The Brooklyn Museum has its own collection engagement, allowing visitors to pose questions about works in real-time to an Audience Engagement Team, and receive quick answers on the history and background of each work.  “ASK uses a very simple mechanism of asking a question and leveraging engagement, so we can learn more about how visitors are experiencing the Museum. This is helping our curators see what’s working and where we could be making refinements for better clarity,” says Shelley Bernstein, Vice Director of Digital Engagement and Technology. (more…)

The Guggenheim has broken off negotiations with the Gulf Labor Coalition, Hyperallergic reports, ending its attempts at reconciling poor working conditions and reported abuses at the museum’s work site in Abu Dhabi.  “Gulf Labor continues to shift its demands on the Guggenheim beyond the reach of our influence as an arts institution while continuing to spread mistruths about the project and our role in it,” Director Richard Armstrong said in an email today. (more…)

A survey article in Financial Times sounds the warning over abuses in the art market, citing Clare McAndrew’s annual report to TEFAF as indicative of increasingly lax regulations over provenance and ethical standards for the sale of work.  “Large sums are involved and are often negotiated through agents without the ultimate purchaser being known, for an asset that is easily portable,” adds Robert Barrington, executive director at Transparency International. (more…)

Ann Freedman has broken her silence on the charges and accusations over the Knoedler Gallery fraud scandals, giving a lengthy interview with The Art Newspaper, including speculations on how she may have been manipulated by Galfira Rosales.  “I asked her questions that made her figure out [a credible name to include in the provenance],” Freedman says. “I was a perfect mark, so I’m told, and my research helped them figure out their own scheme.” (more…)

Mona Hatoum is interviewed in The Guardian this week, reflecting on her views of the artoworld, her own practice, and her career.  “I don’t really understand what ambition means. I take things one piece at a time,” she says.  “I’m excited about working on something, that’s all. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, and I still don’t.  I don’t know if I think in terms of a career. I don’t have a strategy. It’s just the next show.” (more…)

Fischli/Weiss, Rat and Bear (Sleeping) (2008), via Art Observed

The Guggenheim has opened its doors to Swiss collaborative Fischli/Weiss for the retrospective show How to Work Better, exploring the pair’s lighthearted, often satirical manipulations of reality and art history through their unique modes of creation. (more…)

Qiu Xiaofei, Vortex (2015), all photos via Rui Tang for Art Observed

Double Pendulum, the first solo exhibition of Qiu Xiaofei in North America, is currently on view at Pace Gallery on 510 West 25^th Street. Showcasing a group of new paintings, the exhibition presents the artist’s transition towards an abstract expression through a range of colors that complicate the relationships between foreground and background. (more…)

Hernan Bas, Champagne Corks Bobbed in the Pool That Morning, 2016

Bright Young Things is Lehmann Maupin’s ongoing exhibition for a new body of work by Detroit and Miami-based painter Hernan Bas.  Amongst the most particular and earnest contemporary figurative painters, Bas has established himself over the past years as a craftsman of distinctive visual narratives, in which the lavish and relentlessly indulgent daily life of western aristocracy meets the styles of mannerist painting, employing passionate color spectrums and surreal architectural forms. (more…)

Raoul De Keyser, Bern-Berlin hangend (2012), via Art Observed

Compiling a selection of works from the career of Belgian painter Raoul De Keyser, David Zwirner’s exhibition Drift is a notably rich entry in the gallery’s relation with the late artist.  Mixing a series of late works from just before his death in 2012 with a series of pieces working on a longer scale across his career from the 1990’s onward, the show is a subdued, yet rewarding offering, allowing the artist’s variations in interest and technique to converse across several decades. (more…)

Hollywood Agent Ari Emanuel’s WME-IMG has confirmed that is investing in the British art fair and publishing brand Frieze, and will advise on more effectively incorporating digital strategies into their offering for clients.  “We will be able to create better value not only for our galleries but also for our sponsors and their broader business goals,” says co-founder Amanda Sharp. (more…)

David Hammons’s Stone Head has been removed from the artist’s Mnuchin Gallery exhibition for Christie’s May 8th curated sale in New York, estimated at $800,000 to $1.2 million.  The move is “nothing very unusual, the Mnuchin show is a commercial show,” says sale curator Loic Gouzer.   (more…)

The WSJ looks at artist Cornelia Parker’s Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) installation on the roof of The Met, a careful re-creation of the house from the Hitchcock classic Psycho, built from materials harvested from a barn upstate.  “It’s two objects together. One is a fictional object, which is the ‘Psycho’ house, and the other is a real thing, which is the barn,” Parker says. “It’s all fake but all real at the same time.”

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Massive renovations to the Pergamon Museum has sent a selection of 73 Hellenistic artworks and artifacts to The Met for a rare exhibition set to open next week.  We lent very, very liberally, “ says Dr. Andreas Scholl, the director of the Staatliche, which oversees the Pergamon. (more…)

The U.S. Senate has voted to ban the importation of any Syrian art and artifacts, following months of delay and debate on U.S. action.  “The lack of action has kept the United States market open to the import of Syrian antiquities, making it a potential source of funding for extremist organizations,” a task force report on the issue reads. (more…)

As the Art Cologne fair opens today in Germany, The Art Newspaper looks at the shadow cast by The Kulturgutschutzgesetz (Cultural Assets Protection Law), which will make the sale and export of high-valued art works from Germany increasingly difficult. (more…)

Glenn Ligon, What We Said The Last Time (Installation View), all images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed.

Artist Glenn Ligon has embarked on an ambitious exhibition schedule this spring, showing at both New York locations for Luhring Augustine this month.  The show, which closes next week, runs through a range of Ligon’s body of work.   What We Said The Last Time is the Chelsea leg of a two part exhibition, and sees the influential multimedia artist commemorating the literary work of James Baldwin, whose writings had tremendous impact on many other authors and artists. (more…)

The Art News notes Christie’s sales announcement for Basquiat’s Untitled (Devil) 1982, a work the publication speculates may smash the artist’s $48.8 million auction record, and which is likely being sold from the collection of Adam Lindemann.   (more…)

Elmgreen and Dragset have been tapped as curators for the 2017 Istanbul Biennial.  “In light of the current global geopolitical situation, in which we’re experiencing a new rise of nationalism, it will be important for us to curate a biennial based on collaborative efforts and processes,” the artists said.  “Collaboration is something that feels natural to us, since we have been working together as an artist duo for more than twenty years. A biennial can be a platform for dialogue, and a format in which diverse opinions, perspectives, and communities can coexist.” (more…)

The National Portrait Gallery in London and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona are co-organizing a show of Picasso portraiture, set to open late this year.  “Picasso is variant to many of the painters in the NPG who were paid to paint historic figures as he painted his entourage without commissions. But there are recurring strategies of classic portraiture in Picasso’s work,” says curator Elizabeth Cowling. “It was my aim to display the different modes of Picasso’s portraits but also their relationship to the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery.” (more…)

The New York Times reports on Magnus this week, a smart-phone app designed to recognize paintings and artists through photographing and analyzing their work with special recognition software.  The app also bundles in price information and data on the artist’s representation and provenance.  “A lot of people are left out of the market who have the potential to buy,” says founder Magnus Resch. “The No. 1 reason for this is the lack of transparency.” (more…)

A pair of monumental Jackson Pollock works will be reunited at the Royal Academy’s landmark show on abstract-expressionism.  “In a sense the time has now come, the monographic displays have been made, now it is time to put it all together,” says Tim Marlow, RA director of exhibitions.  (more…)

Oscar Murillo was deported from Australia last month, after the artist destroyed his British passport in the middle of a flight to Sydney.  The destruction was in protest the privileges afforded certain Western societies.  “The action of destroying the passport was to create a blockage situation, to create the point in which I am no longer that individual,” Murillo told a French journalist.  “I gave a proposal, I went and made a proposal with a curator, and we were both really happy with it. At the same time, I was feeling uncomfortable because, despite the agenda for the biennale, which wanted to propose a strong situation, there seemed to be a lot of conservative attitudes toward allowing an artist to be really freely expressive.” (more…)

Rhizome has announced the participants for this year’s edition of its annual Seven on Seven conference, including artist and lecturer Hito Steyerl collaborating with Grant Olney Passmore, cofounder, Aesthetic Integration; and Miranda July working with writer Paul Ford. (more…)

The Art Newspaper previews next year’s Antarctic Biennale, which will launch next spring with an expedition of artists to the continent, where they will install a series of temporary projects.  “But every two years? Who will go? Do we really have the resources? And even if we do, isn’t our plan just another assault on the last great wilderness? Fear not,” says organizing curator Nadim Samman.  “Ours is a topsy-turvy biennale, so perhaps we will only go once.” (more…)