday scenes was capable of twisting a viewer’s sense of time and space, has passed away at the age of 71 .  The news was broken by Gagosian, which represents him.   (more…)

Curator and deputy director for international initiatives Donna De Salvo is leaving the Whitney museum after 15 years.  De Dalvo organized the institution’s major Andy Warhol show last year, and has been a fixture of its curatorial program. “I hold a deep regard for the Whitney, which has been my home for one of the most fulfilling periods of my career,” she said in a statement.  (more…)

A piece in the SF Chronicle this week looks at the path forward for the Fine Arts Museums of SF following the departure of longtime Board of Trustees President Dede Wilsey.  “It’s like Queen Elizabeth,” says former museum head Harry Parker. “If you’ve got something that ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There has never been a serious opponent or candidate to succeed her.” (more…)

Following controversy over her financial ties to an Israeli spy company, Yana Peel has stepped down as CEO of The Serpentine Galleries in London. “While we have every confidence in the Serpentine’s ability to continue to serve artists, visitors, and supporters in the future, she will be sorely missed,” a museum statement reads. “The arts sector will be poorer without her immeasurable contributions to our cultural lives.” (more…)

Brooklyn Museum head Anne Pasternak has made Crain’s list of Most Powerful Women in NYC, spotlighting her activism and work with the museum and Creative Time.

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The NYT has a piece this week on artist Andrea Bowers’s monumental artwork drawing on the online disclosures of the #MeToo movement, and the controversy when one person included in the work complained of exploitation. “This is a whole new set of questions,” says Prof. Griselda Pollock, director of the Center for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History at the University of Leeds in Britain. “Artists have a right to quote from the world, and they have authorization to present it as their art. But if you use materials that come from one context of use, with its own inherent ethics and politics, into another one, then we find that there are people who are challenging it.” (more…)

Jeffrey Deitch gets a profile in KCET’s Artbound program, spotlighting his recent work, his focus on Los Angeles’s thriving arts scene, and his early days expanding the scope of the contemporary art market.  “Some people say I created a monster because we basically invented the profession of professional art advisory,” Deitch says of his early work. (more…)

CNN takes a look at the disappearance of Salvator Mundi after its landmark sale last year, noting that the work hasn’t been seen in public since its landmark sale.  “It’s either on the yacht or in a Geneva lock-up, and I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that the yacht is really quite plausible,” writer Ben Lewis said in a phone interview, alluding to speculation that the work is on a luxury yacht belonging to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. “But I would suggest that it may not be the safest environment in which to hang up this picture.” (more…)

Sterling Ruby’s new fashion line gets a profile in the NYT this week, as the artist and budding designer traces his experiences with fiber arts and clothing.   “Outside of the logistics of putting together the collection and the garments — in the kind of production of it — I don’t see it as any different to making a sculpture or a painting,” he says. (more…)

Oscar Murillo gets a profile in The Guardian this month, speaking on his early studies and his drive to push his practice into new spheres. “History is history and you think: now let me forge my own path, ignoring what is allowed or not allowed… just going for it,” he says. (more…)

Artist Martin Roth, who often worked with living organisms and plants in his work, has passed away of unknown causes at the age of 41.  Roth’s last show, November 2017 I collected a plant from the garden of a mass shooter, earned him high praise, centered on a single plant taken from the rock-strewn lawn of the shooter responsible for the murder of 58 people at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas in 2017. “Martin was one of the best artists I ever had the pleasure of working with. He was an uncompromising perfectionist, moving one rock from this corner to that corner in order to achieve exactly what it was he was looking for, and the success of each exhibition was due to his perfectionism,” Roth’s gallerist, RJ Supa said. ” The shows, on a shoestring budget, were always received as dynamic and exhilarating social commentary, emerging masterworks from a talent gone too soon. His talent and vision will be deeply missed.” (more…)

In a major shake-up, French-Israeli media mogul and collector Patrick Drahi has reached an agreement to acquire Sotheby’s in a $3.7 billion deal. “With my family, we are very enthusiastic to build together with its current management and their teams the future of Sotheby’s, a fascinating and multi-secular company with such a celebrated history of uniting people all over the world through culture and arts,” Drahi said in a statement. (more…)

The Istanbul Biennial has revealed its artist list for the 16th edition, set to open September 14. Titled The Seventh Continent, the show will feature artists like Glenn Ligon, Mika Rottenberg, Rashid Johnson, and more, organized by Nicolas Bourriaud, the director of the Montpellier Contemporary. (more…)

A study by the German Lost Art Foundation has found that a “surprisingly large number of objects with dubious provenances” linger in eastern German museums, the Art Newspaper reports. “We had the sense beforehand that there were items with critical provenances in all our museums, but we didn’t know how many,” says Alexander Sachse, a researcher at the Brandenburg State Museums Association behind the research. (more…)

The Broad has acquired David Hammons‘s African-American Flag (1990), Art News reports. The museum also acquired Mark Bradford’s 50-feet-long mixed media work Deep Blue (2018), which is now on view. (more…)