Three men have been convicted in London after the recovery of a £2m vase stolen from a Geneva museum. “The organized crime group involved in this offending believed they could commit significant offenses internationally and that there would be no comeback,” says Detective Chief Inspector Matt Webb. “They were mistaken – highlighting the strength of our relations with international law enforcement partners and our ability to work across international boundaries. (more…)

A data breach at Christie’s exposed the location data of thousands of artworks uploaded to the site, a cybersecurity firm has found. Thousands of clients uploading images of their works for sale had their data exposed through a vulnerability in the company software.  (more…)

A work stolen from the British Museum and valued at $63,800 was placed on eBay for £49, the Telegraph reports.  (more…)

A federal judge has ruled that AI-generated art is not copyrightable. “In the absence of any human involvement in the creation of the work, the clear and straightforward answer is the one given by the Register: No,” says U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell. (more…)

Maureen Dougherty, BOXER (2023), via Cheim and Read

On view this summer in New York, Cheim & Read gallery invites artist Maureen Dougherty to present Borrowed Time, a selection of new works by the painter and filmmaker. Continuing the artist’s work in documentary modes that branch both creative practices, the works on view here are direct and unflinching portraiture, stark in color and form in a manner that explores the sitter’s persona in deep, rich nuances.

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Regina José Galindo, SIREN (installation view)

On Saturday, July 29, 2023, The Watermill Center hosted “the BODY: The Watermill Center Annual Summer Benefit,” celebrating creative experimentation in support of the organization’s year-round Artist Residency and Education programming. This year’s benefit centered on the body’s role in art making and featured exhibitions and performances by a dynamic roster of international artists before culminating with a showing of Artistic Director Robert Wilson’s “Ubu.” (more…)

Sanaa Gateja, Ripe (2022), via Karma

This summer in New York, Karma presents Rolled Secrets, the first New York solo show dedicated to the work of Sanaa Gateja’s following the artist’s inclusion in the 58th Carnegie International. The artist, who transforms natural materials and post-consumer paper waste into complex, mosaic-like works, here continues his practice with a range of materials that include hand-rolled paper beads, cloth, and soaked and pounded strips of bark. Motivated by an innate sensibility of form, Gateja’s often monumental works oscillate between figuration and abstraction.  (more…)

Song Dong, ROUND (Installation View), via Art Observed

On view this summer at Pace Song Dong’s ROUND focuses on the artist’s practice over the past three years, placing ancient Chinese philosophy in a contemporary context and offering new understandings of ideas that figure prominently in his work. Song, who is one of the most important figures of the Conceptual art movement in China, blurs the boundaries between art and life in his interdisciplinary practice spanning painting, sculpture, performance, installation, and film. Here, the artist uses the circle as a mode of philosophical and graphical meditation, reflecting on culture, memory and time through a range of forms.  (more…)

Thomas Hirschhorn, Schema Art and Public Space (2016-2022), via Marlborough

This summer at Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea, the group show Schema: World as Diagram presents a dynamic and intricate series of investigations into lines of thought, diagrammatic modes of thinking, and the use of graphical and indexical modes of organization to present and obscure the process of thought and creation. Occupying two floors of the gallery, the exhibition brings together over 50 artists whose works engage in these themes.  (more…)

Klara Kristalova, The Cold Wind and the Warm (Installation View), via Lehmann Maupin

This summer in London, Lehmann Maupin presents The Cold Wind and the Warm, an exhibition of new work by Klara Kristalova, dwelling on the artist’s figurative ceramic sculptures that incorporate both aspects of the human body and elements of nature, and marking her first solo show in London.  (more…)

Distribuidx (Installation View), via Lisson

This summer, Lisson Gallery marks its entry into the string of group shows sprung up across the art world with a show that opens a dialogue between the work of artist Hélio Oiticica and a range of intergenerational artists with varying relationships to Latin America. The presentation is curated by César García-Alvarez, the Executive & Artistic Director of The Mistake Room in Los Angeles. (more…)

Gilbert & George, BONE TIES (2022), via Lehmann Maupin

This month at Lehmann Maupin’s New York exhibition space, artists Gilbert & George present a body of new works, unified under the title THE CORPSING PICTURES, and centering on concepts of death and humor in equal measure. The exhibition comprises a suite of richly colored pictures starring the artists themselves in various poses of alarm and resignation as bones encroach in intricate patterns over their faces and bodies. Employing their signature use of bold color and symmetrical composition, Gilbert & George confront the subject of mortality and life itself. (more…)

The Lawrence Weiner estate is now represented in Asia by Pace. “Lawrence Weiner’s work redefined how art can communicate meaning,” Pace CEO Marc Glimcher said in a statement. “Language and material come together in his practice to create an experience that is somehow at once universal and unique. A giant of Conceptualism, Weiner offers the phenomenal, the radical, and the poetic in his work, and we are honored to bring it to our audiences to engage with it themselves.” (more…)

Brice Marden, Rivers (2021-2022), via Gagosian

Artist Brice Marden, a landmark figure in the development of modern abstraction and a luminary in the landscape of post-war American art has died at the age of 84, his family announced this week. Marden passed away at his home in Tivoli, New York.

Brice Marden, Yellow Painting (2018-2019), via Gagosian

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Madeline Hollander: Hydro Parade at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Stephanie Berger

On a June evening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a stream of 15 dancers dressed in sleek costumes consisting of shapes resembling water-bearing vessel handles on their arms and thigh-high rubber waders on their feet, maneuvered through the crowded galleries on the museum’s first floor in a continuous, metronomic fluidity. Audiences staggered closely behind, streaming past grand halls and various antiquity rooms, clusters of tour groups, confused museum attendees, and each other, in an eager, and often entirely coincidental, attempt to keep the dancers in sight. The 90-minute performance titled “Hydro-Parade” was Madeline Hollander’s most recent performance project commissioned by MetLiveArts.

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Piet Mondrian, Evolution (1911), via Art Observed

This summer, the Tate Modern presents an exploratory show tracing convergences and divergences in the work of Piet Mondrian and Hilma af Klint. Taking the work of these two luminary twentieth century artists in concert, the show draws intriguing connections across phenomenology, experience, and abstraction, exploring how each artist used their craft to push deeper inquiries and explorations of the world they lived in.  (more…)

Oscar Murillo, manifestation (2020-2022), via Gagosian

This summer at its Grosvenor Hill, London location, Gagosian presents To Bend the Ear of the Outer World: Conversations on contemporary abstract painting, an exhibition of new and recent works by more than forty artists from the Americas, United Kingdom, and Germany. The exhibition has been organized by guest curator Gary Garrels, who, in collaboration with the artists, has selected a single painting by each, with most works presented here for the first time. This is Gagosian’s first exhibition to be sited across its two galleries in Mayfair, at Grosvenor Hill and Davies Street. (more…)

Bob Thompson, An Allegory (1964), via 52 Walker

Marking its seventh exhibition downtown, 52 Walker has opened So let us all be citizens, an exhibition devoted to the short but fruitful career of Bob Thompson. Spotlighting the artist’s jazz-influenced style and consideration for color, line, and figuration—developed during a period when abstraction was the dominant trend in American art—this intimate exhibition pays homage to the friction Thompson generated between his proximity to and deviation from cited and canonical sources.

Bob Thompson, So let us all be citizens (Installation View), via 52 Walker

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Jordan Wolfson, Untitled (2020), via Gagosian

Opening in conjunction with the hustle and bustle of fair week in Basel, artist Jordan Wolfson presents a selection of works at Gagosian that continue his incisive and often wry investigations of violence, pop culture, and constructions of identity. Pairing painted-over photographs of the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. with decals bearing the graphic image of a red rose and the forbidding slogan “Describing how a dog was slaughtered,” Wolfson juxtaposes and mischievously negates potent signifiers of optimism, infallibility, and love.

Jordan Wolfson, Untitled (2020), via Gagosian

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Uri Aran, I’m a Restaurant (Installation View), via Andrew Kreps

On view this month at Andrew Kreps in New York, artist Uri Aran opens a presentation of new works united under the enigmatic title I’m a Restaurant. Exploring pluralities of voice, modalities of form, and a perspective on narrative and the artist that invites vagaries and unclear frameworks.Aran leaves exposed the threads of the mysterious, unstable process by which parts turn to wholes, drawing on traditions of assemblage, ready-made, and process art to create works that are ambiguous and ever-shifting, changing with each viewer, with each viewing. (more…)

The Met is training a group of military officers to work at saving historical artifacts and artworks in Ukraine. “The weaponization of art history,” says Alison Hokanson, associate curator of European paintings, “is the weaponization of objects but also the weaponization of the stories that are told through these objects.” (more…)

The last portrait by Gustav Klimt goes to auction next month, anticipated to fetch upwards of £65 million. “Many of those works, certainly the portraits for which he is best known, were commissions,” says Helena Newman, Sotheby’s worldwide head of impressionist and modern art.”This, though, is something completely different – a technical tour de force, full of boundary-pushing experimentation, as well as a heartfelt ode to absolute beauty.” (more…)

Brett Littman is leaving his post as head of the Noguchi Museum, Artforum reports. “On behalf of the board of Trustees, we would like to extend our gratitude to Brett for his contributions to the museum,” said board cochairs Spencer Bailey and Susan Kessler. “Brett leaves the Museum in a strong position. We wish him great success in his future endeavors.” (more…)

Maurizio Cattelan won his  copyright infringement lawsuit this week after accusations by another artist claiming Cattelan plagiarized his work involving a taped-up banana. “To find otherwise would further limit the already finite number of ways in which a banana may be legally taped to a wall without infringing on Morford’s work,” said U.S. District Judge Robert Scola. (more…)