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…)

Evgen Copi Gorisek at Plan X, via Untitled

Each year, the first week of December is normally reserved for Miami Beach, a bastion of sun and sand that welcomed international hordes of art lovers to its Art Deco havens and bustling streets for the proceedings of Miami Art Week and, at its center, Art Basel Miami Beach.  Yet with the new surge of Covid-19, and the challenges the disease has posed to the art world, this year sees the annual end of year fair and its hordes of parties practiced in proxy, with a similar bevy of sales events heading online.  Not least of those is Untitled Art Fair. (more…)

A young boy thrown from a viewing platform at the Tate Modern can now walk, CNN reports. “Despite everything, he continues to make efforts and progress: he begins to walk with a tetrapod cane while we hold him by the back of the coat for balance,” the boy’s family says. (more…)

A piece in Art News this week charts former banker David Schrader’s impact on Sotheby’s private sales division. “He knows a lot about the art world and a lot about business,” says Pace CEO Marc Glimcher. “When someone like that enters the art world, it can be a disaster. But for him it was not. He is great to work with.” (more…)

A series of collaborative works by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns created for a window display at Bergdorf Goodman will head to auction at Christie’s, Art Market Monitor reports. (more…)

Sarah McBride, the newly elected state senator for Delaware, and the highest ranking openly transgender elected official in the country, has an interview in Art Newspaper this week, where she speaks on her experiences as a trustee at the Delaware Art Museum. “The arts were an integral part of my self-discovery, my journey toward authenticity,” she says. “It was in the performing arts that I was able to explore my identity, my gender, different experiences and emotions.” (more…)

Art News reviews rumors that Frieze is planning an art fair edition in Seoul, South Korea, as local vendors clamor to get an upper hand on any potential announcements. “We are always looking at potential new opportunities and have a great relationship with the Korean galleries, institutions, and collectors,” said a Frieze spokesperson. “Anything is possible, but there’s nothing to report at this stage.” (more…)

Art Basel Miami Beach is cancelled, but Miami Art Week is still rolling this week in the Florida city, leading many to question the city’s art scene and motivations, including a dinner party hosted by the recently-divorced Libbie Mugrabi. “Now I settled a divorce and I have a lot of money,” she says. “And I can do whatever I want with it. It’s my choice. And this is what I want to do.” (more…)

The German government has approved the highest-ever cultural budget for the country, Art Newspaper reports. “This resounding acknowledgement by parliament of the critical importance of culture and the media is a major signal in these difficult times,” says Culture Minister Monika Grütters. (more…)

The mystery around the monolith discovered in the Utah desert has gotten deeper, after the metal structure, which some attribute to artist John McCracken, disappeared from its location. “Almost as quickly as it appeared it has now disappeared,” a statement from the Department of Public Safety reads. (more…)

A piece in The Atlantic this week charts the ongoing internal debates over race and representation currently roiling art museums, and points to a long-overdue reckoning amongst arts institutions. “Historically, I would say [collecting decisions depend on] institutional curatorial expertise right there with artists’ intent, and way down the road, thinking about the visitor experience or relevance to the community,” says Lori Fogarty, the executive director of the Oakland Museum of California. “That is shifting … I think we are at a moment of complete reimagination for museums.” (more…)