Tom Sachs, Waiting Arbor (2014), via Art Observed

For the first time in the museum’s history, an artist other than Isamu Noguchi will present work for the Noguchi Museum, as Tom Sachs brings his Tea Ceremony installation to the museum for its 30th Anniversary.  Sachs, who previously worked on other sprawling, conceptually-unified installation projects like Space Program 2.0: MARS, and Hello Kitty Nativity, here turns his interests towards chanoyu, the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.  Complete with a tea house, tools, and a garden, the exhibit features all the pieces necessary for the ceremony, each time realized through Sachs’s unique formal perspective.  Among the items incorporated within the installation include a bronze bonsai tree made by wielding together over 3,600 individual parts, a full koi pond complete with living orange and gray fish, wooden and metal gates, a full tea house, and many other structures made of everyday objects.

Tom Sachs, Pond Berm (2016), via Art Observed

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David Hammons, Untitled (2014), via Art Observed

When it was announced that Mnuchin Gallery would host an exhibition of artist David Hammons’s work this year, anticipation was understandably high.  The reclusive artist’s work is rarely given this expansive stage for historical examination and the contextual impact of his work.  Spread out across the gallery’s two-floor townhouse exhibition space, Five Decades examines just that, Hammons’s expansive and formally elusive career working at a unique juncture of the avant-garde. (more…)

Jessi Reaves, Muscle Chair (Laying down to talk) (2016), via Art Observed

Artist Jessi Reaves takes Bridget Donahue Gallery into the summer months with her show of new work, transposing the styles and forms of high design into the framework of fine art, and examining the interplay of languages that results.  Having opened in early April, the exhibition, comprised of vividly executed furniture, shelving and cabinets, “suitable for use,” as the press release states, sees Reaves pushing her chosen forms towards new territories, substituting hard angles and flat planes for loping, curving lines, or inverting the often concealed material elements of each form. (more…)

Online auction houses Paddle 8 and Auctionata are merging to form a single online auction company, the New York Times reports.  “We will be able to pick up an object and sell it quicker than anyone else in the world,” says Auctionata exec Alexander Zacke. (more…)

The Modigliani Sells, via Art Observed

After a long week of sales that has seen both ups and downs for the two main auction houses, Christie’s has concluded its week with a consistently solid Impressionist and Modern sale, with 7 of the 54 lots at auction going unsold for a final tally of $141,532,000.   The auction house saw its momentary stumbles over the course of the sale, with several pieces falling well below estimate, and a few high-profile lots going unsold.  Even so, Christie’s managed to keep the bids moving, and keep works selling, a point that surely is not lost on those watching Sotheby’s occasionally disheartening sale earlier this week. (more…)

The Guardian reports on Yves Klein’s years working as a picture framer in London, and the formative influence this work had on his practice, particularly in his work with pure pigments, gesso and gold leaf.  “To earn my living, I worked illegally for about a year in the Old Brompton Road frame shop of Robert Savage, a friend of my father,” Klein wrote of his time in the shop.  “It was there, assisting in the preparation of size, colors, varnish, of gilt bases, that I became familiar with the material, with handling it ‘in bulk’.” (more…)

The art collection of the former Shah of Iran will travel to Berlin, the first time the collection, which includes masterworks by Joan Miró, Andy Warhol, and Jackson Pollock, among others, is shown outside the country since 1979.  “A collection unique for its composition and history will be shown for says Hermann Parzinger, president of The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which manages most of Berlin’s state museums.

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The Warhol Museum has purchased one of Andy Warhol’s rare Paint by Numbers works, a piece that has long eluded the museum’s collection.  “That was in my top three list, along with a 40 by 40 ‘Marilyn’ and an early comic book painting,” Eric Shiner, the museum’s director, told the NYT. (more…)

An engineer who plummeted through a ceiling at the Philadelphia Museum of Art has won a $7.25 million settlement from the institution.  “It was the most terrifying moment of his life,” attorney Larry Bendesky told CBS Philadelphia. “It’s a more terrifying moment than most of us would ever be able to come to grips with.”  (more…)

The Turner Prize shortlist has been announced for 2016, The Guardian reports, counting Anthea Hamilton, Michael Dean, Helen Marten and Josephine Pryde among those who will show at the annual Turner Prize exhibition in competition for the £25,000 prize. (more…)

UCLA is in the late stages of planning for a $31 million expansion to its arts school, funded in large part by dealer Margo Leavin.  “Artists are the backbone of the community, so I wanted it to be something that would have a real impact on that,” Leavin said of her donation. (more…)

The BBC has a profile on Japanese collector Yusaku Maezawa, who purchased over $98 million in art this week from both Christie’s and Sotheby’s, including the record-setting Jean-Michel Basquiat.  “Regardless of its condition or sales value, I was driven by the responsibility to acknowledge great art and the need to pass on not only the artwork itself, but also the knowledge of the artist’s culture and his way of life to future generations,” he said of the purchase. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal looks at the increased focus on African Contemporary art, including the recently concluded 1:54 Art Fair in New York.  “For years we didn’t have many galleries, but artists were still making work that was brave and experimental—and now everyone can see that,” says Azu Nwagbogu, founder of LagosPhoto in Nigeria. (more…)

Mike Cooter, MacGuffin: some archetypes towards a definition (2016)

Swiss Institute’s Fade In: Int. Art Gallery-Day is a group exhibition featuring an ambitious array of contemporary artists, including Cindy Sherman, Allan McCollum, Christian Marclay, Dora Budor and Jamian Juliano-Villani, interpreting the ubiquitous relationship of moving images to the field of visual art. Comprised mostly of commissioned works, the exhibition transforms the gallery’s spacious interior into a vigorous stage, expanding outwards from the gallery entrance towards a deep corner of the storage room on the lower level. (more…)

Francois Morellet, via Art Newspaper

François Morellet, the pioneering French artist who explored interrelations of optical phenomena, light, space and performance, has passed away at the age of 90.   (more…)

Jeff Koons has unveiled a collaborative technology project with Google, a smart phone case that plays excerpts from Swan Lake, and transmits new graphics to the user’s phone each day.  “I’ve always enjoyed ballet,” Koons says. “I think that dance really captures nature and culture together. You have the biological aspect between people, movement, and bodies, and at the same time you are completely referencing also the classical.” (more…)

Ugo Rondinone has installed a massive, $3.5 million sculptural work in the Nevada desert.  “Seven Magic Mountains elicits continuities and solidarities between the artificial and the natural, between human and nature. What centers this amalgam of contradictions is the spiritual aspiration; one that bruises, elevates and transcends,” said Rondinone.   (more…)

A new world record set for Sam Francis tonight, via Art Observed

Another night of sales has come and gone at Sotheby’s, with an unexpectedly robust outing from the auction house that moved quickly through the 44-lot sale to a final total of $242,194,000.  The sale was a short but impressive affair, as the auction house’s early lots consistently beat out estimates in the early lots, and ultimately saw only a small handful of lots go unsold.  The sale makes for an impressive response to market alarmists and critics of the auction house, showing there seems to still be strong enthusiasm in the contemporary market. (more…)

Following in the footsteps of its larger neighbors uptown, the New Museum is embarking on an ambitious expansion, having already raised $43 million towards its $80 million capital campaign goal.  “We’ve known for a long time that we wanted an expansion, but we’ve been thinking about what an expansion means for a museum like this,” says Director Lisa Phillips. “We own the building next door, and it just makes sense to use it. But it was also about thinking about ways to create a parallel structure there, to make something that’s different and a counterpoint to this building.” (more…)

Online retailer Yusaku Maezawa has been identified as the buyer of the record-setting Basquiat last night at Christie’s, Bloomberg reports.  “The moment I first saw the painting at the auction preview, the piece overflowing with his passion and technique, I felt shivers all over my body,” Maezawa says. “Regardless of its condition or sales value, I was driven by the responsibility to acknowledge great art and the need to pass on not only the artwork itself, but also the knowledge of the artist’s culture and his way of life to future generations.” (more…)

An unemployed French mechanic has purchased a painting that may well be a lost early Renoir composition.  Ahmed Ziani bought the work for about $700, when research helped him identify the piece as Soir d’Eté, which the artist created when he was 23. (more…)

The Art Newspaper takes a second look at La Bella Principessa, the work attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci that forger Shaun Greenhalgh claims to have executed, and which continues to confound experts to this day.  “The silly season for Leonardo never closes,” argues Martin Kemp, the Oxford professor who has attributed the work to the Renaissance master.  “The story satisfies the public taste for ‘experts’ and the ‘art world elite’ being made to look ridiculous, but it is low on credibility. We are asked to believe that a self-taught 17-year-old was capable of such refined pen work and chalk drawing. His drawing has some lightweight decorative charm, but nowhere suggests that he could achieve this tautly descriptive line and subtly blended modeling.” (more…)

Thaddaeus Ropac is preparing to open his first gallery in London, the Evening Standard reports, soon to take over the home of the Mallett antiques dealership in Dover Square.  The site will be Ropac’s first in Britain. (more…)

The Tate’s attempts to keep the figures behind its BP sponsorship concealed suffered a setback today after Peter Lockley, counsel for the information commissioner, stated that the museum had not used its confidentiality clause properly, but instead was using it to avoid scrutiny.  “If this is not contracting out [responsibility] to [the Freedom of Information Act], it is only a hair’s breadth away from it,” Locksley said. (more…)