The fully realized design proposals for the Guggenheim Helsinki are set to be unveiled at the Kunsthalle Helsinki today, marking the next step in the museum’s proposed expansion to Finland.  “We hope this exhibition and its programs will inspire the Finnish public to engage with the possibilities of a Guggenheim museum in Helsinki, and to think about the potential of a prominent site on their waterfront,” says Guggenheim Director Richard Armstrong. (more…)

The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice Biennale will go to Ghanian artist El Anatsui.  “The Golden Lion Award acknowledges not just his recent successes internationally, but also his artistic influence amongst two generations of artists working in West Africa,” says Biennale Director Paolo Baratta. “It is also an acknowledgment of the sustained, crucial work he has done as an artist, mentor and teacher for the past forty-five years.” (more…)

Christo has announced a new project aiming to create long immense, yellow fabric walkways spanning Lake Iseo in Lombardy, Italy.  The work will be the artist’s largest since his 2005 piece in New York’s Central Park, and the first since the death of his wife Jeanne-Claude. (more…)

The Institut Giacometti, the foundation museum dedicated to the life and work of Alberto Giacometti, is set to open next year in Paris, featuring a meticulous recreation of the artist’s small, 270 square-foot studio.  The opening of the museum is the result of settled disputes over the estate of the artist, as brokered by Institut head Catherine Grenier, former deputy director of the Centre Pompidou.  “When I got here a year ago,” Grenier says, “this foundation was not at all well known, for one essential reason: It was closed to the public. My priority is to make its activities and its extraordinary collection accessible.” (more…)

Artist Thomas Houseago is the latest artist to install a major large-scale commission at Rockefeller Center this week, as his immense Masks installation finishes completion this week for a Tuesday unveiling.  “It’s so risky, and it’s so terrifying,” Houseago said. “Hopefully kids will enjoy walking in it. And maybe one of those kids will think about being an artist, and that would be fabulous. That’s always the dream, that you give people that space to wonder.” (more…)

Piotr Uklanski, The Nazis (1998), via Art Observed

Currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a retrospective focusing on the work of Polish-born artist Piotr Uklanski, many of which are pulled from the rarely seen Joy of Photography series that the artist executed in the years following his move to the United States following the fall of Communism. (more…)

The Telegraph looks at the growing competition among the world’s wealthiest for high-priced art trophies as status symbols, and notes the growing trend towards the establishment of non-profit foundations and museums as an even more appealing demonstration of wealth.  “Making your collection available to the public, understanding the journey you have been on, your taste,” says Celine Fressart, head of special projects at 1858 Ltd.  “That, really, is the ultimate in bragging rights.” (more…)

This year’s Armenian pavilion at the Venice Biennale will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the massacre of more than one million Armenians by Ottoman Turks during the First World War.  The exhibition, titled Armenity and held on San Lazzaro degli Armeni island (home to the Armenian Catholic Monastery), will feature works by artist Sarkis, and is curated by Adelina Cüberyan von Fürstenberg, who has often worked with the artist.  “It is very important for me to keep the production going, for culture but also to keep the dialogue open,” Sarkis  says.  “We are the link between two pavilions. We are the breath. Whoever thinks otherwise is free to think so, of course.” (more…)

The New York Times profiles Prada Foundation’s new Milan arts complex, designed by Rem Koolhaas and serving as the arts foundation’s permanent location.  “After more than 20 years of staging exhibitions around the world, my husband said he thought it was about time we do something permanent in Milan,” Miuccia Prada says. (more…)

David Wojnarowicz, Cal (Factory Face), 1984

The group show is an undeniable part of the New York art world’s summer repertoire, dabbling in different styles and scenes while blending together the works of artists ranging from the young to the historical, emerging to the iconic. Among the early entries into the spring group show calendar is Debris currently on view at James Fuentes Gallery in the Lower East Side. This show is packed with familiar, utilitarian, and recognizable objects, many of which can be easily found in the vibrantly fluid New York urban landscape. (more…)

Marlene Dumas, The Image as Burden (1993) © Marlene Dumas

Currently on view at Tate Modern is Image as Burden, a retrospective looking at the career of the prolific South African painter Marlene Dumas. Adopting its title from an oil on canvas painting in which a male figure is depicted carrying a female figure, the retrospective, considered the most expansive survey of Dumas’ work in Europe so far, sheds a light on the exceptionally subliminal oeuvre of Dumas, who has, for the most part of her career, maintained a humble profile despite the scholarly and commercial recognition her work has achieved globally. (more…)

Online arts auction platform Auctionata has laid off more than half of its employees yesterday, Art Info reports, part of a strategy by the company to focus on cost-efficiency.  Since launching less than three years ago, the company has raised nearly $100 million in capital, including recent funding of almost $50 million. (more…)

The Art Institute of Chicago has received a major donation of contemporary works this week, totaling 42 works valued at over $400 million, including iconic pieces from Andy Warhol, including an Elizabeth Taylor portrait and Mona Lisa Four Times, as well as several “Film Stills” from Cindy Sherman.  “It’s a powerful statement to have a collection of this international stature staying here in Chicago,” says Robert Levy, chairman of the Art Institute’s board. “It’s unbelievably exciting for the Art Institute, for the City of Chicago, for the entire art community of Chicago. It’s all good.” (more…)

The completed Whitney Museum is set to open in a matter of days, and articles in both New York Magazine and the New Yorker are already praising the space for its massive exhibition spaces and intriguing design by architect Renzo Piano.  “The audacity of the building shows that, yes, the Whitney will survive the new era,” writes Jerry Saltz.  “But the better question is whether it has found a way to thrive in it. And, believe it or not, I am in love with what this building represents.” (more…)

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is no longer represented by Gagosian Gallery, Artforum reports, a move which ends a partnership first started in 2008.  The organization will now look to Pace Gallery (which represented Rauschenberg later in his career), Thaddaeus Ropac, and São Paulo’s Luisa Strina for worldwide representation.   (more…)

As the Los Angeles County Museum of Art continues its 50th-anniversary acquisitions campaign, the museum announced over $200 million in new art received as “anniversary gifts” to the institution.  A number of the works go on view this week as part of the museum’s “50 for 50: Gifts on the Occasion of LACMA’s Anniversary” exhibition. (more…)

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Cain and Abel (2013)

Currently on view at David Zwirner is East of Eden, Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s latest photographic investigation on contemporary humanity and its position within a complexly interwoven cultural setting.  This series reflects diCorcia’s interpretation of a search for equilibrium after the deep impacts of the Financial Crisis in 2007, both during and after the Bush administration. (more…)

Alfred Taubman, via Detroit Free Press

Alfred Taubman, the shopping mall developer and business mastermind who turned Sotheby’s from a private auction house to the publicly traded art market power it is today, has passed away at the age of 91.

Taubman earned his fortune during the years following World War II, re-engineering the American retail experience through his design and development of the modern shopping mall, and used his earnings to purchase Sotheby Parke Bernet for $130 million in 1983.  Within five years, Taubman had retooled its customer experience and sales strategies before taking the company public in 1988.   (more…)

Former Walt Disney President Michael Ovitz has filed a $2.5 Million bad faith breach of contract lawsuit against insurance company American International Group (AIG) and Chartis Property Casualty Co. for allegedly failing to reimburse Ovitz for a lost Richard Prince work.  “While Defendants ultimately acknowledged coverage and full insurance benefits for another loss under almost identical circumstances, Defendants steadfastly, unreasonably, and without probable cause, refused to provide coverage for the loss at issue herein,” and thus represented bad faith, the suit says. (more…)

The New York Times reports on the move of Christie’s Impressionist and Evening Auction for Modern Art to the second week of May, a move that crowds the market with 5 major sales in the same week.  “Fatigue may have set in by then, but it is very hard to predict,” says gallerist and former Sotheby’s exec David Nash. (more…)

A new report released by fine art insurance company Hiscox finds that an increasing number of collectors, at least 75% of those surveyed, are viewing online art sales as an investment opportunity.  “I wonder whether this change in attitude is genuine,” says Robert Read, the head of fine art at Hiscox, “or whether it is a dot.com moment where people feel they are missing out if they don’t.”

A thorough forensic study dating Francisco Goya’s private series “Witches and Old Women” has resulted in an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in London, showing the works in chronological order for the first time.  “His work is all about capturing that human spark,” says Goya scholar Juliet Wilson-Bareau.  “From his youth onwards, he observed everything that life had to offer. He was utterly fascinated by the human animal form from the word go.” (more…)

An article in Bloomberg this week notes the statement of Laurence D. Fink, head of the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock Inc., that contemporary art has surpassed gold as a more secure investment.  “Historically gold was a great instrument for storing of Fink said at a conference in Singapore. “Gold has lost its luster and there’s other mechanisms in which you can store wealth that are inflation-adjusted.” (more…)

The Guardian reviews the ongoing rebuilding efforts at the Glasgow School of Art, after the school’s Mackintosh library was destroyed in last year’s massive blaze.  A fundraising campaign has already launched to help finance a new building, but a debate over rebuilding the space or starting over is currently drawing considerable attention.  “[Mackintosh] was driven by a lifelong search for new forms in architecture and technology and was never a copyist,” architecture professor Alan Dunlop says. “I have no doubt that he would reject the approach of building a replica.” (more…)