The New York Times documents a new trend in galleries’ approach to setting up space in Hong Kong: focusing on small exhibition spaces and tighter exhibitions to draw interest while remaining economically flexible.  “We’ll have exhibitions about four or five times a year, but an exhibition can be three works or four works,” says Pace chairman Arne Glimcher of his gallery’s new Hong Kong space. “Or if it’s watercolors or works on paper or small sculptures, it can be 10 works.” (more…)

Martino Gamper, L’Arco della Pace, all images Courtesy of Serpentine Galleries

Following 2009’s Design Real, curated by Konstantin Gricic, Serpentine Galleries is hosting its second major design exhibition. Titled design is a state of mind, the exhibition emphasizes London-based, Italian-born designer Martino Gamper’s curatorial vision with a selection of major design works brought together by the renowned designer. Gamper, reminding viewers of the emotional charge of design works are capable of beyond their mere functionality and surface presentation, aims to underline the multiplicity of perspectives when appreciating design. (more…)

Qingtai Hu at Shanghai, All Images © MCH Messe Schweiz (Basel) AG

After a hectic week, the Art Basel Hong Kong event is winding down, leaving behind it a record of strong sales and high-profile attendees, continuing the fair’s prominent footprint in Hong Kong’s ever-strengthening draw for collectors and artists.  Pi Li and Doryun Chong of the M+ Museum could be seen browsing the works, as well as Uli Sigg, Takashi Murakami and Carsten Nicolai, who had just opened his astounding installation at the International Commerce Center. (more…)

Fifty years after Frank Lloyd Wright unveiled the groundbreaking design for the Guggenheim Museum, museums around the world are embracing dramatic designs for housing their collections, such as the subtle flow of The Curve at the Barbican in London.  “When we first embarked on this, people thought of this space as very awkward and difficult,” said visual arts head Jane Alison. “You don’t see everything at once. Now artists are very keen to be in the Curve and recognize the potential of it.” (more…)

Raymond Pettibon, No Title (Something Approaches There) (2001), via Art Observed

On view at Venus Over Manhattan is the first exhibition ever to focus entirely on Raymond Pettibon’s surfer paintings, comprised of 40 works created over a 28 year period, from 1985 to 2013. The works vary from small-scale India ink pieces to large-scale paintings up to 10 feet wide, and will remain on view through May 17, 2014.

Raymond Pettibon, Are Your Motives Pure?’ Surfers 1985-2013 (Installation View), via Art Observed

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After a number of considerations have been addressed, the takeover of the Corcoran by the National Gallery of Art is set to get underway, with George Washington University also preparing to take over the institution’s art school.  “I think there’s a euphoria that we have a wonderful solution here,” says Corcoran interim director and president Peggy Loar. “The one thing we need to work at is to maintain that synergy between the collections and curators along with the faculty and the students.” (more…)

Vladimir Umanets, the 2012 vandal of Mark Rothko’s mural Black on Maroon, has published an editorial in The Guardian, expressing regret for his actions but remaining committed to the principles of his conceptual practice Yellowism.  “It doesn’t matter how important one believes one’s ideas to be, nor how genuine one’s intentions are,” he writes.  “It is unacceptable to deface someone’s property without permission. What I did was selfish. My act has hurt many art enthusiasts and I deeply regret it.” (more…)

An intrepid thief made off with a piece of a Danh Vo sculpture Thursday, stealing the work from City Hall Park in New York while the work was being installed.  “We can confirm that a small part of the artwork disappeared from the park during installation, and a police investigation is underway,” a representative from the Public Art Fund noted. (more…)

Kara Walker is profiled in the Economist this week, exploring the artist’s current installation at the Domino sugar factory, and the difficulties in keeping the sugar coated works together in various conditions.   “No one works with sugar,” says curator Nato Thompson. “Now we know why.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal summarizes the deathbed agreement of Cornelius Gurlitt to relinquish his collection of Nazi-looted art works, including the exchange of national pressures, personal politics and legal wrangling that ultimate led Gurlitt to sign the works over to Bern’s Kunstmuseum without notifying the museum directly until after Gurlitt’s death last week.  “It all went a bit crazy,” says museum director Mathias Frehner. (more…)

The New York Times looks at artist Spencer Finch’s special commission for the 9/11 Museum in New York, which opens this week to family of the disaster’s victims.  The memorial seeks to recreate the crystal clear blue the marked the sky on the date of the attacks on the United States.  “It was a risk, certainly, to do,” said Paula Grant Berry, lost her husband in the attack and serves on the Sept. 11 Memorial Foundation’s Board. “Even when we tested it, we never really knew what it was going to look like.” But she added: “I got to see it early and I became a real advocate. I think it’s extraordinary, and it’s so needed, and it brings in the light of day on so many levels and in so many dimensions.” (more…)

As it prepares to move downtown, the Whitney has announced that it will donate its freestanding studio space uptown to Queens’s Socrates Sculpture Park.  “The Whitney Museum has generously presented us with an opportunity to explore the possibility of our first indoor space, which may be used to expand the park’s longstanding free arts education program,” says Socrates Sculpture Park director John Hatfield. “Other possible adaptable uses may include a gallery, visitor area or administrative space.” (more…)

In lieu of paying an inheritance tax, the estate of Lucian Freud has donated a selection of 40 works by Frank Auerbach has been donated to the United Kingdom, covering an approximate £16,250,000 tax bill.  The works will be divided into 11 groups and distributed by Arts Council England to various public collections. (more…)

The New York Times reports on the recently finished renovation of the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which shifted its focus and exhibition strategy to more carefully and chronologically explore the artist’s life.  “It really is a new Warhol; it’s much more about him,” says director Eric Shiner. (more…)

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange) (1955) which sold for $50,000,000 at Phillips, via Art Observed

The Phillips Contemporary Evening Sale has concluded, wrapping up what has been a whirlwind week of contemporary art sales with a briskly-paced, 49-lot sale that achieved moderately strong results, while twelve works were either withdrawn or went unsold. (more…)

Hiroshi Sugimoto has been awarded the inaugural Isamu Noguchi prize for his work as an artist.  The photographer and architect was awarded the prize in an award ceremony at the Noguchi Museum in New York by Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations Motohide Yoshikawa. (more…)

The New York Times takes a look inside the bi-annual Brant Foundation Art Study Center opening last week, held in honor of the space’s new Dan Colen show, and noting its place as a haven away from the bustle of Frieze week.  “Frieze week is a nightmare,” says Nate Lowman. “To have the same limp handshake 400 times? I don’t go to anything except this.” (more…)

Jeff Koons, Popeye (2009-2011), via Sotheby’s

The Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Sale wrapped this evening, with a number of impressive sales that did little to match the fireworks of Christie’s record-setting outing last night, but still managed to bring forth a number of impressive and noteworthy sales, as well as several new world records for artists at auction.  The auction capped a final sales tally of  $364,379,000 over 81 lots, with 12 of those works remaining unsold. (more…)

Paris’s Picasso Museum has fired director Anne Baldassari, citing a “gravely deteriorating work environment” during the museum’s continually delayed renovation, as well as “profound suffering in the workplace and a toxic atmosphere.”  The museum’s  reopening has already been pushed back twice, and had seen numerous employees leaving the organization during Baldassari’s tenure.  “There was nothing in the report from the inspector general that surprised us,” said one ministry official. “This had been going on for several years. The truth is that we could not open a museum with all these employees leaving.” (more…)

Railway operator Amtrak has announced a public art commission with artist Katharina Grosse, designed to combat urban blight along the company’s rail lines.  The Psychylustro project has seen a group workers painting buildings in Northern Philadelphia with an enormous spray gun, shooting streams of house paint on a series of buildings.“It’s a very different understanding of where a painting sits,” Grosse says. “You just get a glimpse of something rather large, it’s just touching the warehouse there on that little edge. The painting itself is far bigger, it’s maybe in the sky but there is no surface where it can land.” (more…)

New York collector Christopher Tsai has announced his intent to found the first Ai Weiwei Museum in his home city, the Art Newspaper reports.  The collector has been inspired by the artist’s output, as well as the proliferation of museums dedicated to the work of a single artist. (more…)

A coalition of Detroit Automakers (GM, Ford, Chrysler) has announced plans to donate about $10 million each over the next decades in order to aid the city’s bankruptcy exit while protecting its art collection at Detroit Institute of Arts.  The museum will also be soliciting donations from other corporations.  “For this to work, the Legislature has to be in and part of it,” says an unnamed CEO considering a donation. “Business groups are encouraging the Legislature to make it happen.” (more…)

Sterling Ruby is interviewed in the New York Times this week, following the opening of the artist’s new show at Hauser and Wirth.  “When you look at what I do,” he says, “it’s schizophrenic to the point where it should never have a market. With my work, you can’t be like, “Well, we can plug this into what’s happening in the market because it looks like the last series.” (more…)

The High Line will open its third and final section of park this fall, which will prominently feature sculptural work by Adrian Vilar Rojas, designed to deteriorate and shift over time, in parallel with the industrial spaces surrounding the work.  “If you stop to think about it,” the artist says, “it’s the most contradictory thing: You’re in relaxed, dreamy space, and then all around you is like a battle zone. People are taking pictures of construction sites.” (more…)