The Spanish government has struck a deal to keep the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Spain, Art Newspaper reports. “The [culture] minister has managed to agree a solid contract lasting 15 years, with the option for the State to purchase the collection at the end of that period. The annual fee is €6.5m a year for a set of paintings and sculptures with a value of €1bn,” the Spanish culture ministry said in a statement. (more…)

Dealer Richard Feigen has passed away at age 90 after contracting Covid-19. Feigen was an early pioneer in Soho before shifting into Old Masters works, where he solidified his reputation as a cunning tastemaker. (more…)

Adam D. Weinberg, Shirin Neshat and more talk in the New York Times this week about how Covid-19 has changed their ways of life, and how they’re working to continue supporting charities and causes during this challenging time. “I miss the serendipity of bumping into people, crossing paths in a spontaneous way,” Weinberg says. “Some of our best conversations used to take place in an elevator or on our way out the door. Those random things that are the fabric of our lives are so greatly diminished.” (more…)

Daniel Buren & Philippe Parreno, Simultanément, travaux in situ et en mouvement (Installation view), Galerie Kamel Mennour

Choosing an auspicious concept for the first show in its new space in Paris’s rue du Pont de Lodi, Kamel Mennour Gallery presents a joint project between two artists of different generations yet similar interests in space and exhibition, presentation and perception.  Unifying the visions of Daniel Buren and Philippe Parreno’s Simultanément, travaux in situ et en mouvement brings together the pair’s intriguing interests in the definition and understanding of space and movement. (more…)

A group of Surrealist pieces held by the artist Man Ray‘s former assistant will head to auction at Christie’s Paris this March.  The collection includes work by the artist as well as from his close friends and collaborators, like Marcel Duchamp. (more…)

Cuban artist Tania Bruguera has been arrested in Havana for her involvement in a protest at the Ministry of Culture this past week.  “Cubans cannot accept that there are artists in prison” the artist said in a statement. (more…)

Claudia Comte, Jungle and Corals (Installation View), via König Galerie

Taking over the halls of the König Galerie Chapel in Berlin, artist Claudia Comte  presents a body of new works unified under the title Jungles and Corals, a selection of new sculptural works produced while Comte was on residency last year in Jamaica at the Alligator Head Foundation as a fellow of the TBA21–Academy. Created in collaboration with local woodworkers, the show draws on natural forms and iconographies to create a distinct and cohesive spatialized experience. (more…)

A group of mayors from ten major US cities have delivered an open a letter to the Biden-Harris administration, pushing for a federal support plan for the arts. “Given what we know about the efficacy of the arts in developing the conditions that are vital to civic healing and unity, social connection and belonging, collective trust and safety, life-long learning, and economic and social justice,” it reads, “it would strengthen our recovery efforts to arm our arts agencies (NEA, NEH, IMLS) with focus and intention in order to serve our most pressing needs while also ensuring that overall arts and culture strategies are incorporated into initiatives within other parts of the administration and across federal departments and national recovery work.” (more…)

Antony Gormley is worried that a proposed upgrade to the A1 carriageway would threaten or obstruct views of his immense work Angel of the North.  “It would be heartbreaking to lose sight of the Angel of the North on the approach from the A1, and thus I am desperate to do all I can to protect these views,” he writes. (more…)

Citing the current uncertainty around the pandemic, the European Fine Art Foundation, which runs TEFAF will postpone its main fair in Maastricht until September, pushing its New York event until 2022.  “The unpredictability and endurance of the pandemic has cast a new light on our work and our lives over the past year. TEFAF looks with great enthusiasm toward the future,” says TEFAF chairman Hidde van Seggelen.  (more…)

A piece in Art Newspaper this week looks at Non-Fungible Tokens, a new crypto technology that represents digital works and proof of ownership, allowing the assets to be purchased and traded. “All the art I make is digital, in the form of videos or images—now I’m chomping at the bit to sell more works this way,” says dealer Kenny Schachter, who has been producing NFTSs for works he makes and sells. “I am convinced that the field will mushroom in the coming two or three years.” (more…)

A piece in Art Newspaper looks at Paris’s resurgent role in the art market, and asks if it might seize a leadership role in Europe over London. “Paris already has the infrastructure, the logistics, the know-how and in addition it’s centralized, whereas Germany has a number of regional centers plus its restrictive export law; Italy has dreadful red tape,” says Pierre Naquin, a French entrepreneur and tax specialist; “I don’t see any other European city being able to take over from London.” (more…)

Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti speaks with Art News this week, as he contends with the new landscape of the auction market in the current days and months to come. “2020 was an unusual year: collector demand was resilient, but supply was more difficult [to obtain], with some consignors being concerned by the impact of the pandemic,” he says. “Private sales and guarantees have undoubtedly been a way to reconcile these two diverging trends. There are traditionally fewer guarantees in Asia than in Europe and in America, for various reasons. In any event, the decision to use a guarantee remains case by case, according to each consignor’s risk appetite.” (more…)

Pieter Vermeersch (Installation View), via Art Observed

Currently on at Galerie Perrotin in Paris, the painter and sculptor Pieter Vermeersch has brought forth an enigmatic and expressive exhibition to mark his sixth solo show with the dealer.  Consisting of a series of conceptual operations, including a series of screenprints on marble slabs, oil paintings on stone, and a range of varied dimensional operations, the show is a striking exploration in scale and shape, material and space through the language of minimalism.

Pieter Vermeersch (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Georg Baselitz has donated six of his paintings from his holdings to The Met.  “He’s very interested in the context that the Met collection can provide,” says director Max Hollein. “I think he was very excited and pleased.” (more…)

A piece in Town and Country this week documents the Frick’s takeover of the Met Breuer building. Director Ian Wardropper says the exhibitions at the newly renovated space will “remind people that the Frick is not just a painting collection.” (more…)

A piece in the collection of Pennsylvania’s Allentown Art Museum has been firmly reattributed as an official Rembrandt.  “It’s very exciting,” says museum VP of curatorial affairs, Elaine Mehalakes. “It was a painting that had been in good standing for three centuries, and this is really a reassertion of the attribution.” (more…)

In a recent public appearance, Ai Weiwei called China “the greatest challenge the West has ever faced,” referring in particular to the current political state of Hong Kong and its relationship to mainland China.   “This is not just a struggle between Hong Kong and China. It is a struggle between freedom and a sectarian state. Hong Kong represents a value we should all protect,” he says. (more…)

Gregory Crewdson, Redemption Center (2018-2019), via Art Observed

On view through this past weekend at Galerie Templon in Paris, Gregory Crewdson’s newest series, An Eclipse of Moths presents a series of sixteen large scale prints that act like portals into desolate American scenes. First released in 2020, a year that will be remembered for the stark political division and a health crisis that ravaged the country, Crewdson’s work here continues his reputation for cinematic visual languages, which he pursues with a large production team. He goes location scouting, and carefully lights his sets and directs actors as if they were in a film. His cohesive choice of four by eight foot prints allows the viewer to step back to grasp a grand scene that must be approached closely in order to take in the meticulous details, of signals and characters that, despite their distance, communicate with each other.
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A piece in the New York Times documents the recent efforts to clean and restore works and spaces in the Louvre while the museum is shuttered under Covid restrictions. “For some projects, the lockdown has allowed us to do in five days what would have previously taken five weeks,” says curator Sébastien Allard. (more…)

Two rare pieces by Arshile Gorky and Wassily Kandinsky from the collection of the same private European owner, not seen publicly since the 1970’s, will debut at Sotheby’s modern and contemporary art evening sale in London on March 25, and are anticipated to reach a shared total of £3.7 million ($5.08 million). (more…)

The Centre Pompidou in Paris will close for renovations in 2023 through 2027. “There were two options,” says French culture minister Roselyne Bachelot. “One involved renovating the center while keeping it open, the other was closing it completely.” Bachelot said that the latter option was ultimately more appealing because “it should be shorter and a little bit less expensive.”  (more…)

Leon Black, chairman of the Museum of Modern Art,  is leaving his role as CEO of Apollo Global Management, after news broke of his payments of over $150 million to the late Jeffrey Epstein. “I have advised the Apollo board that I will retire as C.E.O. on or before my 70th birthday in July and remain as chairman,” he said in a statement. (more…)

Haim Steinbach, Display #28 – Rustic Wall (1991), via Tanya Bonakdar

For more than four decades, artist Haim Steinbach has explored the psychological, aesthetic, and cultural aspects of collecting and arranging found objects, selecting items that range from the obscure to the ordinary, the private to the ethnographic and using them as a meditative element to emphasize notions of circulation and human connection.  For his most recent show at Tanya Bonakdar in New York, a selection of works on view highlights a concentrated three-year period in the artist’s career, and offers a recontextualization of his own historic practice and an occasion for reflection. (more…)