A still life painting in San Francisco many experts had written off as a fake Van Gogh has now been authenticated, Art Newspaper reports.  Held by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the work has been dated to 1886. “Van Gogh’s experimentation with techniques learned from studying Flemish old masters as well as the Impressionists,” says museum head Thomas P. Campbell. (more…)

Sean Kelly gallery now represents the work of Belgian artist Kris Martin.  “There were conversations with several different galleries, and luckily, he’s chosen to work with us,” the dealer says. It’s almost scary how perfect his work is—certainly for my aesthetic and my taste, but also for the gallery as well.” (more…)

Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun’s 1788 painting Portrait of Muhammad Dervish Khan, Full-Length, Holding His Sword in a Landscape has sold for $7.18 million, a record for a pre-modern painting by a woman.  Vigée Le Brun showed the work in the Salon of 1789 in Paris, and it wound up in the collection of the artist’s husband, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun. (more…)

Phillips Auctions achieved sales of $916.5 million in art and collectibles last year, a 29 percent increase from 2017 and the most in its 220-year history, Bloomberg reports.  “Our strategy of focusing exclusively on the 20th and 21st centuries, our continued expansion in Asia, and our move to increase our modern art offerings have all played a role,” says CEO Edward Dolman. (more…)

Olafur Eliasson’s installation Your blind passenger, a lengthy tunnel of blinding fog, will be installed at the Tate Modern, The Guardian reports. “It shows that the relativity of our senses is much higher than we think, we have it in our capacity to recalibrate or at least stop being numb,” the artist says. (more…)

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco will begin offering free general admission to all city residents on Saturdays, Art News reports.  The new initiative was announced by FAMSF director, Thomas P. Campbell, who took over November 1 after helming the Met for almost a decade. (more…)

Nato Thompson, the curator and director of Philadelphia Contemporary, will reprise his role as artistic director of the Seattle Art Fair. “After meeting such great artists and organizations, I am eager to build on the work to make something altogether different and wild for this fifth edition,” he said in a statement. “[The] Seattle Art Fair gives artists a powerful spotlight, and I’m revving up to put together a program that is as captivating, inspiring and beautiful as the Pacific Northwest.” (more…)

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., has extended its Charline von Heyl show to make up for the government shutdown.  (more…)

A Lucian Freud painting of the heir to the Guinness fortune is set to go to auction this March at Sotheby’s London, estimated at  £4.5m-£6.5m. “It is funny with Freud, you don’t really get a grip of how good he was until you see these things in person, especially these works from the 1950s which you don’t see very often,” says  Tom Eddison, a contemporary art specialist at Sotheby’s. “It is so precise and so beautifully executed. It is a really extraordinary painting, a very tender and beautiful portrait.” (more…)

Cecily Brown has donated an immense painting to the Louisiana Museum in Denmark after holding a show at the museum.  According to Brown, the painting was donated  “to express my gratitude for the great cooperation I’ve had with the museum around the exhibition.” (more…)

The British Museum is taking on the role of “global watchdog” in the examination and regulation of antiquities dealers, a new piece reports. “We have become alarmed at widespread practices in the art market. The more you pay attention, the more you notice patterns of laxity, misconduct or obfuscation,” says curator Marcel Marée.  (more…)

The Guggenheim Museum is deaccessioning a Zao Wou-Ki painting from its collection to sell at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, valued at around $7.7 million–$10 million.  “With its distinguished provenance and impeccable quality from the artist’s critical ‘Oracle Bone’ period, this masterwork will no doubt generate interest and excitement from collectors worldwide,” says Vinci Chang, Sotheby’s head of modern Asian art. (more…)

David Zwirner Books has partnered with Simon & Schuster, one of the largest and most high-profile publishers in the world, making it the first gallery to have mainstream distribution for its books in North America. “We have been impressed by David Zwirner Books’s editorial focus, the quality and range of its titles, and its traction both within the art world and beyond. We are eager to bring their impressive titles to readers across the U.S.,” says Michael Perlman, the vice president and general manager of Simon & Schuster Publisher Services. (more…)

MoMA has added 800 instruction drawings by more than 300 artists to its collections after a gift from Gilbert and Lila Silverman.  “I had a wonderful life with Gilbert,” Lila said, “and I am just delighted that the works are now at MoMA.” (more…)

James Turrell has closed his Skyspace work, Meeting, at MoMA PS1 indefinitely after the scaffolding of new condominium development interfered with its view.  “After further conversation with James Turrell, we have closed Meeting at the artist’s request and it will remain closed until the temporary construction scaffolding is no longer visible from the work,” the museum said in a statement. (more…)

British Museum head Hartwig Fischer is facing criticism after saying that the removal of the Parthenon marbles from Greece in the 19th century could be interpreted as “a creative act.” The full quote reads: “We should appreciate this opportunity. You could, of course, be saddened by the fact that the original environment has disappeared. When you move a cultural heritage to a museum, you move it outside. However, this shifting is also a creative act.” (more…)

Former Sotheby’s auctioneer Jeremy Cooper has donated 1,000 artist postcards he has collected over the years to the British Museum.  “The more I looked, the more I discovered that it’s a field of unrecognized historical significance – it just seemed completely neglected,” Cooper says. “These postcards were made by artists as individual expressions, not just the reproduction of a work of art, which is what most postcards are.” (more…)

The Smithsonian Institution is planning on reopening this Tuesday, following the conclusion of the government shutdown.  The closure has affected a number of runtimes for shows either soon to open or close.   (more…)

The newest iteration of the Desert X art festival has announced its artist list, with curator Neville Wakefield reprising the show with works by Pia Camil, Jenny Holzer and more. (more…)

A daring heist at Moscow’s New Tretyakov Gallery saw a thief walk out of the gallery with a painting after removing it in broad daylight, The Guardian reports. The man, apprehended hours later, removed a painting Arkhip Kuindzhi from the wall and walked out, mistaken by many for a museum employee. (more…)

(more…)

Artist Melissa McGill will set a a navy of about 50 traditional Italian vela al terzo sailboats on the Venice this summer, all colored blood red.   “It’s not a competitive regatta,” she says. “It’s more of a presentation. Basically, we are presenting these regattas as a way to bring together all these local boat owners with these beautiful traditional boats.” (more…)

HBO Films has acquired artist Rashid Johnson’s first directorial effort, an adaptation of  Native Son in advance of the film’s premiere at Sundance, Variety reports. The cast includes Ashton Sanders, Margaret Qualley, Nick Robinson, KiKi Layne, Elizabeth Marvel, David Alan Grier, and Bill Camp.  (more…)

The National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts will reopen Monday, as a crucial season for grantmaking begins in D.C.  “I want to underscore that since they are being taken off furlough, [employees] will receive all of their salary and benefits,” says NEH Chairman Jon Parrish Peede. (more…)