Martine Syms is now represented by Sadie Coles HQ, the Art News reports.  The announcement comes after Syms capped her first exhibition at MoMA this summer. “Syms is original and dynamic, and has already earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humor, and social commentary,” a spokesperson for the gallery says. “Having experienced the work during Donahue’s presentation last year as part of London’s Condo gallery-swap scheme, we found Martine and her work compelling, sophisticated, and profound.” (more…)

Monika Sosnowska, Façade (2016), via Art Observed

Taking over one of the multiple large-scale exhibition spaces at Hauser & Wirth’s cavernous complex in downtown Los Angeles, artist Monika Sosnowska offers an interestingly nuanced exploration of modernist architectural convention for her first solo show in the Californian metropolis. Spreading her twisted steel sculptures and varied spatial interventions throughout the gallery, Sosnowska’s body of work marks a negotiation between the historical landscapes and political structures of her home country of Poland, writ large against the gallery’s ample halls. (more…)

The ICA Los Angeles is set to open its doors this fall in a former garment factory in downtown Los Angeles, the Art Newspaper reports. “The primary thing we’d like to achieve as an institution is to make this feel like a welcoming space for a public that might otherwise feel intimidated,” says curator, Jamillah James. (more…)

The Chicago Tribune takes a tour of Marisol, the new restaurant inside Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The space, named after the famed French-Venezuelan sculptor Maria Sol Escobar, features a massive mural by Chris Ofili. “We want (Marisol) to be a space where people come together,” says chef Jason Hammel. “If people walk around upstairs or go to a performance at the theater, they want a place to hang out afterwards and talk.” (more…)

Government proposals to close London’s art and antiques crime squad are being met with harsh criticism, the Art Newspaper reports. “We are right to fear it will face closure,” says Richard Ellis, former head of the Metropolitan police’s art and antiques crime unit, noting “too many temporary postings becoming permanent” after similar proposed budget cuts. (more…)

The Brooklyn Museum has appointed Jennifer Y. Chi as the institution’s new deputy director and chief curator, Artforum reports. “I am excited to partner with Jennifer,” says Director Anne Pasternak. “She is not only a renowned scholar and curator, but also a creative thinker, whose drive and entrepreneurial skills will be a great boon to our efforts in expanding our curatorial activities.” (more…)

Maureen Gallace, Clear Day (Installation View), via Art Observed

Painter Maureen Gallace has brought an expansive look at her painterly practice to MoMA PS1 this summer, opening an exhibition cataloguing the artist’s long-running engagement with the rural American landscape, and the pastoral language that underwrites it as a source for constant reinvention.  Pulling together a dizzying selection of the artist’s work, the exhibition offers an opportunity to trace these recurrent ideas and concepts through a wide swath of the artist’s work, bringing the viewer into an extended engagement with both her formal language, and the subject itself. (more…)

London gallerist Laura Bartlett is closing her space in London, which she has run for the past 12 years. “I have had the pleasure to work with an incredible group of artists over the years and I am happy to announce that I will continue these collaborations as an advisor to international collections, working on private and public commissions and towards a more fluid exhibition programming model,” she wrote in an online statement. (more…)

Painter Sean Scully is featured in the New York Times’s ‘Show Us Your Wall’ piece, showcasing some of the works from his collection including Walker Evans photographs and pieces by Damien Hirst. “I’m not trying to make a collection. It’s just making itself,” he says. “I’m quite a social person, quite a communicator, and I like to have the work of other people around. And occasionally I want to buy something that I want to look at for a long time.” (more…)

David Hockney is profiled in the New York Times this week, as the artist turns 80 years old, and reflects back on his life as a painter, and his relentless desire to challenge and reinvigorate the medium.“To hell with the idea of a single vanishing point,” he says during the course of the interview. (more…)

Lévy Gorvy will open an office in Shanghai, the Art News reports, with former Christie’s employee Danqing Li heading up operations. “We are delighted to welcome Danqing Li to our international team,” co-founder, Brett Gorvy, said in a statement. “Having worked with her for many years in Asia during my tenure at Christie’s, I have always admired the depth of her knowledge and her unique sensitivity not only to art but to the cross-cultural connections it creates. It’s an honor to welcome her to the Lévy Gorvy family.” (more…)

Casey Kaplan Gallery is now representing artist Matthew Ronay, who moves from the closing Andrea Rosen Gallery. The artist’s work in ceramics and wood draw on an abstract formal language recalling West Coast sculpture in the 1960’s and 70’s.  (more…)

The Louvre Abu Dhabi will open its doors on November 11th, with President Emmanuel Macron expected to visit for the institution’s opening ceremony. “We are finally going to leave the realms of the imaginary and discover not only the architectural design of Jean Nouvel, but the content of a new museum, conceived under a bilateral agreement that makes it an absolutely unique creation”, says Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez. (more…)

Ruberta, the collaborative Los Angeles gallery project undertaken by a quintet of Latin American dealers, is profiled in Art News this week, before it opens next week. “We joke now that Ruberta is the Wu-Tang Clan of galleries,” the Mexico City-based dealer and gallery founder Brett W. Schultz says in a statement. (more…)

Wood from artist Sam Durant’s controversial piece Scaffold will be buried, according to the ruling of Dakota elders committee. “The wood has a spiritual nature that is inherent to itself in Lakota Dakota tradition,” says Ronald P. Leith, a member of the Dakota elders committee. “Of the four elements — fire, water, air, earth — you cannot use any of the elements in a disparaging fashion without putting yourself in a position of being disrespectful. To use fire to burn this wood that has a negative stigma attached to it — that is not allowed.” (more…)

The New York Times has a piece this week on the continued efforts of The Met to rebuild following the ouster of Thomas P. Campbell.  The piece speculates on potential new Directors for the museum, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Anne d’Harnoncourt. “It would come as no surprise that Anne d’Harnoncourt might have been considered for this position,” Norman Keyes, a Philadelphia Museum spokesman said of this potentiality. “However, we have had no knowledge that such an offer was actually made and would be surprised in any case if she would have taken it. She was deeply committed to Philadelphia, and proved this time and again over a period of many years.” (more…)

Fifteen stolen paintings and drawings by Georg Baselitz, valued at around $2.9 million, have been recovered by German authorities. An unnamed suspect in the shipping industry was apprehended this week, resulting in the return of the works. (more…)

Constantin Brancusi gets a lengthy spotlight in the Wall Street Journal this week, documenting the artist’s enduring influence on the landscape of contemporary art, and the impact of the United States on the artist’s work. “If it hadn’t been for the Americans, I would have starved,” Brancusi once wrote. (more…)

Artist Robert Longo is preparing a monumental public work, American Bridge Project, which will cover a pair of walkways at Hunter College uptown with the artist’s vivid drawings of the American flag. “It was really difficult to figure out what would work from a distance,” he says of the project. “It’s like these slivers of images; they slice the sky. And bridges are metaphorically something we need politically more than ever.” (more…)

Artist duo Gilbert & George get a profile in the Financial Times this week, with the pair looking back on their career, and their approach to their work. “We believe in making money and industry,” says Gilbert at one point. “I’m interested in being a normal person who wants to make money and [sell] our stuff.” (more…)

A rediscovered Francis Bacon painting from the artist’s series of “pope” paintings will feature as a star lot at Christie’s fall sale in London, the Telegraph reports. The painting is considered quite rare, and expected to sell for upwards of £10 million. (more…)

As the Barbican prepares a major exhibition of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Guardian looks back at the artist, his career, and his early death. “I knew when I met him that he was beyond the normal,” says musician and film-maker Michael Holman. “Jean-Michel had his faults, he was mischievous, he had certain things about him that could be called amoral, but setting that aside, he had something that I’m sure he had from the moment he was born. It was like he was born fully realized, a realized being.” (more…)

Hannah Levy, Untitled (2016), via Art Observed

Currently on view at MoMA PS1 for the museum’s spring and summer season, Past Skin draws on a nuanced understanding of modern man, dwelling on both changing conceptions of the body and body politics in conjunction with the modes of information dissemination, networked culture and physical architecture that have created a more nuanced assemblage of forms and functions in modernity.  Drawing heavily on the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, the show, organized by Jocelyn Miller, pulls the human form into the swarms of data modern life is embedded within, and explores how this position has subtly changed the human relationship to the world around us. (more…)

Following several years of fierce debate, Italy is relaxing its strict export laws on art, particularly on post-war work.  Some have stated that the move will vastly charge the market, as “works made in the 1950s and early 1960s were not easily exportable,” according to dealer Luigi Mazzoleni. (more…)