In the past two years, U.S. authorities have seized over $100 Million in art and antiques from Subhash Kapoor, a 64-year-old American citizen accused as one of the biggest smuggles of ancient antiquities and art in the world.  Kapoor has sold or donated ancient art works to a number of prominent museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and LACMA, and is currently being held in India as a suspect in an international smuggling ring.  The United States is also seeking its own charges for the dealer.  “It’s one of our most significant antiquities and artifacts investigations that we’ve conducted,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent in Charge James T. Hayes says. (more…)

When the Whitney Museum set out to restore artist Douglas Davis’s early collaborative, online art piece the World’s First Collaborative Sentence, few could foresee the challenges that digital and internet-based art posed for repair and maintenance.  Based on constantly shifting programming languages and operating systems, digital art often offers complex restoration problems, forcing curators and experts to evaluate the degradation of web sites, coding and software updates against the original authenticity of the piece to properly exhibit it.  “We’re working on constantly shifting grounds,” said Rudolf Frieling, of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “Whatever hardware, platform or device we’re using is not going to be there tomorrow.” (more…)

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait (1983), courtesy Skarstedt Gallery

Playing with constructed images of self and cultural phenomena, Robert Mapplethorpe’s challenging self-portraits were an influential and essential part of the 1970’s New York arts scene.  Now, the artist’s work in the medium is documented through eleven photographs at Skarstedt Gallery currently on view through June 15th. The photographs are extremely personal explorations that the artist took of himself periodically throughout his life, meant to explore different aspects of his own identity, as he captures himself in a variety of states and moods.

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Billed as the world’s largest art exhibition, the newly announced Art Everywhere project will turn billboards and poster sites around the United Kingdom into exhibition spaces for works from the national collection.  The project is curated in part by the British public, who will vote on their favorite works from a curated shortlist.  Damien Hirst has offered a work for exhibition, and is a vocal supporter of the project.  “Art is for everyone, and everyone who has access to it will benefit from it. This project is amazing and gives the public a voice and an opportunity to choose what they want to see on their streets.“  He says. (more…)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge (1892), courtesy The Frick Collection

The Frick Collection is currently displaying a series of nineteenth-century French drawings and prints by a variety of Realist, Impressionist, and Post-impressionist masters, made possible by the Florence Gould Foundation.  Exploring the varying approaches of figuration, depiction and ornamentation throughout 19th century drawing and prints, the exhibition is on view through June 16th.

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A video, released online yesterday and since removed, purportedly depicts artist Richard Prince burning one of the five still disputed Canal Zone pictures that were challenged in court by photographer Patrick Cariou.  While Prince had won the case for the majority of the works in the series, Graduation, the work depicted in the film, was still under consideration for not being fully “transformative.”  Cariou had originally sued to have the works destroyed.  In the video, Prince is quoted as saying “to them this stands for money,” before having an assistant douse the work in gasoline and light it on fire. (more…)

Gert&Uwe Tobias, Untitled (2012), © photo Alistair Overbruck, Cologne/Gert & Uwe Tobias/VG. Bildkunst, Bonn via Whitechapel Gallery

Whitechapel Gallery is currently hosting a major exhibition of work by Romanian-born twins Gert and Uwe Tobias, showcasing the brothers’ work and its abilities to challenge the distinctions between fine art and craft with their collaboratively created woodcuts, sculptures, collages and typewriter drawings.  Their multi-genre works from 2008 to the present are organized into a site-specific installation for the gallery, and showcase their broad, nuanced skill set in a global context.

Gert & Uwe Tobias (Installation View), via Whitechapel Gallery

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Sou Fujimoto’s Serpentine Pavilion, via The Serpentine

The Serpentine Gallery’s annual summer pavilion opened late last week in London’s Hyde Park, with a presentation by designer Sou Fujimoto and Serpentine Directors Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Fujimoto, Peyton-Jones, and Obrist, via Bloomberg (more…)

Sterling Ruby, SP Paintings (Installation View), courtesy Nahmad Contemporary

This past month, Nahmad Contemporary was home to its inaugural show, a body of new work by American artist Sterling Ruby, entitled “SP Paintings;” a series he has been developing for a number of years, but has never collectively displayed in an exhibition until now.

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British Pavilion (Installation view) 2013

With the impressively well-stocked selection of pavilions at this year’s Biennale, the United Kingdom has turned to Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller to represent the country, presenting a complexly layered thematic exhibition titled English Magic.  Best known for his restaging of the miners’ strike battle of Orgreave in 2001, his 2009 road trip though America with a car wrecked by a bomb in Iraq, and his 2012 touring bounce house version of Stonehenge, Deller has brought his controversial, political resumé to bear on the largest stage for his country’s creative reputation, creating a visually aggressive criticism of modern wealth.

Jeremy Deller, St. Helier on Fire 2017, British Pavilion 2013

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Figment NYC, Governors Island

The ferry from lower Manhattan to Governors Island was filled with excited children and adults wearing feathers, sequins and other outlandish pieces of clothing this weekend, setting the tone for the playground of colors, sounds, and movement that marked Figment NYC. Running June 8^th-June 9^th, the festival grounds on Governors Island was transformed into a fantastical wonderland worthy of Seuss and Dali, a colorful and immaginative exhibition of arts, costumes, performances, and other sights, including a petting zoo and free clothing tent, which provided a helpful hand to those who arrived in less motley apparel.

Pop Dogs, Figment NYC, Governors Island

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George Condo, Downtown New York (2012), Copyright George Condo / ARS (Artists Rights Society), New York, 2013 via Sprueth Magers

For the past thirty years, George Condo has created visceral, challenging works that blend art history and theory with an irreverent worldview that make his sculptures and canvases explode with life.  Currently, the artist is exhibiting a selection of  his Drawing Paintings and bronze sculptures, created in 2012, for his third solo show with Sprüth Magers, Berlin. Condo has a long standing relationship with the gallery that started almost 30 years ago, when Monika Sprüth hosted one of Condo’s first solo exhibitions in Cologne in 1984. (more…)

Artist Elizabeth Peyton and designer Dries Van Noten recently sat down with the Financial Times’s Style section to talk about their ongoing friendship, their mutual respect for each other’s work, and Peyton’s portraiture of Van Noten.  “The faces people make when they are photographed, and the face they have when you draw them are very different. It’s a very special thing to share with someone, because it’s time spent together that is not about eating or the usual social things.” Peyton says. (more…)

The Financial Times has published a series of articles on collecting, gallery operations and the contemporary art world, running in its June 7th issue, as well as online.  Taking a look at the global market for contemporary art, the special section of the paper includes interviews with Bill Viola and Maurizio Cattelan, a history of the upcoming Art Basel fair, a recap of the newly reopened Berggruen Museum in Berlin, a spotlight on the rising popularity of sculpture in the British market, and a feature on the high-profile Russian art dealer Stella Kesaeva. (more…)

A work depicting Saint Helen in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum has been revealed as a Tintoretto.  Previously credited to Schiavone, The Embarkation of St Helena to the Holy Land was discovered as a misattribution during a digitization of the museum’s records.  National Inventory Research Project director Andrew Greg said: “Non-British paintings are sometimes a comparatively neglected aspect of a museum’s collections and we also recognised that few museums have complete up-to-date catalogues of their picture collections. (more…)

Two of Russia’s most prominent museums, the Hermitage Museum and the Pushkin Museum, are currently embroiled in a dispute over the collections of Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin, which had been distributed between two institutions when Stalin shut down the State Museum in 1948.  The debate was brought to light this year, when the Pushkin’s director, Irina Antonova, appealed to President Vladimir Putin on live television, asking him to recreate the institution in Moscow, raising ire over the rightful home of the works, which include pieces by Picasso and Matisse.  “The expert advice seems to be all on the Hermitage side—but you never know,” says Geraldine Norman, an advisor at The Hermitage. (more…)

Prior to his death in February, American artist Richard Artschwager designed four elevators for the Whitney Museum’s new museum space in Chelsea, currently under construction.  The four designs, titled Six in Four, are designed around the reoccurring motifs of doors, windows, tables, baskets, mirrors and rugs that appear in Artschwager’s work.  “The idea was to have something that immediately gives you a sense of place, an identity, so that this isn’t just another generic museum,” Whitney Director Adam D. Weinberg said. (more…)

Rodney Graham, (Installation View), via 303 Gallery

303 Gallery is currently presenting its seventh show with artist Rodney Graham, the inaugural exhibition for the gallery’s new home on West 24th Street, New York. In the works on display, Graham continues his allegorical self portraits, creating surreal scenes in hyperreal lightbox photographs. The humorous yet sympathetic works, often ironic re-constructions of esoteric references, give the sense of a private joke, playfully lampooning the absurdity of life.

Rodney Graham, Cactus Fan (2013), via 303 Gallery (more…)

Philip Taaffe, Recent Work (Installation view), courtesy Luhring Augustine Gallery

Recent work by Philip Taaffe is currently on view at Luhring Augustine gallery in Chelsea, New York, marking Taaffe’s first solo show of paintings in New York since 2007. Culling together a diverse set of influences and materials, the works on view unveil Taaffe’s explorations of imagery in art, architecture, and archeology, both in contemporary and historical contexts.

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Troy Brauntuch, State Trooper (2013), via Petzel Gallery

Chelsea’s Petzel Gallery is currently presenting a pair of new exhibitions examining the process of art creation and photography, as explored in the works of artist’s Troy Brauntuch and John Stezaker.  Taking notably distinct, attentive approaches to the photographed image, these two artists present new entries into well-established bodies of work, while adding new wrinkles and conceits to their practice. (more…)

In the wake of the multiple lawsuits brought against the Knoedler Gallery for sales of counterfeit art since the space closed in 2011, Forbes Magazine has published an article detailing the lack of oversight and due diligence that often plagues collectors when art and antiques are being bought or sold. “Sophisticated businesspeople would never do a business deal without asking questions, but somehow when they are buying art or collectibles, their common sense flies out of their head,” says Patty Gerstenblith, a professor of Art and Cultural Law at DePaul University. (more…)

This week, art dealer Larry Gagosian asked New York State Supreme Court to throw out the lawsuit collector Ronald Perelman filed against him last fall.  Gagosian and Perelman have been embroiled in a debate over the sale of a Jeff Koons sculpture, with Perelman claiming that Gagosian used his position to take advantage of Perelman in the sale.  “I really think that these two gentlemen ought to get together at a cocktail party in the Hamptons this summer,” Justice Barbara Kapnick said. “This is a crazy case to have going on in this court and you ought to see if this can’t get resolved before I write a decision.” (more…)

The Bride and the Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns, (Installation View) © Felix Clay 2013. Courtesy of Barbican Art Gallery

Taking a diverse look at Marcel Duchamp’s influence on artists around the globe, the Barbican in London is currently presenting The Bride and the Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns, following the artist’s influence on several modern masters in the fields of composition, choreography and the visual arts. Featuring around 90 works by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, as well as choreographic work by Merce Cunningham and works by John Cage, the show takes great pleasure in crossing the disciplines of art, dance and music to reflect the multi-faceted work of these artists.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1950 replica of 1917 original) Photo Felix Clay 2013, Courtesy of Barbican Art Gallery. (more…)

Alexander Calder, Calder After the War (Installation View), courtesy of Pace London

Currently on view at Pace Gallery London, from April 19th through June 7th, is an exhibition of over fifty works by Alexander Calder, created between 1945 and 1949, one of his most well-known periods during which he pioneered many of his sculptural abstractions through movement in three dimensions, particularly via his mobiles and stabiles.

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