Salem, MA’s Peabody Essex Museum has quietly risen up the ranks to become one of the United States’ top 20 art museums for gallery space and endowment, thanks in part to a new revenue model that focuses on strengthening the museum’s endowment over physical expansion.  Led by director Dan L. Monroe, the museum has also shifted its focus towards the local community, and away from occasionally unreliable streams of tourists.  “That gives you a dynamic relationship with the community and the capability to develop a support base,” Mr. Monroe says. (more…)

Sotheby’s announced that its will soon hold its first evening auction of Indian works in 12 years, a collection of 43 works from collector and dealer Amrita Jhaveri.  The upcoming auction will be exhibited in New York, London and New Delhi in advance of the sale, and will include works by Tyeb Mehta, Francis Newton Souza and Syed Haider Raza, with a total value of $7 million. “Her father and mother were also collectors and knew various artists. But I believe that these are her works.” Says Yahmini Mehta, international director of Indian and South-east Asian art at Sotheby’s. (more…)

While fine arts auctions in New York State generate total sales of $8 billion annually, many dealers and market analysts are calling foul on auction practices intended to drive up the price of works with little to no supervision of the market.  “The art world feels like the private equity market of the ’80s and the hedge funds of the ’90s,” says James R. Hedges IV, a New York collector and financier. “It’s got practically no oversight or regulation.”

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LA Art Show (2013), Installation View

The LA Art show held its opening night premier party on Wednesday, January 23rd at the LA Convention Center. During the Patron Hours, James Franco was the guest of honor and was joined by an eclectic LA crowd, with an incredible mix ranging from the overtly contemporary to the traditionally elegant. Entering its 18th year, the fair has earned a reputation for its well planned juxtaposition of traditional and modern art, and this year’s edition was no different.  The milling crowd moved easily from the traditional to contemporary sections and back, taking their time to comb through the sheer scale of the festival and its one hundred prominent worldwide galleries.

LA Art Show (2013), Installation View

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MoMA PS1 is reportedly working with city officials to bring a large-scale performance dome to the Rockaways in an effort to help raise funds for the neighborhood that was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.  While little news has been released, funding for the dome has apparently been acquired from Volkswagen. (more…)

A recurring theme of late for American museums has been that of repatriation, with several major institutions announcing that they will return ancient works to foreign countries claiming that the works were theirs.  However, many critics and museum employees posit that these claims on ancient art are often little more than extortion, and that the claims do little more than starve the cultural offering of museums and institutions around the globe, all while ignoring key issues of theft and looting.  “Has any of this affected the real evil, which is looting?” asks Stephen Urice, a cultural property lawyer at the University of Miami. “From what I see, it’s getting worse.” (more…)

With the Spanish economy in the throes of stagnancy, the annual ARCOMadrid Art Fair is looking abroad to ensure a productive year.  The fair has compensated 150 VIP guests to attend from the United States, Asia, and elsewhere in order to ensure a strong turnout this February.  “We’re very aware of the difficult moment the Spanish economy is in, so we’re trying to compensate with foreign buyers,” said ARCO director Carlos Urroz. (more…)

Luc Tuymans, The Summer Is Over (Installation View), via David Zwirner

With a consistency that can almost be regarded as mechanical, 2013 marks another show by Belgian painter Luc Tuymans at David Zwirner in New York.  Since joining the gallery in 1994, the Belgian painter has held solo exhibitions in the gallery every two years, and is currently presenting a new series of thematically interwoven works that expound on his sparsely colored, figurative approach, titled The Summer is Over.

Luc Tuymans, Zoo (2011), via David Zwirner

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A painting by French Master Charles Le Brun has been discovered at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris.  The work, titled Le Sacrifice de Polyxène, had hung for years in plain sight in the suite where Coco Chanel had lived for 30 years, but only drew attention recently, when the Hotel closed for renovations.  “It is a magical discovery,” said Cécile Bernard, a Christie’s expert. “The painting must have been there for at least 50 years.” (more…)

A large banner featuring one of George Condo’s Jesters has been unfurled outside of the Metropolitan Opera.  The banner promotes the Opera’s current production of Rigoletto, as well as Condo’s current show of work in Gallery Met, the exhibition space in the Met’s south lobby, which opens Monday.  (more…)

The Dutch Restitutions Committee has rejected the claim of two Jewish art dealers for all but one of 189 works in the country’s national collection.  The committee did return one work, Ferdinand Bol’s Man With High Cap, but was unable to find enough evidence to return any of the other contested works.  “Ownership of most of the works has not proved very probable,” the Dutch Restitutions Committee said in its recommendation, published late yesterday on its website. “During the occupation, the Katz brothers often acted as middlemen and intermediaries for German buyers.”  (more…)

Frieze New York has announced its 2013 “Projects”, a selection of seven specially commissioned works that will be brought to life at the fair this May.  The show will feature works by Liz Glynn, Maria Loboda, Mateo Tannatt, Andra Ursuta, Marianne Vitale, a special tribute to the artist-run restaurant Food, and an original text by novelist Ben Marcus.  Says Frieze New York Projects Curator Cecilia Alemani: “For the second edition of Frieze Projects in New York, I asked the commissioned artists to intervene in the fair and its surrounding landscape by staging challenging works that play with everyday habits and collective behaviors. Basic actions such as eating, drinking, speaking and praying serve as the starting point for a series of site- specific installations that engage the ritualistic dimension of the fair and the unique landscape of the island.” (more…)

Following a well-attended VIP preview at this year’s Art Stage Singapore, dealers are saying that the Asian art fair is off to a strong start.  The growing wealth of Southeast Asia is reflected in the high number of Asian galleries at the fair, but Western artists have also fared well, with a number of Antony Gormley works already sold, and major interest in the butterfly works of Damien Hirst.  “With the Dow at a four-year high, a lot of people have loosened their purse strings,” said Jasdeep Sandhu, of Singapore-based Gajah Gallery. (more…)

Sculptor Marc Quinn has unveiled his most recent installation commission, a massive rendering of the artist’s son at the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore.  The sculpture, titled Planet, is intended to play on notions of weight and scale, and continues Quinn’s record of major public works, following his bust of Allison Lapper on Trafalgar Square’s 4th plinth.   (more…)

Ed Ruscha, I’m Amazed (1971),via Bernard Jacobson

This January, Bernard Jacobson Gallery is home to Ed Ruscha’s I’m Amazed collection, which presents some of the artist’s most abstract works.  Known for his treatment of text as objects, the titles of Ruscha’s images become the works themselves. Single words are juxtaposed against simplistic images (i.e. gas stations or landscapes) while others dominate the work completely. His statements, or individual words, become ambiguous against their backdrop. The title of show is adopted from a work that reads ‘I’m Amazed’ in faint grey print,engulfed by a swarm of flies to the point of illegibility. The laconic effect of such imagery sufficiently summarizes the collection and sets the sombre and subdued atmosphere of the show.

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Despite pending legal challenges to its construction, artist Christo has begun the preparation process for his “Over the River” project, an ambitious installation that will drape almost 6 miles of silver fabric over the Arkansas River in Colorado.  The artist has started clearing railroad tracks along the project’s route, and taking efforts to minimize effects on the area’s bighorn sheep population.  While official construction was supposed to begin next month, challenges to permits have made the official start date uncertain.  “I don’t consider it a pause,” Christo said. “It’s part of the dynamics of the project.”

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Christian Marclay’s film The Clock, recently closed its one month run at the Museum of Modern Art this week, drawing a record 40,000 visitors to the museum.  The number of visitors exceeds the combined counts for The Clock’s two prior New York screenings.  The winner of the Golden Lion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, Marclay’s film literally tells time, using shots of  various clocks from the full range of film history to compile a full 24-hour viewing experience. (more…)

Performance artist Terence Koh has announced that he is currently working on an opera to premiere at the new Thaddeus Ropac complex on the outskirts of Paris.  The work will be done in collaboration with composers from the Philharmonie de Paris, and follows in the footsteps of Marina Abramovic, who debuted her own opera last year in Madrid. (more…)

In what will become a permanent installation, artist Xavier Veilhan has installed his sculpture of Jean-Marc Bustamante a few steps from the Museum of Modern Art.  The piece sits at the entranceway for RXR Realty, the company that commissioned its installation, and was created with the use of three-dimensional scanning technology and stainless steel construction.

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Romanian authorities have arrested three men suspected of the theft of seven paintings by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gaugin, and others from a Rotterdam museum.  The paintings were stolen last October in an overnight break-in. While the works have yet to be recovered, police believe that they are hidden in an undisclosed location in Romania.   (more…)

Richard Deacon, Four by Four (2012), via Marian Goodman

Marian Goodman is currently presenting a selection of new works by Welsh sculptor Richard Deacon, documenting the artist’s ongoing interest in form and surface through a variety of both hung and freestanding sculptures.  Composed of both wood and metal works, Deacon’s pieces on view explore the implications of texture on the form and presentation of the work, and the dissonances in volume and presence that result. (more…)

Some 350 engravings by Romantic era poet and artist William Blake have been discovered in the library of the University of Manchester.  A team of student and faculty researches uncovered the prints after an extensive, two-year search through the library’s archives.  According to library archivist Stella Halkyard:  “The students had some specialist training in identifying prints from David Morris at the Whitworth Art Gallery before hunting through the collection. They found out we actually had a huge number of commercial engravings by Blake.” (more…)

Painter Jean-Michel Basquiat’s tribute to his favorite writer, William Burroughs, titled Five Fish Series will be on the auction block at Sotheby’s February 12th Contemporary Arts sale. The work is estimated to sell from £4.25 million to £6.25 million.  “Basquiat is the blue chip artist of the moment,” said Sotheby’s contemporary specialist Alex Branczik. “He is recognised today in perhaps the same way he recognized Burroughs in the 1980s as someone who was streets ahead of his time – Basquiat is the artist who everybody wants at the moment so we have high hopes of it doing well at auction.” (more…)

A federal judge has decided in favor of sculptor Robert Indiana in a case that claimed the artist had renounced work he had previously authenticated.  Dealer Joao Tovar, who brought the suit, had purchased a series of works attributed to Indiana, and was about to sell them at auction when the artist stepped in to renounce the works as his.  The court ruled that the works were in fact created by Indiana’s longtime associate, John Gilbert. (more…)