The Andy Warhol Foundation is auctioning a selection of holiday themed works by the artist online.  “While Warhol’s style may have shifted starting in the 1960s, his generous spirit and penchant for the holidays was always evident by his creation of works of art as gifts for family, friends, and colleagues throughout his career,” says Michael Dayton Hermann, director of licensing, marketing, and sales at the Andy Warhol Foundation. (more…)

The Smithsonian Institution and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation have joined forces in an effort to build an international network of provenance research on Asian art. “Research on objects from the Asian region has so far been overshadowed by other focal points of provenance research, but the first seminar already showed there is great interest in the topic,” says SPK President Hermann Parzinger. (more…)

Collector Ronald Lauder has made a significant gift of arms and armor to The Met, Art News reports. “When I began thinking about where I wanted my collection to ultimately be displayed, it was only fitting that it would all come back to The Met,” he said. “Just as I have learned and continue to learn at The Met, I know that this collection will educate future generations about this important period in our history.” (more…)

A massive party, standing in for the usual Art Basel revelry and held at the Nautilus Hotel in Miami Beach was raided this week for defiance of Covid-19 procedures. “The police showed up at 8:15 p.m. and literally raided the place and forced everyone to leave,” said one guest. (more…)

Creative Capital has announced a round of 35 new grants totaling $1.75 million in funds.  “We are thrilled to honor these brilliant artists and the powerful, boundary-pushing work that they are creating,” says Leslie Singer, Creative Capital’s interim executive director. “We look forward to seeing these projects grow to make their mark on the world, in spite of the tremendous challenges this year has posed for so many artists.” (more…)

A piece in the Washington Post charts the blowback over the Baltimore Museum of Art’s attempted sale of works from its collection. “There’s one thing the Baltimore episode made clear: Even the most noble of causes, including paying the mostly minority guards a living wage and improving access for the community, can’t be funded by monetizing the collection,” says one insider. (more…)

In an effort to mitigate financial damage caused by the pandemic, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London will remain closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, likely through 2022. “It will take two to three years to get a reasonable recovery, but it could even be five years to reach the pre-Covid highs,” says Tim Reeve, the V&A’s deputy director. “Consumer confidence about busy, enclosed spaces will take a long time to recover.” (more…)

Christie’s and Sotheby’s have been ordered to reveal dealings with the late Jeffrey Epstein, including all dealings and correspondences. (more…)

Arguments have begun in a pair of Supreme Court cases that could drastically change the U.S.’s policies on Nazi-looted art from WWII. “Just imagine there’s a campaign of genocide and as part of that there’s an effort to take all the property including jewelry, art and even the extraction of gold teeth,” said Clarence Thomas. “You could go down the list of the awful things that were done.” (more…)

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Museums in Seoul are shuttering again as Covid-19 cases continue to rise in the city.  The nation’s health minister has called the city a “covid war zone.” (more…)

A mural on the wall of the restaurant at Tate Britain has been deemed offensive, and will likely lead to the restaurant’s closure. The mural was criticized for racist depictions of non-Europeans.  The museum’s trustees have not been satisfied with explanations of the work by the museum. (more…)

Dia Chelsea will reopen in April, the NYT reports. “From the beginning, we’ve been trying to do this in an economical fashion and really not overextend,” says director, Jessica Morgan.  (more…)

Artist Titus Kaphar has an interview this week on CBS News, discussing his work and recent show at Gagosian. “I think the paintings do speak to those different kinds of disappearance that happens to young Black children, that is the violence against them by police, that is being poisoned by the water in our communities, Flint, that is natural disasters that the country hasn’t come up and really completely finished resolving and repairing yet,” he says. (more…)

An artist group called The Most Famous Artist has taken credit for the monoliths installed in Utah and California this past month. “I am not able to say much because of legalities of the original installation,” says group member Matty Mo. “I can say we are well known for stunts of this nature and at this time we are offering authentic art objects through monoliths-as-a-service. I cannot issue additional images at this time, but I can promise more on this in the coming days and weeks.” (more…)

An investigation into Dutch Museum restitution policies has found that the restitution review panel in the country too frequently sides with the institutions which hold the works in question. “If it’s looted art and there’s an heir, the interests of the museum shouldn’t be taken into account,” Jacob Kohnstamm, a lawyer who led the panel that wrote the report. “We’re trying to strive for justice.” (more…)

Soyeon Shin at Mrs., all images via NADA

Returning to Miami amidst the pressures and concerns of the current Covid-19 crisis, this year’s iteration of NADA Miami from the New Art Dealers Alliance feels a bit different.  Reworking the format to fit the travel concerns and logistical issues posed by the virus, this year’s iteration, its 18th, manages to showcase an international series of presentations from a diverse roster of 47 NADA Members and 27 first-time exhibitors for a total of 97 galleries from 44 cities, both in gallery spaces and online. (more…)

The Supreme Court will consider a case over whether the heirs of Jewish art dealers can sue to recover works and/or compensation for looted works, a case concerning forced sale and the question of whether works are recoverable. “The Nazi regime stripped German Jews of the protection of the rule of law from the moment Hitler took power and declared explicitly that Jews were not ‘German.’” says Boston attorney Nicholas O’Donnell. (more…)

Frieze has taken gallery space in London’s Mayfair District. “We can confirm that Frieze is planning to take a lease on 9 and 9a Cork Street, subject to obtaining all relevant permissions, with a view to create a space for ambitious exhibition projects. Further updates and information will be available in the forthcoming months,” a spokesperson says. (more…)

In a new study, an AI algorithm capable of creating Chinese landscape paintings fooled human evaluators over 50% of the time.  Princeton student Alice Xue’s work on whether a machine could pass a Visual Turing Test showed that machines are now able to create works able to fool evaluators over half the time. (more…)

Tracey Emin has an interview in the Art Newspaper this week, as she discusses her recently opened shows and challenging 2020. “I think when I was younger, I had more of a blind ambition,” she says. “Now I haven’t got that at all. I just need to do the things I want to do.”  (more…)

Olafur Eliasson at Tanya Bonakdar, via Art Basel

As the year rolls into December, and businesses remain shuttered over Covid-19, the Art Basel fair franchise has launched another edition of its Online Viewing Rooms series, marking off the string of days normally occupied by Art Basel’s famed Miami Beach fair with a more restrained, but equally well-stocked outing that seems to have notched strong response in its early hours.  Long marking the end of the art world’s fall season, and serving as a much-needed last bash of the year for art lovers and art workers worldwide, this year’s edition of Art Basel’s December fair comes without the endless string of afterparties, replaced with a range of online offerings. (more…)

Artist Christoph Büchel is being pressured by the Venice Biennale to return the sunken boat he exhibited at last year’s Venice Biennale in memory of the drowned migrants who died onboard. “Starting in November 2019, we have repeatedly asked Christoph Büchel and his gallery Hauser & Wirth, to respect the commitment the artist made to return [the boat] to its owner, the municipality of Augusta in Sicily, which loaned it to Büchel,” the Venice Biennale said in a statement. (more…)

The Tate has announced plans to cut around 12% of its workforce, amounting to around 120 full-time positions, in order to survive the economic impact of the pandemic. “We hope that this voluntary process will help us make these significant savings, but we cannot rule out having to move to compulsory redundancy in 2021 to meet the necessary level of reductions. If so, we will protect as many jobs as possible and ensure that no area of the workforce is unfairly hit harder than any other,” says director Maria Balshaw. (more…)