Sterling Ruby at the Gagosian booth, all photos via Art Observed

Returning to its annual haunt at MoMA PS1, the Printed Matter New York Art Book Fair has concluded, bringing countless rare, collectible and artist-authored books to Long Island City. (more…)

An exhibition at La Monnaie de Paris, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Christian Boltanski, will allow users to take away the works.  “Just like currency, the works are destined to be dispersed. This is what is suggested by the title of Christian Boltanski’s piece Dispersion, which encourages the public to leave the exhibition with a bag filled with clothes,” says Chiara Parisi, the director of cultural programmes at La Monnaie de Paris. (more…)

Matthew Barney is interviewed in the New York Times this week, as the artist prepares to open an exhibition of River of Fundament and its surrounding works at MOCA.  “In many ways, the real leads the artificial in ‘River of Fundament,’ ” he says. “I’ve always had an interest in colliding the natural and artificial, but I think what makes this work different from what I’ve done before is that the natural is foregrounded.” (more…)

CNN notes the growing popularity of African contemporary art on the market today, noting major increases in prices for African artists in the past several years.  “I’ve studied the movement of the prices of artwork sold in auctions in Nigeria since 1999,” says Prince Yemisi Shyllon, one of Nigeria’s largest art collectors. “And I can tell you how much the artworks have grown over time, of different artists — if we draw a correlation analysis we come up with a positive graph about the growth, and therefore it can form a solid basis for investment.” (more…)

The Artes Mundi Prize, offering the largest purse award for UK Contemporary Art, has announced its shortlist, including Neïl Beloufa, Hito Steyerl, Lamia Joreige, Nástio Mosquito, and Amy Franceschini.  “This group of artists…demonstrates the importance and usefulness of art and culture in our everyday lives as it challenges our preconceptions and gives us new ways of engaging with the world around us,” says Karen MacKinnon, Artes Mundi’s director and curator. (more…)

Mike Kelley, Kandor 10B (2011), via Art Observed

Mike Kelley’s Kandor series ranks among the artist’s more enigmatic projects: a series of sculptures, videos and installation work that works the origin mythologies of the Superman comics into the fabric of the artist’s own life and work.  The works are equally desolate and comical, peculiar and commanding in their execution, often rendered in glowing hues of purple, red and yellow, or countered by immense chunks of sculpted detritus, recreating the titular hero’s Fortress of Solitude. (more…)

Collector Audrey Irmas is selling an iconic Cy Twombly blackboard painting this fall at Sotheby’s, with $30 million from the sale proceeds going to fund a new Rem Koolhaas designed building for the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles.  “I hope this building will provide a gathering place for cultural life and social events in a very diverse neighborhood,” says Ms. Irmas. (more…)

Phillips is expanding its focus to include Modern Art, the Art Newspaper reports, specifically focusing on early 20th century work with ties to the contemporary.  “For a long time now, collectors have been buying across the 20th century. I want to flesh out Phillip’s presence in that market without losing our traditional focus on cutting-edge contemporary,” says Phillips head Edward Dolman. (more…)

Bosnia’s National Museum has reopened after a three-year closure due to a lack of funding.  “The National Museum is the national treasury of all citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Bosnia’s Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic said. (more…)

The Swiss artist Not Vital has announced plans to purchase Schloss Tarasp, a twelfth-century castle located in the Swiss Alps, for $8 million.  As part of the purchase, the artist has agreed to keep the castle’s museum publicly accessible until at least 2030.  (more…)

Eli Broad is profiled in Bloomberg this week, as the collector opens his new museum, and makes the case for L.A.’s new status as an art-world capital.  “We’re really the contemporary-art capital of the world,” he says. “New York still is the commercial-art capital of the world — but a month doesn’t go by when one of their galleries doesn’t move to Los Angeles.” (more…)

A piece by Christopher Knight in the LA Times notes that the Broad Museum’s stated goal of keeping its collection circulating and on loan may be harder than it seems. “Museums are notoriously hard to define. Except for those that don’t collect at all, however, the most important activity they undertake is exhibiting a permanent collection,” he says.  “The display defines the place, giving a distinctive public profile to an otherwise faceless institution.” (more…)

The New York Times profiles Bushwick’s Signal Gallery this week, noting the space’s forward-thinking programming and focus on the cutting-edge of the contemporary discourse.  “Four or five years ago, everything around here felt slapdash. Sometime during our search for a space, it became very clear that we could present things in this area at a level that was more professional and respectful,” says co-founder Kyle Clairmont Jacques. (more…)

A group of former students at USC’s Roski School of Art are reporting that a blog they started in 2012 was taken over by USC Administration without their notification.  “Beyond it being a retaliative move, it was a strategic attempt at wiping those statements off the web,” says recent graduate Jacinto Astiazarán. (more…)

Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced a list of 262 small and midsize nonprofit cultural institutions that will benefit from its $30 million Arts Innovation and Management (AIM) program.  The two year program provides unrestricted grants to these organizations, as well as management training.  “Local arts groups are economic and cultural engines that contribute to communities in ways that few other industries can,” says Michael Bloomberg. “By supporting smaller organizations that don’t typically have endowments and providing them with management training, we are working to help them have an even greater positive impact on an even broader audience.” (more…)

Art Berlin Contemporary is set to take place this week, with 100 participating galleries taking up space in the halls of Station Berlin at Gleisdreieck.   (more…)

Eduardo Paolozzi, Kalasan (1973-74), via Art Observed

Eduardo Paolozzi’s contributions to the landscape of British pop, post-war sculpture and contemporary collage practices would make a fitting argument for qualifying him as one of the 20th Century’s great underestimated artists.  A founder of the International Group alongside Richard Hamilton, Paolozzi’s work mined the intersections of industrial materiality and mass media iconography, combining a populist focus with a coy perspective on post-war Britain. (more…)

Carl Andre in His Time (Installation View), via Art Observed

Taking the minimalist exercises of Carl Andre as its starting point, Mnuchin Gallery has opened an exhibition taking the structural interests and shared visions of the New York school of minimalism during the 1960’s and 70’s as its core focus.  Titled Carl Andre in his Time, the exhibition presents pieces by Donald Judd, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt and more, each locked into conversation with Andre’s work.

John Chamberlain, Honest 508 (1973-74), via Art Observed

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The New York Times has a profile on Joshua Roth this week, the head of United Talent Agency’s new fine arts division.  “I’m interested in artists who are re-envisioning the way to make art and re-envisioning how people experience it,” he says. “And I think our agency can be really helpful in that way. We want to help find opportunities for artists outside of the gallery.” (more…)

Activists occupied the lobby of the British Museum this weekend, in protest against the museum’s acceptance of funds from BP, once again drawing attention to the oil company’s contributions to the country’s largest arts institutions.  “They get to purchase a social licence to operate, which is incredibly important for a company like BP,” says activist Danny Chivers of BP or not BP. (more…)

Sotheby’s most recent S.E.C. filings indicate that the auction house has guaranteed nearly the full $500 million estimated from its sale of works from the Alfred Taubman estate.  “In the event that the property sells for less than the guaranteed price, Sotheby’s must perform under the auction guarantee by funding the difference between the sale price at auction and the amount of the auction guarantee,” the filing says. (more…)

Gego, Dibujo sin papel 88|28 (1988), via Art Observed

German-born Venezuelan artist Gego (born Gertrude Goldschmidt) is the subject of the opening fall show at Dominique Lévy this month, charting the late artist’s investigation of geometric form and space as it translates through the formal signifiers of modernity. (more…)

Francesco Vezzoli, Eternal Kiss (2015), via Almine Rech

Continuing his recent interest in the preservation, representation and context of the historical, Francesco Vezzoli is currently showing a new work Eternal Kiss at Almine Rech’s London exhibition space.  Taking a pair of classical Roman busts originally acquired at auction, Vezzoli has worked for several years restoring the works, relying on the input and advice of archaeologists and historians to approximate their original surfaces. (more…)

Thomas Ruff, Negostil 01 (2015)

Considered amongst the most prolific and groundbreaking of contemporary photographers, Thomas Ruff is the subject of an exhibition with his new body of work at Gagosian Gallery’s London location.  Over the last three decades, Ruff, who emerged during the 80’s while studying under Hilla Becher at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, with other now influential names such as Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky, has faithfully explored the visual and practical limits of photography a medium that has traced its evolution alongside the rapid changes in technological development over the past century. His constantly evolving, experimentalist approach to his practice has provided him a broad repertoire of shifting elements and touchstones. (more…)