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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The Hirshhorn Museum’s proposed “Seasonal Inflatable Sculpture Project,” informally referred to as “the Bubble,” has been officially decided against, after years of debate and wrangling over its installation on the museum’s property on the National Mall.  The news comes shortly after Hirshhorn director Richard Koshalek announced his decision to resign after a split vote on the Bubble several weeks ago.  “If the board were more together and if we were seeing more results of that, then we might have made a different decision,” Smithsonian Undersecretary Richard Kurin said. “Because it’s divided, it makes it hard to move forward.” (more…)

The William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, London has been awarded the UK’s prestigious Art Fund Museum of the Year, entitling it to a £100,000 prize.  The award comes after an ambitious renovation and restoration project, which put £3 million into upgrades and new curatorial standards to make the museum a jewel of the city’s already burgeoning cultural offering.  Says Art Fund Director Stephen Deuchar: “The collections are not only important but they are very beautifully presented, in terms of the physical fabric of the showcases and also the interpretation – the labels are erudite and accessible. There is a great curatorial coherence to the collections and that comes across in every square foot of the museum.” (more…)

To commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the Tube, Art on the Underground has invited 15 innovative contemporary artists from across the globe to produce limited-edition posters. Each image will present a different perspective on the London Tube, and hence create a vibrant narrative of the world’s first underground network. Artists involved include Gillian Wearing, Sarah Lucas and Wolfgang Tillmans. (more…)

Vollis Simpson, a self-taught North Carolina artist renowned for his whirligigs, died on Friday at his home after complications from a heart valve replacement.  He was 94.  Simpson was known to scour junkyards for bits to assemble his quirky, wind-powered whirligigs. His pieces have been featured in numerous art museums and exhibitions across the country, including his 55-foot-tall, 45-foot-wide work Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, on permanent display at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.  A park in his honor, the Wilson Whirligig Park, will be opening in the fall in the city of Wilson, N.C.

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Following on news of the dissolution of L&M Arts in New York earlier this year, the gallery partnership between Dominique Lévy and Robert Mnuchin will dissolve its Los Angeles outpost.  “We’re sad, of course. It’s an amazing place and has been an amazing three years. But following the split in New York, this is only logical. Robert and Dominique were going their separate ways in New York and wanted to focus on their separate endeavors.”  Said director Sarah Watson. (more…)

David Pappaceno, Psychic Birth (Installation view,2013), at English Kills Gallery.

This past weekend, locals, gallerists, collectors and other art enthusiasts flocked to Bushwick, Brooklyn for the seventh-annual Bushwick Open Studios, organized by nonprofit community group Arts in Bushwick. With over 550 spaces participating, many with more artists than one, it was impossible to see everything, even for the most dogged observer. Art turned out at every corner—in galleries, art studios, apartments, bars/restaurants, shops and event spaces— in this rapidly-developing district with a concentration of studios and gallery spaces that rivals Chelsea.

M. Henry Jones, Jim Jarmusch (2013) at Microscope Gallery

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With the announcement of Sotheby’s and Christie’s summer Impressionist and Modernist sales this month, analysts are noting that both auction houses have featured top lots from the collection of the Nahmad family, showing the family’s trademark approach of purchasing art in great quantity and reselling when the time is right. “It was once said that the Nahmads propped up this market with their buying when times were tough; now they appear to be propping it up with their selling.” Writes The Telegraph’s Colin Gleadell. (more…)

Plans have been set in place to move Oslo’s Edvard Munch museum to the city’s waterfront, which had previously been delayed for several years to due location and funding considerations.  The new, glass-lined building, titled Lambda, is projected to open in 2018, designed by Spanish firm Herreros Arquitectos.  The decision  “shows that even the starkest political opponents can put aside their differences for the common good”, said city commissioner for culture and industry Hallstein Bjercke. (more…)

Bashir Makhou, Giardino Occupato (Installation View) (2013) All photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Otherwise Occupied is an exhibition of Palestinian artists organized by al Hoash, a Palestinian art organization based in Jerusalem, as part of the 55^th International Art Exhibition at Venice Biennale 2013. The show is one of 48 Collateral Events hosted around the city. The exhibition features the work of two prominent, internationally renowned artists: Bashir Makhoul and Aissa Deebi. Makhoul is the head of the Winchester School of Art, England, while Deebi is a founding member of ArteEast, a Brooklyn-based organization that supports Middle Eastern art and culture. Both have exhibited work at the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Manhattan, and mainly work with photography. In the past, both have addressed the themes of diaspora, exile and, more broadly, Palestinian politics, unsurprising given that both artists were born inside the 1948 borders of Palestine, and have since immigrated to become citizens of other states. Currently, they are working in the globalized art world, exemplified by Massimiliano Gioni’s Central Pavilion, The Encyclopedic Palace. Nevertheless, the artists still consider themselves Palestinian, underlining the complex political identities of modernity Gioni expressed in his press conference.

Bashir Makhou, Giardino Occupato (Installation View) (2013)

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Damien Hirst, Death or Glory (2001)

In conjunction with the events and exhibitions of the 55th Venice Biennale this summer, Le Stanze del Vetro (“Rooms for Glass”), the joint project by La Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Pentagram Siftung, is currently presenting Fragile?, an exhibition dedicated to the presence and use of glass in contemporary art.  Perhaps one of the more interesting conceits for a Biennale exhibition, the show on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore looks at glass as an aesthetic and and figurative medium in current practice, featuring works by Ai Weiwei, Marcel Duchamp, Pipliotti Rist, Joseph Beuys, and many more.

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101 Spring Street, the New York Residence of artist Donald Judd, opened its schedule today for small public tours, offering visitors a firsthand look at the artist’s distinct views on design, lifestyle, and creativity, through his meticulous and elegantly simple renovation of the former industrial space.  “I’ve never built anything on new land,” Judd once wrote. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal has published a thorough profile on MoMA’s recently hired curator of photography, Quentin Bajac.  Recruited last year, Bajac is the first non-American to be named to the post, and brings a diversified view into the art form that often incorporates fields like astronomy.  “Photography has established a fruitful dialogue with other media,” he said. “With film, with architecture, with sculpture. What I’m really interested in is this dialogue with other techniques.” (more…)

British artist David Shrigley has chosen an unlikely subject for his sculptural commission outside the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich: Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee, Bubbles.  Standing near a fan monument to Jackson, Shrigley’s sculpture will aim to bring attention to Bubbles’s currently unfunded care in Florida. “Michael Jackson’s will made no provision for the care of Bubbles, yet the Estate of Michael Jackson still claims ownership of him. It costs $20,000 US a year to care for each of the 30 apes at the sanctuary and whilst some Michael Jackson fans have donated money to the cause there is still a massive shortfall in funding. Apes live almost as long as humans, so the cost of lifetime care for the apes will run into many millions.”  The press release on the website claims. (more…)

Dealer Matthew Marks is currently selling his West Village apartment, built in 1830 by painter Abraham Rattner.  The building boasts impressive renovations, all made since the building was purchased in 1997.  “At home, we like to move the furniture around, repaint and change the art frequently, but after 16 years, we’ve tried all the combinations and it’s time to move on.”  Marks said. (more…)