Sean Kelly Gallery will feature a unique booth at this year’s edition of Frieze New York, interviewing collectors for a podcast on collecting and the market.  “This is about taking it back to the origins of the art world and why we all originally did this,” says Kelly. “It’s about supporting artists. It’s about asking questions about the ecosystem of the whole endeavor” and “moving into a future that benefits artists, collectors and institutions.” (more…)

David Simpson, Blue to Yellow Air (1967), via Haines Gallery

The hustle and bustle of the spring art season has fallen over New York, and the anticipation is building for this year’s edition of Frieze New York, set to open its doors in just a few days at its annual haunt at Randall’s Island.  This year, as the fair reaches its seventh edition, some adjustments and tweaks to the schedule will look to expand the fair’s offerings and appeal in an increasingly crowded circuit. (more…)

Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Your Place or Mine… (Installation View), via Jewish Museum

Given Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s works are in many ways “sites” unto themselves, it can be easy to forget that the pieces themselves are also site-specific. In turn, New York’s Jewish Museum seems like the perfect space for Chaimowicz’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States, given its prior history as a family home, yet that equally omits some credit due still to Chaimowicz. The crown moldings and wood floors and banisters that make the space familiar have become part of his narrative here, yet each gallery is made distinct, and the intimate effect of his works would result even working within a white-cube gallery space.  This exchange between site and space, artistic inclination and the fluid acts of design are at the center of this show. (more…)

Bloomberg asks whether a volatile stock market might actually be a boon for the art market, as collectors look for more stable sites for investment. “In my experience, when the market goes up and down, up and down, that’s good for art,” says dealer Christophe Van de Weghe. “Over the last 30 years, volatility has been very good for us dealers, because that’s when people want to buy a hard asset.”  (more…)

David Zwirner proposed a tax structure of sorts for large galleries this week during a talk in Berlin this week, arguing for a tax on larger galleries at fairs and events to help pay for access for smaller galleries. “I do feel that something is wrong with the current system,” he said. “It’s not good that a few galleries are getting more and more market share and the younger galleries are having a harder time to compete.” (more…)

Maria Lassnig, New York Films: 1970 – 1980 (Installation View), via Art Observed

Following the passing of renowned Austrian artist Maria Lassnig, a body of new films was unearthed from the artist’s estate, pieces that marked a continuation and elaboration of her unique and exploratory approach to the human form and its movements. This body of films has traveled to New York this month, following a close collaboration between the Maria Lassnig Foundation and the Austrian Film Musuem to execute an attentive and exacting restoration, resulting in their presentation as Maria Lassnig: New York Films 1970–1980 at MoMA PS1. (more…)

Lorna Simpson, Five Properties (2018), via Hauser & Wirth

Marking her first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth London with a body of new works, artist Lorna Simpson’s Unanswerable features new and recent paintings, photographic collages and sculpture.  Continuing the artist’s pioneering approach to conceptual photography, which features powerful juxtapositions of text and staged images, often bringing into question the nature of representation, identity, gender, race and history, the show is a fitting reintroduction to Simpson’s work for a broader audience, and one that marks the continued impact and importance of her practice today.  (more…)

Thomas Dane Gallery now represents Dana Schutz, Art News reports. Schutz will have her first show with the gallery in October 2019 in London.  (more…)

The New York Times explores the recent trend in museum curating towards “transhistorical” exhibitions, pairing contemporary works with pieces from deeper into the art historical canon. “What it is trying to do is to say that history lives,” says Sheena Wagstaff, chairwoman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary art department. (more…)

Firehouse, Engine Company 31, a historic fire station in Lower Manhattan will host “Bring Down the Walls,” a new project by Creative Time that will mix workshops and exhibitions each day with live performances and DJ nights each night.  (more…)

Eva Rothschild will represent Ireland at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Ireland’s Minister of Culture, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht has announced.  “My intention is to make a sculptural environment which engages with current social changes through embodiment, presence, and materiality,” Rothschild says. “I want to create a situation that suggests multiple sculptural possibilities for rearrangement and reordering in which it becomes difficult to distinguish renewal from collapse.” (more…)

The Documenta exhibition has appointed executive Sabine Schormann, formerly of of Lower Saxony’s Sparkasse bank and the foundation of VGH insurance, as its new CEO. “I see my role as an enabler. I want to strengthen public perception and ensure the greatest possible development of Documenta without intervening artistically,” Schormann says.

(more…)

The Tate has announced its shortlist for the 2018 Turner Prize, including Forensic Architecture, Naeem Mohaiemen, Charlotte Prodger and Luke Willis Thompson in its list of nominees.  The winner of the £25,000 prize of the will be announced in December. “Following a thoughtful and rigorous debate, this year’s jury has chosen an outstanding group of artists, all of whom are tackling the most pressing political and humanitarian issues of today,” says Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain. “This shortlist highlights how important the moving image has become in exploring these debates.”

(more…)

The New York Times has a piece on Berlin this week, spotlighting the city’s long history as a home for artists and liberal-minded thinkers. “There are big spaces, like TriBeCa and SoHo in the old days,” says painter Sean Scully, who keeps a studio in the city. “It reminds me of that.” (more…)

Julian Opie is featured in The Guardian this week, with the artist reviewing recent works and their processes.  “Making art is a fairly odd decision, but people have been doing it since for ever,” he says. “If doodling while on the phone I’m inclined to draw a 3D cube and then another. It’s the fastest way to create imaginary space, another world. I live in London and move through a labyrinth of extruded rectangles like an ant on a computer board. I understand space and see movement by the changing views on these shapes. By simply adding flat squares to the sides of my extruded rectangles I create modern buildings.” (more…)

Sotheby’s will set a new world auction record with Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (sur le côté gauche) at this month’s Impressionist and Modern Sale in New York, with an estimate of more than $150 million. The figure is the highest estimate ever placed on a work of art, and has already been confirmed as a record breaker. “This painting reimagines the nude for the modern era,” says Simon Shaw, the co-head worldwide of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art department. (more…)

A piece in the New York Times this week notes the increased focus by museums towards Latinx artists.  “We’re at a really important point in history where plural curatorial voices can show not just a survey,” says Marcela Guerrero, who was recently hired as the Whitney’s first curator specializing in Latinx artists. “We can now go deeper and start unpacking what Latino art really is.” (more…)

Anicka Yi is interviewed in Frieze this week, discussing her practice and what she sees as the next steps for women in the arts. “In general, I learned fairly early on that cisgender, straight-identifying females tend to not help other women,” she says of her early experience in the arts. “It’s not even a conscious malicious act, in most instances. It’s a deep conditioning that somehow distancing yourself from the perceived ‘weaker pack’, with all its attendant baggage, might advance your uniqueness as an individual, making you less prone to be judged as a ‘vulnerable woman’.” (more…)

Cristian Valsecchi will will take over as manager of the Fondazione Prada, Art News reports. Valsecchi is currently secretary general of Fondazione Torino Musei and Associazione dei Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani (AMACI), and formerly served as a professor of economics for arts and culture at the University of Bergamo. (more…)

LACMA’s annual Collectors Committee Weekend resulted in an unprecedented acquisition of women artists, with new works purchased by Martha Boto, Betye Saar, Jennifer Bartlett and Julie Mehretu, as well as a sculpture by Ruth Asawa. (more…)

Doug Aitken, New Era (Installation View), via Art Observed

Walking into the shadowy depths of 303 Gallery this month, viewers are confronted with an almost completely destabilizing series of visuals.  Huge explosions of color and line expand out from the center of television screens placed in the pitch-black space, swirling movements and patterns created by arrangements of various technologic peripherals and paraphernalia.  Accentuated by the hall of mirrors the artist has constructed inside the gallery space, the video creates a alienating effect, the feeling of being awash in technologic constructs we are inventing faster than we can fully comprehend their effects on communication, knowledge or expression. (more…)

Mark (Installation View), via Team Gallery

The word “mark” takes the center stage in Team Gallery’s ongoing group exhibition, featuring works by Erica Baum, Louise Fishman, Suzanne McClelland, Shannon Ebner, and Al Loving. Aptly and simply titled mark, the exhibition gathers a group of two dimensional works in print and painting that loosely investigate the impact of visual culture on personal and collective memory. Initiated through varied linguistic and social traits of the word finding to its current use and connotations in modern English, the various approaches here explore differing meanings of the “mark,” each of which serve as tactics to examine societal codings of information, ethics, and culture. (more…)

Peter Halley, Barbara Bloom, Ashley Bickerton, Joan Wallace and Jeff Koons get together for a piece in the New York Times this week, dining at Katz’s and discussing the 80’s scene downtown. “SoHo had this hierarchy and the gallery structure, but when all these artists opened these fresh, young galleries, there was no hierarchy there,” Koons says of spaces in the Lower East Side. “It was really about showing exciting works. Things weren’t set up as business-oriented. I went through some of the SoHo galleries, but I was never completely accepted there. And as outsiders we finally had a place where we were embraced.” (more…)

The Tate is looking to appoint its first trustee to represent the interests of people aged 16-25, and will lower prices for younger visitors, the Art Newspaper reports. Tate head Maria Balshaw is reportedly seeking “a cultural entrepreneur and digital native” to help represent the interests of a new generation at the museum. (more…)