The New York Times looks at recent trends towards sustainability in museum construction and renovation, including the use of repurposed or receycled material in recent projects like The Whitney and The University of California, Berkeley, Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.  “At its very fundamental core, this is a project about sustainability,” says Lawrence Rinder, the director of UC Berkley’s museum. “At a philosophical level, it was about the sustainability of our institution — we were in a seismologically unsound building and had to move to preserve our collection and our audience and our programming.” (more…)

Larry Bell, Lil’ Orphan Annie (1960), all photos via Art Observed

Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting work by American sculpture and installation artist, Larry Bell at its Upper East Side location in New York, compiling a series of historically resonant works in conjunction with some of the artist’s recent environmental installs.  The exhibition, titled From the ’60s, sees the acclaimed artist presenting a body of work representative of his career working among the neo-avant-garde that followed in the wake of New York abstraction, and which continued to push the limits of perceptual and conceptual definitions of art.    (more…)

The Art Newspaper reports on Robert Mapplethorpe’s upcoming exhibitions at LACMA and the Getty, and the challenges of presenting works from his X Portfolio, a sexually provocative body of work that was used in the artist’s early 1990’s obscenity trials.  “One must ease the public into it—that’s an art in itself,” Mapplethorpe is quoted in reference to the work. (more…)

Five paintings by Francis Bacon, valued at upwards of €30 million, have been stolen from a home in Madrid, The Guardian reports.  One unnamed expert states that they will be difficult to sell on the market.  “It is not at all easy to sell a Francis Bacon, large or small, without that getting to the ears of those who pore over such a rarified sector,” they said. (more…)

Jeffrey Deitch will be reopening his famed Deitch Projects gallery space at its former 18 Wooster Street location, Art News reports, with current resident Swiss Institute relocating at the conclusion of its lease.  Deitch is the owner of the building that houses the gallery.  “Swiss Institute has been a fixture of the NYC art community since our founding almost 30 years ago, and we will continue to present exhibitions at our location at 18 Wooster Street until our lease ends,” says director Simon Castets. “We will soon be announcing details about our future plans.” (more…)

British Petroleum is withdrawing its controversial sponsorship of the Tate next year, citing an “extremely challenging business environment,” rather than the ongoing protests over its contributions to the museums.  “They are free to express their points of view but our decision wasn’t influenced by that. It was a business decision,” says Peter Mather, head of BP in the UK. (more…)

Pelham Holdings, which represents the legal interests of the Qatari royal family, has filed a new legal complaint in Manhattan federal court, providing a detailed chronology of the sale of the disputed Picasso bust.  The filing states that Maya Widmaier-Picasso’s daughter Diana received a lucrative contract for the work’s $106 million sale to Larry Gagosian, shortly after the original sale to the Qatari family was canceled.  (more…)

The New Yorker has published a selection of photos by Bill Jacobsen, documenting the transitional period between the Whitney’s departure and the Met’s arrival in the Breuer building.  The photos, showing the space’s stripped bare architecture, welcomes both a familiarity with the Whitney’s former home, and an appreciation for the unique architecture its original designer had embraced. (more…)

The New York Times takes a tour of Tom Sach’s studio this week, as the artist prepares for an upcoming installation of a ceremonial tea house at the Isamu Noguchi Museum in Queens.  “It’s a way of creating an armature for ritualized activity, where we overcome our differences,” the artist says. “Within the act of preparing and serving a bowl of tea, we have the opening to investigate human relationships and the human condition.” (more…)

Erwin Wurm, One Minute Sculptures (Installation View), via Art Observed

Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures are a unique moment in the artist’s catalog, a comical application of the artist’s subversive wit.  Transferring his patently absurdist utilizations of domestic commodities and subjects onto the human form, the works take his nuanced eye for the more unique forms and signifiers mass production and late capitalism, and apply them towards an immediate interaction with the human body.  Through his works in the series, Wurm deconstructs use and value as essentially productive elements of consumption, and then turns the intersection of actor and object into an inherently useless situationism. (more…)

The New York Times interviews artist Maria Hassabi this week, as her piece Plastic gains increasing attention at MoMA this month for its placement of shifting, gradually moving bodies across the floors and stairwells of the institution.  “It was really important for me, while making the work, to keep thinking of the three-dimensionality,” says Ms. Hassabi, “to know there would be people everywhere around us, that people were going to ignore us, and that somewhere in there, somebody would stay and pay attention to us.” (more…)

The FT profiles Andrew Butterfield this week, a dealer known for his impressive work in researching and rediscovering lost Old Masters works.  In the story, Butterfield discusses some of his greatest finds, like a rare Donatello sculpture, and how these works can go overlooked for so long.  “Often what you’re looking at is literally covered in paint from later periods,” he says. “Varnish is a very common mode of second-tier restorers. It’s an easy and a cheap way of solving problems. You’re getting rid of any imperfections. But you’re also getting rid of the perfections.” (more…)

A Francis Bacon painting has been discovered on the back of two paintings by Irish artist Tony O’Malley.  O’Malley seems to have divided the wooden board backing his works, on which Bacon’s piece, Figure, is painted, to create two other paintings, but the pair have recently been reunited, and are being sold at Christie’s in London as a set, estimated at £20,000- £30,000.  “Now these paintings, and the lost Bacon study, will be reunited and viewed together for the first time in almost 60 years,” the auction house said in a statement. (more…)

The Kunsthaus in Zurich is facing criticism over its construction over a 14th Century Jewish cemetary, and its inclusion of works from the collection of Nazi arms dealer Emil Georg Bührle.  “We were playing with open cards about the past when the vote took place in 2012,” said Björn Quellenberg, a spokesman for the Kunsthaus. “That was the time to discuss it.”  (more…)

The Annual sales reports from TEFAF (The European Fine Art Fair) this year have 2015’s total sales figure at $63.8 billion, a 7% decline from 2014.  “The main reason for the negative growth is that the bigger the market gets, the harder it is to keep growing at as fast a pace,” says economist Clare McAndrew, who presented the report. (more…)

Karen Kilimnik, the adoration of the cats (2015), via 303 Gallery

In her eleventh exhibition with 303 Gallery, on view through March 26th, Karen Kilimnik returns to her historically-motivated sense of sarcasm and self-awareness, dissecting the convoluted theoretical foundations of contemporary art, in a trademark language that plays on, and resonates with, notions and concepts of kitsch.  Kilimnik’s uncompromising fascination with the imperviousness of pre-20th century European extravagance, and its depictions in the art of the era, as well as that of modernity, blossom through her own collage techniques here, combining flippant references with lush environs to create critically de-centered works.

Karen Kilimnik (Installation View), via 303 Gallery

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Tom Wesselmann, San Francisco Nude with Green Wall (1959) All images © Estate of Tom Wesselmann/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY, photo c/o David Zwirner

For its current exhibition in London, David Zwirner‘s Grafton Street gallery compiled a collection of thirty collages. created between 1959 and 1964, by the late Pop artist Tom Wesselmann, works that mark a significant point in the artist’s career as a leading figure of the Pop art movement, just at the point where he was transitioning from brusque abstraction to an interest in the commodity formats and spatial confines of the canvas.  Wesselmann’s later career, which consists of bold, graphically vivid works is hinted at through these collages, exposing the growth of his iconic style, and his interest in capturing interiors, landscapes, and female nudes. (more…)

Gagosian Gallery has announced plans to open a gallery in San Francisco, across the street from the newly renovated SFMoMA.  “This makes sense with the new museum opening and with the emerging collector base in Silicon Valley,” Larry Gagosian said. (more…)

Calvin Marcus, Automatic Drawing #4 (2015), via Art Observed

Marking the artist’s first exhibition with David Kordansky, Calvin Marcus has brought his own unique brand of deeply personal, witty surrealism to bear in Los Angeles, exhibiting a body of mixed-media paintings, drawing, fabric work and readymade sculptures that incorporate a subtle blend of humor into the artist’s carefully designed and shifting craft. (more…)

Albert Oehlen (Installation View) All images Courtesy the Gagosian Gallery

In his work, German artist Albert Oehlen concerns himself with illustrating and exploring the process of painting itself.  From the early 1980’s on, he has combined tenants of figurative and abstract practice in reaction to the Neo-Expressionist trends in painting during the time, eventually Oehlen turning his experiments with various mediums and modes of painting more fully towards abstract painting.  Oehlen frequently approaches painting through a set of restrictions he imposes upon himself: to work at a deliberately slow pace, with only one color, or with unfamiliar or non-typical tools (his fingers, brushes, collage, and in this instance, aluminum-panels instead of canvas).  With a new series of works at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill location in London, Oehlen reveals a series of works drawing on digital processes incorporated into the act of painting, continuing certain explorations he began with line painting during the 1990’s, and reflecting his ongoing concerns with constantly testing the boundaries of the medium and its relation to broader modes of production.

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The New York Times notes Hauser Wirth & Schimmel’s efforts to preserve the original graffiti and murals painted on its new Los Angeles home.  “You can walk in this neighborhood, which you can’t in a lot of other parts of L.A., and we wanted to integrate that and open it up, so people can cut through,” says senior director Stacen Berg. “Maybe they never go into the galleries, but they still interact with something, even if they’re just on their way to get coffee.” (more…)

An article in The Guardian this week sees a group of Iranian artists living abroad discussing what their national heritage means for their art, both in terms of their own practice, and the expectations that many have for their work’s content as a result, often dealing with subtle demands to acquiesce towards ideological expectations.  “The problem now about working in the US is that you are faced with this duality, with this dilemma,” says artist Nicky Nodjoumi.  “Either you are truly an artist without the notion of being from Iran; but at the same time if you are Iranian you have to show some symbol of identity in order to be accepted in the art scene. Not as a universal artist but as an Iranian artist.” (more…)

Despite military oppression and censorship in Thailand, Reuters reports on an increasingly strong art scene developing in the nation’s capital, Bangkok.  “It’s because they can’t talk about it that they’re creating,” says Gili Back, a cafe and gallery owner.  “You’ll see a lot more graffiti and street art where people are having their say on walls.” (more…)

Emmanuel Perrotin is opening a gallery space in Seoul, South Korea, the Art Newspaper reports.  “The space will be inaugurated with an exhibition of French artist Laurent Grasso’s work on 28 April, followed by a solo show dedicated to Kaws in June,” a gallery spokeswoman told the publication. (more…)