David Kordansky’s efforts to diversify his gallery program and respond to injustice in the world gets a spotlight in the NYT this week. “He has been ambitious in trying to figure out ways for his gallery to better reflect the world that we live in, and the concerns many of us have about it,” says artist Rashid Johnson. “Racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia — the gallery is working with artists that attack and consider these issues in their projects.” (more…)

American universities’ move towards remote learning have caused uncertainty for college museums. “The last several months have been very complicated,” Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, former director of Spelman’s campus museum, “but we’ve relished the opportunity to be quiet and inward. We didn’t feel the impulse to get out in front of the Zoom superhighway.” (more…)

A sale of Impressionist and Modern works October 28th at Sotheby’s New York could see new records for works by Giorgio de Chirico and Man Ray, Art News reports. “Both masterpieces are the epitome of museum-quality painting and provide a unique glimpse into the profound early output of these two visionary artist,” said Lisa Dennison, Sotheby’s Americas chairman. (more…)

A piece in Art News this week notes the challenges and opportunities that arise when a collector’s sudden change in fortune results in a sell-off of works. The piece surveys a range of collectors who suddenly sold off their collections in the midst of panics or other issues. (more…)

Gabriel Orozco, Estanque (2020), via Marian Goodman

Currently on at Marian Goodman’s New York exhibition space, artist Gabriel Orozco is presenting a body of new works drawing on his continued exploration of global and local cultural formats, and the possibility for performance and repositioning within their varied aesthetic and conceptual palettes.  For this exhibition, Orozco presents a new series of tempera paintings in a large and small scale, and a selection of new watercolor collages which expand upon his Suisai series, begun in 2016. (more…)

Photographer Dawoud Bey gets a profile in the New York Times this week, as he looks at his body of work and the violence against black bodies endemic to the United States.  “What underlines and underpins all of this are these places, and what these places are and what they were and what they represent in our collective history,” he says. “You can either tie an enslaved person to a tree and whip them until they pass out or you can put your knee on their neck and wait until they die.” (more…)

Michael Queenland, Untitled (Stationary) (2017), via Tanya Bonakdar

Marking a sustained engagement with language and text, the current group show at Tanya Bonakdar Los Angeles, Restless Index, explores a specific approach to cataloging and documenting, and the potentials that these explorations of archives and databases might offer for the future.  Inadequacies of language—whether legal, symbolic, written or visual—are cast into stark relief during moments of social upheaval, a point which feels particularly apt during this cultural moment, and which serves as a bedrock for the show, exploring associations once normalized by cultural hegemonies as renewed sites of contention and conflict.  The show explores the canon as a permeable and flexible, where monuments and institutional mandates are called into question, histories reassessed, and so too are visual codes that derive from those histories. (more…)

The New York Times this week describes a protracted battle to reclaim the looted collection of Baron Mor Lipot Herzog, and the collectors’ descendants who have taken up the cause.  “It’s the third generation and fourth generation who is actively pursuing the quest to restitute the memory of the Herzog family, to right the provenance of the looted artworks,” said Agnes Peresztegi, a lawyer who has represented parts of the family for 20 years. (more…)

Kevin Beasley, The Road (2019), via Casey Kaplan

Artist Kevin Beasley returns to Casey Kaplan this month for an exhibition of new work surrounding questions and explorations of ancestry, ownership and land, dwelling on a range of questions over ownership and property that underscore the United States’s relationship to its own past, and the culture of violence and oppression that helped to build its economic foundations.   (more…)

Sotheby’s will sell the collection of New York collector, art dealer, and interior designer Hester Diamond, featuring a range of both Old Masters and Contemporary works, valued at $30 million. “Her taste and her visual sensibility were so strong, it ran through everything, the modern and the old,” says Diamond’s Stepdaughter, dealer Rachel Kaminsky. (more…)

Artist Howardena Pindell has readied a new body of work at The Shed, and speaks with the New Times about her life and work.  “Every day I live, I seem to forget all that I’ve done, and I’m amazed when I think about it,” she says. “I don’t know how I did it. I really don’t. I mean, I don’t know how I survived.” (more…)

A piece in the NYT this week visits Beirut-based artist Maya Husseini, chronicling the destruction the city’s explosion wreaked on her works, and the countless pieces destroyed by the blast. “Thirty years of my professional life were gone,” she says. “Dust!” (more…)

Rachel Whiteread has an interview in The Guardian this week, encouraging young artists to hold on to their dreams and hopes in this challenging time. “I really want people to carry on doing what they were doing. It is important they don’t give up on their dreams, and they follow through with what they have trained for,” she says. (more…)

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) has tapped Stéphane Aquin as its new director, taking over from Nathalie Bondil, who was forced out last summer amid allegations. “It is with great pride that we announce the return of Stéphane Aquin to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. His impressive track record, combined with his knowledge of the MMFA, has made him an obvious candidate to fill the role of director,” said MMFA board chair Pierre Bougie in a statement. (more…)

The Brooklyn Museum is expanding its rounds of deaccessioning, selling off another set of works October 28th at Sotheby’s.  “This effort is designed to support one of the most important functions of any museum–the care for its collection–and comes after several years of focused effort by the museum to build a plan to strengthen its collections, repatriate objects, advance provenance research, improve storage and more,” says director Anne Pasternak. (more…)

Philippe Parreno, Manifestations (Installation View),  via Esther Schipper

Marking his eighth solo show with Berlin’s Esther Schipper, artist Philippe Parreno‘s Manifestations spans the full range of his artistic output, running through a selection of pieces that include a granular soundtrack, a CGI film, atmospheric sensors, robotic systems, computer code, ice and water.  In typical fashion for the artist, the show is billed as an effort to “connect ‘things’ that, a priori, had nothing to do with one another; ‘thing’ that allow themselves to be summoned by repetitions, synchronicities, signals, or singularities.” (more…)

John Hatfield, Executive Director of Socrates Sculpture Park since 2012, has announced his plans to step down after nine years leading the outdoor sculpture park.  “It has been my great privilege to lead such an extraordinary organization over the last nine years,” he said. (more…)

Art in General will permanently shut down operations as of October 31 due to the challenges posted by Covid-19.  The organization plans to donate its archives to the Smithsonian. (more…)

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The New York Times has a piece this week culling together a list of the “25 Most Influential Works of American Protest Art Since WWII,” and exploring how various works, from signs, to installations, to active participations in physical space, have affected and changed discourses on art and politics. (more…)

Lévy Gorvy has opened a new location at a former Pret a Manger in London. “When times are difficult, people get creative,” says Victoria Gelfand-Magalhaes, Lévy Gorvy’s president in Europe. (more…)

Andreas Gursky, Rhein III (2018), via Sprüth Magers

Opening a show of new works in Berlin, artist Andreas Gursky arrives yet again at a prime moment of reflection and consideration for the inhabitants of modernity, offering up a selection of photographs that welcome a renewed perspective on the state of the world, and the forces that shape it.  Featuring the artist’s first new body of work in almost three years, Gursky’s exhibition in the Berlin outpost of Sprüth Magers addresses a range of themes that the artist has investigated for decades, and often  revisits settings such as the Rhine river and Hong Kong’s futuristic cityscapes to explore new contexts and sets of information layered over by the current state of the world.  Gursky looks anew at our built environment and humankind’s impact on the natural world.

Andreas Gursky, Bauhaus (2020), via Sprüth Magers

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Brazilian mining magnate and art collector Bernardo Paz, has been prevented from selling works from his collection at Inhotim Institute in Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte to subsidize the more than $110m that his former iron ore mining company, Itaminas, owes to the state of Minas Gerais. The Brazilian court ruled the decision to sell the works did not prioritize the public interest. (more…)

The Ford Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have joined forces on a grant fund for disabled artists and activists, the Disability Future Fellows. “Institutional structures have not served disabled artists in the past,” said Emil Kang, Program Director for Arts and Culture at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. “Disability Futures is the result of listening, collaboration, and humble engagement and we at Mellon are pleased to recognize and support these outstanding artists.” (more…)