For the entire month of June, the Public Art Fund will exhibit artist Félix González-Torres’s first billboard, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. “While the work has been installed in many locations around the world, there is not a time I go by that corner that I don’t imagine the billboard being there,” says Andrea Rosen, the president of the artist’s foundation.  (more…)

Elad Lassry, Untitled (Boots, Caps) (2018), via 303 Gallery

Currently on view at 303 Gallery in New York, artist Elad Lassry brings a selection of new photographs and sculptures that continue his aesthetic project exploring the construction, distribution and consumption of images, often through the willful subversion or deconstruction of the image’s functions, contexts and framings. The show, on view through the weekend, compiles a broad range of recent projects and ideas from the artist, each delving into different modes of exploring and re-creating the space of the image. (more…)

Artist Julian Schnabel gives a frank interview in The Guardian this week, as the artist promotes his new directorial effort dedicated to the life of Van Gogh.  “Do you need to know that Caravaggio killed a guy at a tennis match to appreciate his paintings,” he asks at on point. “Have you ever seen a Caravaggio painting? Did it speak to you?  Does knowing he killed someone at a tennis match change what you think about it?” Not really. “Exactly!” he says, triumphantly. (more…)

Cuban artist­-activists will present alternative event during the run of the official Havana Biennial, protesting the recently passed Decree 349, which requires artists to receive approval from the Cuban government before their projects are presented. “It’s evident that Decree 349 is oppressive,” says organizer Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. (more…)

A group of academics and theorists have demanded that the Whitney Museum remove Warren B. Kanders from his position as vice chairman of its board, part of an ongoing campaign against Kanders and his ownership of a defense manufacturing company. “The stakes of the demand to remove Kanders are high and extend far beyond the art world,” the letter reads. “Alongside universities, cultural institutions like the Whitney are among the few spaces in public life today that claim to be devoted to ideals of education, creativity, and dissent beyond the dictates of the market.” (more…)

The European Parliament has called for EU freeports to be closed across the continent following a highly-critical report on tax evasion and money laundering this past week.  The report notes that freeports have become popular “for the storage of substitute assets, including art, precious stones, antiques, gold and wine collections–often on a permanent basis–and financed from unknown sources.” (more…)

Gagosian now represents artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Art News reports.  “It’s such a dream come true,” the artist says. “I mean, just having an art career—period—is a dream come true as far as I’m concerned.” (more…)

The Jewish Museum in Berlin, will no longer accept donations from the Sackler family, Art Newspaper reports, growing an increasingly large list of institutions not accepting funds from the institution.  “In 2002 we were not aware that OxyContin is subject to misuse,” a museum spokesperson says, referring to the last time the museum received funds from the Sacklers. “Returning the donation would also not be an option because we would have to use public funds to do that. We also feel that renaming would be an inappropriate attempt to disguise what happened. It would contradict the fact that we acted in good faith in 2002.” (more…)

Watercolors by William Blake that were sold by a Glasgow bookshop for £50 each and resold at Sotheby’s for over $6m will be shown in a Tate exhibition this autumn, Art Newspaper reports. The watercolors had been thought lost for 165 years before being found in a portfolio at the shop.  (more…)

The Shed is set to open in New York, a $500-million arts center designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with the Rockwell Group and focused around championing young and experimental artists. “There are many cultural institutions that are truly world-class in our town, but some of them tend to be about the past,” says Jonathan Tisch, the Shed’s vice chair. “The Shed is about, once again, the future.” (more…)

Matias Faldbakken, Untitled (2016), via Paula Cooper

Taking over Paula Cooper Gallery’s second floor exhibition space on W 21st Street, artist Matias Faldbakken is presenting a selection of new works, including a selection of sculptures from his Screen Overlaps series (2016) and FUEL SCULPTURES (2017), as well as an install of his piece THE INTERNET in the gallery’s vitrine space downstairs. On view through the end of the week, the show emphasizes Faldbakken’s unique engagement with history and politics through surreal arrangements of material. (more…)

Artist Lari Pittman is now represented by Lehmann Maupin, Art News reports. “Lari has developed a wholly unique mode of painting and mark-making that is in perfect company with artists in our program,” says David Maupin, one of the gallery’s founders. “Pittman’s embrace of pattern and design through a socio-political lens makes him stand out as a significant painter.” (more…)

Anish Kapoor has created a special artwork for The Guardian commenting on Brexit, rendering a massive gash cutting through the British Isles. “We’ve allowed ourselves as a nation to enter a space of unknowing,” he says. “I can’t help but see it in terms of a depressive self.”  (more…)

The Drawing Center has added dealers Valentina Castellani and Almine Ruiz-Picasso, filmmaker and collector Harry Tappan Heher, and financier and collector Jean-Edouard van Praet d’Amerloo as board members.   “All four of our new board members are revered and active participants in the international art community, and bring their precious expertise to an already exceptional and dedicated board,” says executive director Laura Hoptman. (more…)

Damien Hirst’s Demon with Bowl from his show in Venice at the Palazzo Grassi has gone on view at the Palms Hotel in Vegas, alongside a $1M party package in the suite the artist designed for the hotel.  (more…)

Philippe Parreno (Installation View), via Gladstone

Taking over the exhibition spaces at Gladstone Gallery’s 24th Street locations, artist Philippe Parreno once again transforms the space into a roving systemic experiment, setting up varied inputs and explorations to contribute to a shifting sensory experience. Dwelling on notions of interrelated systems and interactions of various elements, Parreno’s work centers around his film Anywhen In a Time Colored Space (2019) and the systems set up to facilitate its exhibition. (more…)

Art in America has a piece this week on the recent trend towards unionization in the art world, and the challenges workers face when trying to unionize. “Nonprofits tend to argue that they have less money and that unionization will wreck them,” says Maida Rosenstein, the president of Local 2110. “You see this especially with social services, but elsewhere, too. A place like the New Museum might also argue that unions are crude outsiders who can’t understand their values.”

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Phillips has announced that it will sell 95 works from the Fiterman collection at its various locations and sales over the next year.  The most valuable work in the group is a Roy Lichtenstein, Horse and Rider from 1976 that is estimated at $7-10m. (more…)

Christo has announced plans to install one of his famous wraps around Paris’s L’Arc de Triomphe. “Thirty-five years after Jeanne-Claude and I wrapped the Pont-Neuf, I am eager to work in Paris again to realize our project for the Arc de Triomphe,” he says.

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NADA will stage its own show on Governor’s Island during Frieze Week, opening NADA House as a 34-room exhibition in three houses on the island’s historic Colonels Row, including House 403, where it staged its first show on Governors Island, “Close Quarters,” last year. “We had such a good experience with the project we did there last summer, and we’re excited to be back for a longer run,” says executive director Heather Hubbs. “In the process of staging the project last year, we just learned so much about the island and its history. I thought that it could be something that artists would want to respond to.” (more…)

A piece in the Art Newspaper this week asks why the British Museum is still accepting money from Big Tobacco.  “The cigarette companies have never begged art museums to take their money—just the opposite is true,” says Alan Blum, the director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco & Society at the Univeristy of Alabama. “Arts organizations beat a path to Philip Morris and thus in my opinion should be considered full collaborators in the burnishing of the company’s image.” (more…)

The NYT has a piece this week on Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which was intended to anchor the collection of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, but which has not been seen since its purchase. “It is tragic,” says Dianne Modestini, a professor at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and a conservator who has worked on Salvator Mundi.  “To deprive the art lovers and many others who were moved by this picture — a masterpiece of such rarity — is deeply unfair.” (more…)

The NYT has a profile on Mary Boone this week, her rise to power, and her current jail sentence for tax evasion. “We used to say that Mary brought the uptown gallery downtown,” says Eric Fischl. “She knew she was showing artists whose work was going to become expensive, she knew the idea of bohemian SoHo was over, and she knew that the relationship the arts had to the media was changing, and that this element of glamour was going to be a part of the telling of the story of art and artist. For good or for worse.” (more…)

Mere hours after artist JR’s installation at The Louvre went on view, his paper covering over the museum’s glass pyramid has been torn to shreds. “The images, like life, are ephemeral,” he posted online about the damage to the work. “Once pasted, the art piece lives on its own. The sun dries the light glue and with every step, people tear pieces of the fragile paper. The process is all about participation of volunteers, visitors, and souvenir hunters.” (more…)