Artist Derek Fordjour gets a profile in the NYT this week, as he opens a show around a recent exploration into puppetry and performance. “I love learning other ways to have a conversation,” hey says. “Painting has its utility, but performance is another register.” (more…)

Pace Gallery will open a new space in London, taking over the former location of Blain Southern. “This is a time for investment and faith in London,” says Marc Glimcher. “Its role as a cultural hub remains undisputed given the number of world class institutions on its turf, and even staring into the face of Brexit I am convinced that London will remain an economic capital of Europe and a crucial centre for the art market.” (more…)

Sotheby’s will add a final sale to its 2020 calendar this December 8th, bringing forward Pablo Picasso’s 1962 painting Buste de Femme Assise, which is offered for $8 million–$12 million. “We are continuing to rethink not only the traditional auction calendar, but also the ways in which our sales are organized and categorized,” says Amy Cappellazzo, chairman of Sotheby’s Fine Art Division. “Collectors continue to be less concerned with the traditional art market categories of the past.” (more…)

A piece in the NYT this week profiles the departure of Joseph C. Thompson from Mass MOCA, the museum he founded and built into its current role as a bastion of contemporary arts in Western Massachusetts. “No doubt I have a terminal case of founderitis,” he says, “and by rights probably should have left years ago.” (more…)

Researcher Clare McAndrew’s latest NYC Art Market Report paints a disturbing picture for online art fairs and viewing rooms, noting that even after a year of heavy focus on these ventures, 26% of collectors have still not made a purchase online. “Many collectors have only been able to view and transact online, which for most is not their preferred or most frequently used method of engagement with the art market under normal circumstances,” the report reads. (more…)

Bloomberg has a piece this week detailing banks’ increasingly large role in supporting the arts. “From the 1950s onward, bankers needed to create a new and positive image for themselves, and I think bankers like [Chase Manhattan’s] David Rockefeller were really aware of the fact that they could use art to that end,” says Arnold Witte, an associate professor in cultural policy at the University of Amsterdam. (more…)

The NY art non-profit Anonymous Was a Woman has announced its 2020 grant winners winners, who will receive $25,000 each.“The fact that through this award women artists are being recognized for the work, that’s huge, even today,” says recipient Linda Goode Bryant. (more…)

A third of U.S. museums remain shuttered due to COVID-19, a new study finds. “The financial state of U.S. museums is moving from bad to worse,” says Laura Lott, the president and CEO of the American Alliance of Museums. “Those that did safely serve their communities this summer do not have enough revenue to offset higher costs, especially during a potential winter lockdown.” (more…)

Kader Attia, The Vally of Dreams (Installation View), via Regen Projects

Marking his first exhibition in Los Angeles, French-Algerian artist Kader Attia has opened The Valley of Dreams at Regen Projects, marking a new wrinkle in an already expansive and complex body of work.  Spanning a selection of both new and preexisting works in various media including a lightbox photograph, ceramics, sculptures, and a large-scale installation that continue his material and philosophical investigation of the notion of repair as a global, cultural phenomenon, the show is a perfect introduction to the artist’s work for the West Coast. (more…)

Paul Chan, Spekulieren (to speculate) (2020), via Greene Naftali

Opening his fifth solo exhibition, Drawings for Word Book by Ludwig Wittgenstein, at Greene Naftali in New York, artist Paul Chan has installed a series of loosely rendered, childlike drawings, a swirling body of playful images rendered in black and white, sprawling across the walls of the gallery.  Marking a continuation of his practice between producing art works and printed materials through his publishing company, Badlands Unlimited, the show marks an intriguing engagement with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.   (more…)

As a second Covid-19 wave surges around the globe, Art Basel in Hong Kong and Frieze Los Angeles have both moved the dates for their upcoming fairs, with ABHK set to take place in May, and Frieze set to kick off in July.  (more…)

Cecily Brown, The Splendid Table (2019-2020), via Paula Cooper

Currently on view at Paula Cooper’s 26th Street Exhibition Space, artist Cecily Brown has brought forth a striking body of new paintings, continuing her unique exploration of the liminal spaces between abstraction and figuration.  Across a range of works exploring a rich color palette of warm polychrome hues and deep black, Brown’s work demonstrates a prolonged exploration of color’s potential to fill in this space between modes of depiction.

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A piece in The Guardian this week remembers curator and museum head Okwui Enwezor, featuring a range of stories and profiles celebrating his life and work. “I have never met in all my life such a brilliant man. He had a goal and a purpose and he never swayed from the path,” says artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen. (more…)

A piece in The Guardian this week recaps the recent family dispute over Botticelli’s Madonna and Child (1485), as Tanya Dick-Stock, daughter of Canadian businessman John Dick alleges her father used an offshore company to purchase the painting under her name.  “No we don’t know what happened to it or who owns the painting,” says the spokesperson for Dick-Stock. “But we intend to commit resource and energy to finding out.” (more…)

The Bronx Museum of the Arts has tapped Klaudio Rodriguez as its new executive director.  Rodriguez had been working as the museum’s interim director for several months. “Klaudio’s leadership really brought out the best of the entire staff,” said Joseph Mizzi, chairman of the museum board. (more…)

As MoMA prepares to open another full rehang of its collection, the NYT takes a look at the museum’s “Fall Reveal,” documenting each floor and cataloging the various focal points and concepts explored across the galleries. (more…)

A piece in the Art Newspaper details criticism of UNESCO for allegedly exaggerating a $10bn figure as the scale of the illegal art trade worldwide.“The landscape has changed enormously, says Clinton Howell, president of the international association of dealers’ unions CINOA. “Ethical practice is not an abstract concept but an essential business tool.”  (more…)

The Hammer Museum’s latest iteration of the Made in LA Biennial is open, but its run is in question over the surging cases of coronavirus, the LA Times reports. “When can we reopen is not a question I can answer, except to say we hope it’s soon,” says museum rep Scott Tennent. “We’re following the lead of the state and the county. We really want to share this exhibition with everyone — it’s ready — but until we’re actually told we can reopen, we’re in stasis.” (more…)

Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Wind Rider (Installation View), via Company

Hyper-loaded with material and imagery that spans a range of cultural signifiers so often ascribed to the American cowboy as a standard of heterosexual, white heroism, painter Jonathan Lyndon Chase has opened a powerful new show at Company Gallery, titled Wind Rider.  Rich subject matter and made all the more nuanced and powerful by the artist’s own experiences and history, the show is a fluid, charged affair, mixing memory and iconography into a series of pieces that open new lines of discourse and awareness.   (more…)

Nicole Eisenman, Where I Was, It Shall Be (Installation View), via Hauser & Wirth

Having established herself as a central figure in American painting throughout the 1990s, Nicole Eisenman has only continued to grow and expand her impact and practice over the following decades, building her practice outwards into a range of media formats and frameworks that explore her particular experience of the construction of 2-dimensional, and now 3-dimensional space.  Marking her first show with Hauser & Wirth in the gallery’s picturesque Somerset compound, the artist showcases a diverse multidisciplinary language through mixed media works on paper, sculpture and painting. (more…)

John Waters has donated his collection of 372 contemporary art works to the Baltimore Museum of Art. “I’ve always said you have to know good taste to have good bad taste,” Waters says. (more…)

Sun & Sea (Marina), the Venice Biennale performance that earned the Lithuanian Pavilion its Golden Lion last year, will go on view next year at E-Werk Luckenwalde outside of Berlin. “The Luckenwalde presentation will be essentially the same work as Venice, except for the qualities that the venue brings to the piece when experiencing it—an empty swimming pool comes with a whole different kind of underlying catastrophe, at least for me,” says curator Lucia Pietroiusti. (more…)

An outdoor installation by Nick Cave at Jack Shainman’s Kinderhook, NY space is causing controversy in the town, as residents rally to have the work removed, claiming it’s signage and therefore not legally displayed. “It’s an artwork,” Cave says. “It’s freedom of expression. It’s not complicated.” (more…)

The Met will have two joint chairs for the first time, with Hamilton E. James and Candace K. Beinecke taking over at the museum.  “These are exceptionally challenging times,” says former chair Daniel Brodsky, “and the opportunity to have two leaders with strong yet different experiences is a win-win for the museum.” (more…)