Artist Yoko Ono is selling a Basquiat painting from her collection at Sotheby’s upcoming Post-War and Contemporary Sales this November in New York, Bloomberg reports. The work is presented as a tribute to boxer Muhammad Ali, and is expected to fetch upwards of $12 million. (more…)

A group of experts have released an opinion this week that Leonardo da Vinci may have painted a nude version of the Mona Lisa, the Telegraph reports. Researchers point to the artist’s work Joconde Nue as bearing a striking similarity to the sitter in Da Vinci’s famed portrait. “The drawing has a quality in the way the face and hands are rendered that is truly remarkable. It is not a pale copy,” says curator Mathieu Deldicque. “We are looking at something which was worked on in parallel with the Mona Lisa at the end of Leonardo’s life.”  (more…)

Art Basel has agreed to continue its programing at the Miami Beach Convention Center for another five years, extending its residency at the site through 2023. The Convention Center will add a series of additional renovations to its space as part of the deal. “This agreement is comparable to locking in the Super Bowl for five years,” Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine said in a statement. (more…)

Frieze London, via Art Observed

The flagship event of London’s bustling art week, Frieze London opens this week at Regent’s Park, opening the month of October with one of the fall’s largest art fair events around the globe. Bringing over 160 galleries from around the globe to the fair’s grounds, the fair will turn 15 years old this year, looking back on its run as an increasingly vital part of the international art circuit, and one of the main players in the shifting landscape of the art market’s move towards more temporary, globally distributed events. (more…)

The Tate Modern’s most recent installation project, a massive swing set built by Danish Collective Superflex, gets a profile in The Guardian this week, emphasizing its attempts at encouraging reflection through social interaction.  “We’ve made sure the carpet is very thick so it is extremely comfortable, you can rest,” says Superflex member Rasmus Nielsen. “You can come here and take a nap.” (more…)

Los Angeles’s Institute of Contemporary Art gets a profile in the LA Times this week, showcasing the institution’s new exhibition space downtown and its vision for the future. “We have an important program that’s different from a collector’s museum or a collecting museum or a smaller organization,” says director Elsa Longhauser. “People are so interested in having cultural experiences—there’s a hunger—and I don’t think you can have too many.” (more…)

A pair of missing Henri Matisse cut-outs valued at $4.5 million sit at the center of a claim in France, with the artist’s heirs claiming the works disappeared while in storage and showed up at a sale at Sotheby’s in 2008. The lawsuit was filed “out of respect for the artist, because many were never intended for commercial sale, and finally for the integrity of the art market,” according to the artist’s great-grandson, Georges Matisse. (more…)

Amy Yao, Foreign Investments (Good Ramen) (2017), via Art Observed

For the last several years, the artists represented by 47 Canal have stood at the forefront of contemporary sculpture. It is easy to see the influence of artists like Josh Kline, Anicka Yi, and Amy Yao when looking at the work of younger artists exhibiting at galleries like Hotel Art Pavilion and Real Fine Arts, and their investigations of materials inextricable from the landscape of modernity makes them a distinctly notable entry in the evolution of New York’s arts history.  Amy Yao, who splits her time between Los Angeles and New York, brings her work back to 47 Canal this month with her new exhibition, Weeds of Indifference. Though Yao has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Oslo, and Paris within the last two years, Weeds… is her first solo show in NYC since 2013. In that interval, Yao’s work has lost none of its bite, but that is not to say that things are still the same.

(more…)

Hélio Oiticica, P15 Parangolé Cape 11, I Embody Revolt (P15 Parangolé Capa 11, Eu Incorporo a Revolta) worn by Nildo of Mangueira, 1967. Courtesy of César and Claudio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro. © César and Claudio Oiticica. Photograph by Claudio Oiticica

One of the most innovative artists and thinkers of the past century, Hélio Oiticica is currently being honored with an in-depth survey that breaks down key moments and artistic endeavors from the artist’s short but impressive career at the Whitney Museum of American Art. From his early days as part of the Neo-Concrete movement in his native Brazil to his time in New York’s East Village during the 1970s’, Oiticica’s inventive practice unfolds in sequences and segments throughout To Organize a Delirium, offering the audience a nuanced and participatory experience that exceeds traditional limits of art viewing experience, a point that strengthens his own conceptual engagement with art itself. (more…)

Artist Brian Belott is selling a body of works at museums across the city this weekend, pricing the works at arbitrary price points from 5¢ to $5,000, with the funds going towards his upcoming Performa project. “We expect to be kicked out of museums pretty quickly,” says curator Jens Hoffman. (more…)

Pierre Huyghe, After ALife Ahead (2017), via Art Observed

Placing monumental works and nuanced environmental engagements across the city of Münster once each decade, the Skulptur Projekte touched down in the city again this summer,  spreading its wings over the German city for its fifth edition. Offering yet another take on the massively-scaled European art festivals, biennials and other curated events, Münster’s entry in this summer’s calendar is noteworthy in its engagement with the city itself. Embracing the location-sensitive capabilities of sculpture and public art, Skulptur Projekte welcomes meditations on what art might be capable of when inserted into the fabric of daily life, presenting a city where nuanced, conceptually-rich pieces of art can be encountered and experienced at almost any turn. (more…)

The Nuevo Museo, a small, egg-shaped exhibition space from Guatemala City has arrived in Los Angeles, and is currently installed outside of LACMA. “Our interest is in giving visibility to others,” says founder Stefan Benchoam, “a balance of Guatemalan artists and international artists who would resonate locally.”  (more…)

MoMA’s associate director Kathy Halbreich is leaving the museum to lead the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the NYT reports. “It’s a foundation focused on doing the best for artists,” she says. “The more I learned, the more perfect the match felt as my next chapter.” (more…)

As Grand Rapids, Michigan’s annual ArtPrize event gears up for another year, artists are responding to the event’s ties to the DeVos Family, who helped fund the early years of the event. “People try to pin ideologies onto ArtPrize but it’s really about open access to public space and free expression,” says exhibition director Kevin Buist. “There’s this persistent myth that anyone involved is in ideological lock step with one another. That’s completely untrue.” (more…)

Simon Sakhai and Aya Mousawi, founders of the itinerant Moving Museum project, will join Art Basel’s new Cities initiative as consulting strategists. “In so many respects, Art Basel Cities was the opportunity to explore all of the same themes and questions we were trying to answer with the Moving Museum, but on a much bigger scale, and the mobilization of so many additional stakeholders beyond what was possible in our own capacity,” Sakhai says. (more…)

Andeas Schulze, Vacanze 15 (2016)

While today painting may often present draw critique as something of an exhausted genre, Cologne-based painter Andreas Schulze‘s surreal arrangements of bodies in space always manage to serve up a convincing protest.  This contrarian approach is perhaps best seen at Team Gallery where Schulze has arranged a series of smoky, slender depictions of beachgoers, bearing the apropos title Vacanze 365. Focusing particularly on torsos and pelvises, the painter captures vacationers sporting different types of beach attire in catchy patterns and bright colors, carrying smoke dispensers emerging as puffy clouds from belt-like stripes on waistlines. The gallery walls—covered in bright blue with traceable painterly gestures—bear an efficiently immersive installation, playing each work’s spry bodies against the soaring walls, with works hanging in untraditional angles in proximities to the ceiling. (more…)

The New York Times profiles Yayoi Kusama’s newly opened museum in Tokyo, and the artist’s push to preserve her legacy as one of Japan’s foremost Post-war artists. “Until now, I was the one who went overseas,” she says. “But I now recognize that there are more people coming to Japan to come to see my work.  And that is why I decided to establish a place for them to see my work.” (more…)

Having just pulled works from a show on Chinese conceptualism, the Guggenheim is now facing harsh criticism over giving in to protests. “When an art institution cannot exercise its right for freedom of speech, that is tragic for a modern society,” artist Ai Weiwei said of the occurrence. “Pressuring museums to pull down artwork shows a narrow understanding about not only animal rights but also human rights.” (more…)

Bowing to a wave of criticism, the Guggenheim will remove three works from its show on Chinese conceptualism.  The pieces, which featured live animals, draw strong condemnation over their use of live animals. “Although these works have been exhibited in museums in Asia, Europe and  the United States, the Guggenheim regrets that explicit and repeated threats of violence have made our decision necessary,” the museum said in a statement. “As an arts institution committed to presenting a multiplicity of voices, we are dismayed that we must withhold works of art. Freedom of expression has always been and will remain a paramount value of the Guggenheim.” (more…)

Gavin Brown’s Enterprise will host a fundraiser event to benefit the recovery efforts in Puerto Rico. “What can we do?” it said in a statement. “We need to pool together resources to rebuild the island as soon as possible. Each of us has to put our talents to use towards the goal of getting Puerto Rico back on its feet again.” (more…)

The New York Times has a profile on Thelma Golden this week, as the Studio Museum head steers the institution towards its new home on 125th Street. “What she has done is to simultaneously foreground the Harlem-ness in Studio Museum but also enabled it to become a national institution,” says MoMA Director Glenn Lowry. (more…)

Joanne Carson, via Art Observed

As the month of September nears its conclusion, the 11th year of Bushwick Open Studios returned to Brooklyn this past weekend, with artists around the neighborhood opening the doors to their project studios, galleries, rehearsal spaces and even their homes to intrepid viewers. Presenting a broad look at the city’s young and practicing artists in their native environment, this year offered a series of surprises and strong works that once again underscored the fair’s reputation as a first-hand look at the Bushwick art scene in close focus. (more…)

Frieze Art Fair has named Loring Randolph its new artistic director of the Americas. Randolph joins the fair after serving as a longtime partner at Casey Kaplan in New York. “I have participated for many years in Frieze Art Fairs as an exhibitor and my perspective in this regard offers some unique insights into my new role,” Randolph says. “Frieze is a progressive organization that is poised for growth, and I greatly look forward to working with my colleagues—the array of world-class galleries, curators, writers and collectors that partner with the Frieze fairs—to present an unparalleled experience at Frieze in the quality of gallery presentations by today’s most significant international artists.” (more…)

The New York Times has a piece on challenging works of contemporary art that decay and break apart, presenting unique challenges for collectors and conservators. ‘‘Contemporary art’s job is to wreck, to ruin what came before,’’ artist and director John Waters says of such demanding work. (more…)