Sculptor Anish Kapoor has unveiled Unity, a memorial to those killed in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.  The 19.5 foot tower will be installed at Hanover Square, near the site of the original towers, and will contain a mirrored interior.  “The chamber reflects light so as to form a column, which hovers, ghost-like, in the void of the stone.”  Says Kapoor.  “This very physically monolithic object then appears to create within itself an ephemeral reflection akin to an eternal flame.” (more…)

Part of the 2013 London Design Festival, Alex de Rijke of dRMM Architects and Dean of Architecture at the Royal College of Art has created a complex, interlocking staircase installation on the grounds in front of the Tate Modern.  Endless Stair will open on Friday, and is open to the public during the day.  It closes on October 10th. (more…)

Opening September 16th, a former Getty filling station in West Chelsea is scheduled for conversion into a temporary public art program, beginning with an exhibition of sheep sculptures by the late French artist Francois-Xavier Lalanne.  The project was initially conceived by dealer Paul Kasmin, who represents the Lalanne estate, and real estate developer Michael Shvo, whose company purchased the station this summer.  Sheep Station, as it is called, will feature 25 of Lalanne’s “Mouton” sculptures, each made of epoxy stone and bronze.

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As tensions mount in the Middle East over a potential war with Syria, the Italian government has cancelled a museum loan that would have sent Botticelli’s The Annunciation of San Martino alla Scala to the Israel Museum.  The Italian Ministry of Culture has cited logistic and safety concerns regarding the work, and expressed hope that the work would soon be exhibited in Jerusalem. (more…)

Outside at Riverfront Studios, via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

Station to Station, the traveling art happening organized and led by Doug Aitken, kicked off Friday night at Riverfront Studios in Brooklyn, featuring a vibrant array of music, performance, video, installations and appearances that launched Aitken and his traveling band of artists and musicians on a nationwide tour, which will conclude in Oakland at the end of September.  With different artists and performers appearing on each stop, the event will continue to shift and evolve with each subsequent event. (more…)

In the run-up to his career retrospective at the New Museum next month, Chris Burden is profiled in the New York Times, detailing his diverse and challenging body of work, his position as a highly influential, yet elusively underground figure in the American art world, and his Topanga Canyon home where he lives and works with his wife, sculptor Nancy Rubins.  “One of the reasons Nancy and I have lived up here is so we can just leave lots of junk lying around, and it doesn’t bother anyone that much,” says Burden. “Money has come into this canyon in the last few years. By our standards, it’s starting to get a little too crowded.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal reports on the current state of Sotheby’s auction house going into the fall art season, detailing the company’s increasing stock price despite sales that have been less than exemplary.  With a series of high-profile investors now on board, including the recent addition of Daniel Loeb’s Third Point, Sotheby’s has a number of options standing before it to increase its value for shareholders. (more…)

Moscow Biennale Curator Catherine de Zegher has spoken on the current calls for a boycott of Russian art and art events, stating that she has no intent on a boycott or cancellation of the event to protest the current state of civil rights for Russian LGBT citizens.  “I’m not a big believer in provocation,” De Zegher says. “Art that is very provocative is like fast food almost. It flares up, then it’s finished. Of course I do believe in activist gestures, and movement and action, but I think art works in a different way.” (more…)

From Cy Twombly to Robert Rauschenberg, artist foundations have been seeing a high number of internal turmoil, as trustees and advisors lob claims of unpaid compensation, outlandish salaries, and nepotism that place the foundations’ ostensibly noble missions into question.  “The private foundation world is a wild, wild west,” said Trent Stamp, founding president of Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits. “There’s an opportunity for great abuse.” (more…)

Fashion designer Jeremy Scott has unveiled a new series of prints for his Spring and Summer 2014 line, featuring collaborative artworks made with Kenny Scharf.  Featuring Scharf’s signature cartoon imagery, the pieces are part of a series called “Teenagers from Mars.” “Jeremy is the first person that I ever let take my art and do whatever he wants. I wasn’t nervous about it not being the greatest most fun thing and I wasn’t let down for one second.”  Says Scharf. (more…)

A recently discovered painting has been confirmed as an authentic Van Gogh, and is set to go on view at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam later this month.  The work, Sunset at Montmajour, was identified as a Van Gogh by the materials and through personal letters, in which the artist describes the work to his brother Theo.  The work had sat in an attic for years, held by a discouraged Norwegian man who had been told the work was not authentic almost twenty years prior.  Researcher Teio Meedendorp commented that he and his fellow researchers “have found answers to all the key questions, which is remarkable for a painting that has been lost for more than 100 years.” (more…)

Over the past several years, the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas has built a museum-caliber art collection, on view at the hotel’s CityCenter campus.  Featuring works by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Henry Moore, Isa Genzken, Frank Stella and others, the center’s collection is intended to serve the city as a widely accessible collection of artworks, tucked away among the sights and sounds of The Strip.  “What makes a city successful? What makes people want to live there?” Says MGM CEO James Murren. “We do not have an art museum. I thought that was a big quality of life gap.” (more…)

Henrique Oliveira, Baitogogo (2013), courtesy André Morin, Palais de Tokyo

In a myth which circulated amongst the Bororo people of central Brazil, an early chief named Baitogogo flees into the forest after avenging the rape of his wife. While running through the wood, he is attacked by his son, who flies above him as a bird and bombards his father with droppings which germinate into a tree. At first shamed and burdened by the tree, as he wanders the forest, Baitogogo eventually becomes enchanted by his surroundings, and lives from then on in his newly found paradise.  While refusing a direct correlation between the myth and his latest work, contemporary Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira has created his own “Baitogogo” in the form of a knotted, anthropomorphic forest, currently on view at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo. Interested in the same dream logic, binary oppositions, and unexpected life explored in the myth of Baitogogo, Oliveira’s work is hybrid and transformative, fantastic and unexpected. (more…)

Artist Rob Pruitt has launched a website for voting in the third Rob Pruitt’s Art Awards, tallying votes for fields including “Artist of the Year,” “Critic of the Year,” Art Fair Booth of the Year,” and more.  Winners will be announced in the December 2013 issue of Art In America.  “Conceived as a performance-based artwork, Rob Pruitt’s Art Awards are modeled after the Oscars and the Grammys as high-profile, industry-specific prizes that celebrate the achievements of their respective constituents.”  The site says. (more…)

The Princeton University Art Museum has announced plans to install 12 billboards around the University, city and state, featuring the art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres.  The selected work, Untitled (1991), features an empty, but once occupied bed, evoking powerful emotions of intimacy and loss.  “Apart from its sheer beauty, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work invites us to consider issues of love and searing loss, and to become more aware of the meaning of private emotion and public space,” says Museum director James Steward. “In an age in which the scourge of AIDS remains with us globally, Felix’s immersive vision remains essential, and is a potent reminder of how this disease ravaged the art world twenty years ago.”  (more…)

As he prepares to open his first exhibition in Russia, the Financial Times has sat down with artist John Baldessari to discuss the artist’s ongoing work, and his irreverent view for the art-industrial complex: “I was getting mildly irritated by artists getting branded – ‘This is a Warhol’, ‘This is a de Kooning’ – and you don’t even look. It just has to look like a brand,” He says.  “And I said, I wonder if I can slow that down.” (more…)

Conrad Shawcross, ADA (2013), Courtesy Palais de Tokyo

On view at Palais de Tokyo in Paris is a major exhibition, organized by 21 young curators from 13 different countries, who were in turn selected from a candidate pool of 500. Nouvelles Vagues occupies all of Palais de Tokyo’s exhibition space as well as around 30 galleries throughout Paris. (more…)

Marian Goodman Gallery has reportedly settled on a new space in London, located at 20 Golden Square, just off Piccadilly Circus.  The addition of Goodman to the neighborhood signals what may be the emergence of a new gallery district in central London, to the east of Regent Street.  The gallery has not stated an intended opening date, but it is not anticipated to be before the end of this year.  (more…)

Art collector and Newspaper Magnate Peter Brant is selling Jeff Koons‘ Balloon Dog (Orange) from his collection to auction this November at Christie’s in New York.  The sale will go to benefit his Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, CT, and is estimated at $35 to $55 million, a noteworthy figure that places the low estimate well-over Koons’ current auction record of $33.6 million. (more…)

A recent article by The Independent uncovers the extensive network of government funding, support and propaganda around American contemporary art during the 1950’s and 60’s as an economic and political weapon against the Communist bloc.  Part of the original scope of the CIA when it was founded in 1947, a program called the Congress for Cultural Freedom was used to promote and disseminate the works of American artists as a symbol of outright cultural freedom of expression.  Says former agent Donald Jameson: “It was recognised that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.” (more…)

In an effort to win more consignments, Sotheby’s has filed a statement saying that it has entered into auction guarantees totaling over $166 million, including $23.5 million by undisclosed third-party guarantors.  With fall sales in London, New York and Hong Kong, the auction house has increased its borrowing capacity to provide even more in guarantees to interested sellers.  “We did this to enhance our flexibility as we negotiate deal opportunities and hopefully provide us with an opportunity to improve margins and profitability by taking prudent balance sheet risk,” Sotheby’s head William Ruprecht said. (more…)

During research on a book about Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, writer Martin Bailey stumbled across a Parisian newspaper article, detailing the artist’s public severing of his left ear following a row with Gaugin.  The article, which reported the artist merely as “someone named Vincent,” also details Van Gogh’s later arrival at a “house of ill repute,” where he presented the doorman with the piece of his ear.  “Take it, it will be useful.”  The artist told him. (more…)

The Exhibitor List for the 2013 Edition of the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair has been announced, featuring a list of 258 galleries from 31 countries around the world.  The fair has also announced a number of new programming choices for this year’s fair, including the announcement of New York’s Public Art Fund Director Nicholas Baume as the lead curator for the fair’s “Public” section. Art Basel Miami Beach Opens on December 8th. (more…)

In anticipation of her upcoming show at the Brooklyn Museum, New York Magazine sat down with artist Wangechi Mutu to discuss her elusive, layered collage techniques, her influences in science fiction and mythology, and her views on images of international black identity.  “In National Geographic you always saw pictures of tribal Africa. And here I am sitting in Nairobi, in our suburban house, watching TV and thinking, ‘Why is it always going to be these tribal people that are the ambassadors of our image?’”  She says. (more…)