Artists Guadalupe Rosales and Hank Willis Thomas have received this year’s Gordon Parks Foundation fellowships, Art News reports. “Both Guadalupe and Hank will engage the visual life of their communities through their work as artists, archivists, and photographers, and will explore completely distinct and individual narratives,” says executive director Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. (more…)

Cory Arcangel is opening a pop-up of his Arcangel Surfware brand at Dover Street Market Los Angeles this week, Art News reports.  “The space that Dover Street Market has given me is about the same size as my shop in Stavanger,” Arcangel said. “It is also weirdly about the same shape, which is kind of trapezoidal.” (more…)

A group of protestors stormed the Guggenheim this weekend, raining down pamphlets criticizing the museum’s ties to the Sackler Family, part of artist Nan Goldin’s ongoing protests against the family behind the manufacture of OxyContin. “I want the Guggenheim and others publicly to disavow themselves from the Sacklers and refuse future funding from them, and I want them to take down the Sackler name from the museums,” Goldin said. (more…)

Christie’s London will auction off the art collection of songwriter and singer George Michael this year, The Guardian reports, with the funds raised going to charity. “Philanthropic work was hugely important for George during his lifetime and it was his wish that this work would continue after his passing,” Trustees of Michael’s estate said in a statement. (more…)

The National Museum of Scotland has completed a fifteen-year renovation, Art Newspaper reports, repositioning the collection and allowing each part to be more focused.  “It wasn’t clear what the museum was or what it was trying to be, which led to strange juxtapositions,” says director Gordon Rintoul. “On one floor you had British birds and on a floor above you had material from the Middle East—in an atrium space.” (more…)

Christie’s has achieved its highest ever sales total for 2018, with a final tally of $7 billion, bolstered by the sale of the Rockefeller collection.   “Clients like to go to the platforms they have read about as being successful. Some of our clients preferred the US over the UK, but this is an American situation, not a UK issue,” says Dirk Boll, the president of Christie’s in Europe, the Middle East, Russia and India. (more…)

Two new films by Paul and Damon McCarthy will premiere next week in Los Angeles during Frieze Week.  The works will screen at Montalbán Theater in Hollywood, and will feature the pair’s trademark approach to sexuality and violence. (more…)

Garage Magazine has a piece on Dan Colen, and his recent projects providing food from his farm upstate to those in need. “In 2012, I started talking to friends who knew about farming, and one of them started talking to me about ‘food deserts,’” he says. “The idea of Sky High Farm was to distribute sustainably grown vegetables and meat locally—we work with local food banks and Food Bank for New York City to bring good, healthy food to people without access to it.” (more…)

Henry Timms, current head of the 92nd Street Y, will become the next president of Lincoln Center, the New York Times reports. “I don’t think you should ever pretend that there aren’t some real, and interesting, management challenges here,” Timms said. “But I think it’s the case that every constituent’s best interest is served in a collaborative culture.” (more…)

Frieze has announced the exhibitor list for the 2019 edition of its New York fair, including a series of expanded curated sections and projects.  (more…)

The City of Venice has approved a new fee for day-trippers to the lagoon island.  “Finally, day-trippers will start paying their way,” says Claudio Scarpa, head of the Venetian Association of Hoteliers. “People who arrive in the morning and leave in the evening, contributing little economically but imposing a heavy strain on services, need to understand that not everything is free.”  (more…)

Catherine Carver Dunn will take the helm as executive director of The Tate Americas Foundation, a charity working on funding and acquisition projects for the Tate. “Catherine has a proven record in key cultural institutions of implementing organizational strategy,” says Pamela J. Joyner, chair of the board of the Tate Americas Foundation. “I look forward to working with her to advance Tate Americas Foundation’s work to promote art and artists of the Americas. She will play the lead role in developing the talent and creative thinking necessary to make the foundation effective in the future.” (more…)

The heated divorce of Harry and Linda Macklowe has exasperated courts as the order to split up their famously impressive collection seems to have raised difficulties. “People in the art world don’t want to get in the middle of the divorce,” said lawyer Dan Rottenstreich.  (more…)

The Met is teaming with Microsoft and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create a series five digital prototypes that use artificial intelligence to work with images from the Met’s collection. “This is a conservative institution by nature,” says Max Hollein, the Met’s director. “We need to shake it up.” (more…)

The New York Times has a lengthy piece on the finishing touches of the MoMA expansion project, which will see the museum close for four months this summer and open in a completely new configuration.  “A new generation of curators is discovering the richness of what is in our collection, and there is great work being made around the world that we need to pay attention to,” Glenn Lowry says. “It means that the usual gets supplanted now by the unexpected.” (more…)

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The High Line will experiment with exhibiting painting this summer, showing a selection of works along the expanse of the elevated park.  “Usually painting is not a medium that is associated with public art, so we wanted to challenge artists that we wouldn’t necessarily work with because they typically work with painting or two-dimensional mediums,” says curator Cecelia Alemani. “We wanted to bring those artworks into the parks and see what would happen.” (more…)

Roman StaÅ„czak will represent Poland at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Art News reports, and will turn an airplane inside out for the piece. “‘The scale of the undertaking and the boldness of the concept guarantee a monumental quality of the project and its visual appeal,” the jury said.  “The artist is not afraid to see his statement associated with questions of fundamental importance for the divided political community.” (more…)

The New Yorker profiles artist Pat Steir’s current show at the Barnes Foundation, noting the artist’s chance-based approach and her pieces spread throughout the institution.  “It’s a joy to let a painting paint itself,” she says. “It takes away all kinds of responsibility, because I can come in in the morning and say, ‘Oh, look what the paint did!’” (more…)

Ruth Asawa is profiled in Art News this week, as she reflects on her time at Black Mountain College. “Art was at a high level and living was very difficult,” she says. “We lived in crude beds and we were so poor we had to scrounge around with leaves and rocks. We were forced to go back to natural things rather than having good paper and good materials that we bought and I think that was very good for us.” (more…)

Jeff Koons gets a profile in The Guardian this week, as the artist prepares a show in Oxford, and reflects on the nature of his work “The reason I work with readymades,” he says, “is to remove judgment and hierarchy. Every object is a metaphor for yourself. I try to make work to make you think everything is perfect in itself. It’s all a metaphor.” (more…)

A piece in Art Newspaper this week charts the ongoing drama over the proposed L-Train shutdown in North Brooklyn, and how its potential shutdown has affected galleries. “It’s been an emotional rollercoaster,” says Celine Mo, of Victori & Mo. (more…)

The EU Commission has put increased pressure on the Luxembourg Freeport over accusations of money laundering, with German MEP Wolf Klinz calling on European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker to close loopholes that welcome financial crimes, and Juncker relaying the request to European commissioner for economic and financial affairs. (more…)

Art News charts the problems caused by the polar vortex sweeping across the Midwest, noting the closures of a number of art museums to protect against the bitter sub-zero temperatures, save Minneapolis’s Walker Center, which remained open for its usual free Thursday admission.  (more…)