Damien Hirst has an interview in The Guardian this week, as he charts his experience during lockdown, and how it has affected his work. “I used to listen to music a lot when there was more activity and people,” he says of his experience working alone. “The paintings are going more successfully, which is really strange. Maybe it’s my focus, maybe that’s why I’m not playing the music. I’m kind of getting lost in the paintings.” (more…)

Los Angeles City Council has approved a measure to redirect developer fees to into emergency arts grants, the LA Times reports.  “This includes tiered grants of between $500 and $2,000 for individual artists, with the highest amounts reserved for artists who are full-time freelancers, and therefore “more vulnerable in an economic downturn,” The COVID-19 Emergency Response Program text reads. (more…)

A look at unemployment and income data by FiveThirtyEight shows that the U.S. arts sector has suffered a contraction of over 54% since the beginning of lockdowns. (more…)

The Guggenheim is closed, but its installation of blossoming tomatoes, part of its last show before lockdown, Countryside, The Future, is still growing, yielding pounds of fruit each week from an installation on Fifth Ave.  “This tomato-growing module couldn’t just be turned off with the lights,” says curator Troy Conrad Therrien. “We brought the exhibition to the street, and the street is still accessible.” (more…)

Heading off logistical and safety concerns surrounding COVID-19, the Venice Biennale has postponed its next two editions, moving its architecture show to next year, and the next iteration of its art exhibition to 2022.  “I hope that the occasion will mark a new celebration of togetherness,” says curator Cecilia Alemani, “a new sense of participation and communion.” (more…)

Bosco Sodi, A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains (Installation View), via Art Observed

As the city of Hong Kong gradually reopens, galleries are slowly returning to business as usual, with shows returning to their exhibition schedules, albeit slowly and gradually.  Among these shows is a quite striking exhibition of new pieces by Mexican artist Bosco Sodi at Axel Vervoodt, incorporating a range of material investigations and variations on his already enigmatic and exploratory processes. Titled  A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, the exhibition takes the artist’s own hand and his engagement with traditional Chinese art techniques in equal stride. (more…)

A group of mayors from major US cities have appealed to Congress for more funding support for the arts. “This is about individuals—artists and cultural workers alike—whose livelihoods are being threatened if not already irrevocably impacted,” the letter reads. “This is also about the soul of our communities: It is the arts that make each of our communities unique. And it is the arts that will help our communities survive and thrive economically.” (more…)

Valentine Uhovski, former CEO of Paddle8, is being sued for alleged misuse of company funds in the days before the online auction house declared bankruptcy. (more…)

MoMA has cut its budget by $45 million, seeking to reduce its operations in the face of coronavirus.  “We will learn to be a much smaller institution,” says Glenn Lowry.  (more…)

Mark Manders, via Tanya Bonakdar

Taking the challenges raised by the COVID-19 pandemic head-on, the Frieze Art Fair has opened its Online Viewing Room program, bringing a selection of works by its exhibitors to view on its website.  Opened as a stand-in for the cancelled New York edition of its international fair program, the online show has created an expansive online show, welcoming those left working from home or sheltering in place to take a leisurely browse through the show. (more…)

Tech entrepreneur and Napster founder Sean Parker is embroiled in a dispute over a Peter Paul Rubens work he purchased at Christie’s, after the seller attempted to cancel the sale.  “A consignor sought to cancel a completed auction sale and following repeated attempts to settle the matter amicably, the matter was submitted to arbitration,” a Christie’s spokesperson said. “The arbitrator ruled that Christie’s complied with its contractual obligations and that the successful bidder had lawfully acquired the painting. Christie’s is now seeking to confirm the arbitration award in federal court to conclude this matter, and transfer the painting to the buyer and the significant sale proceeds to the consignor.” (more…)

LA Times critic Christopher Knight of  has won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. The committee praised Knight for “demonstrating extraordinary community service” and for “applying his expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the LA County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s mission.” (more…)

The Royal Academy of Art will press on with its plans for a Marina Abramović survey, Art News reports, opening the show in 2021. “We have almost 80 percent of the show ready,” Abramović said. “I have never been more ready in my life. So, now I have an entire year to rethink or change things,” which she hopes will make for “the best show of my life.” (more…)

Sotheby’s is moving forward with its marquee New York sale this June, and will feature Roy Lichtenstein’s White Brushstroke I (1965), estimated at $20-$30 million. “This is Pop at its most profound core” says David Galperin, head of Sotheby’s contemporary art auctions in New York. “White Brushstroke I is an icon of Pop Art, capturing in a single painting the rupture that this movement invoked in an entire generation of postwar picture-making.” (more…)

A piece in the New York Times charts how the impacts of the coronavirus might alter the face of future art events like Biennials. “We’re going through something we have never seen,” says Manuela Moscoso, curator of the Liverpool Biennial. “Coronavirus arrived in several waves: first the virus, and then all the different realizations of what it means.” (more…)

The Willem de Kooning Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Teiger Foundation, and the Cy Twombly Foundation have partnered on a grant project to supply $1,250,000 in aid to Tri-State non-salaried workers in the visual arts who have experienced financial hardship from lack of income or opportunity as a direct result of the COVID-19 crisis. (more…)

Christo’s plan to wrap the Arc de Triomphe has been delayed until 2021, the artist’s studio announced on its website. “Thirty-five years after Jeanne-Claude and I wrapped the Pont-Neuf, I am eager to work in Paris again to realize our project for the Arc de Triomphe,” the artist says. (more…)

Germano Celant, the Italian curator who coined the term “arte povera” and enervated the landscape of post-war contemporary art, has passed away at 79 of COVID-19-related causes. Celant was instrumental in pioneering the Italian post-war landscape, and worked for years at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Fondazione Prada in Milan. (more…)

BP will not judge this year’s portrait award at London’s National Portrait Gallery, The Guardian reports.  “The judging panel is refreshed each year to ensure new perspectives are brought to judge the entries,” says a gallery spokesperson. “The gallery and BP jointly agreed not to have a sponsor representative on the judging panel this year.” (more…)

The art world is getting back to business in Seoul, as galleries open with new measures in place to protect against COVID-19. “I wouldn’t say things are totally back to normal,” says gallerist Passion Lim of Lehmann Maupin. “But it’s a start.”  (more…)

Art Basel is making preparations in case its future fairs are cancelled or affected by COVID-19, with adjustments to exhibitor fees and other concessions to improve the company’s flexibility.  “We resolutely believe that physical interactions will remain essential to experiencing, discovering, and selling art in the future, as well as to building the paramount personal relationships that underpin the art world,” reads a letter from the company. “Right now, though, the challenge that Art Basel faces is determining how we can help to sustain our galleries until our fairs recommence, alongside trying to imagine and define how the art fair of the future might differ from that of the past.” (more…)

Museums in Belgium and Italy are aiming to reopen this May, Art Newspaper reports. “Museums are like parks; spaces in which the individual experience can intertwine with the public space of being together. In the coming months, as a society, we face the challenge to find a new, positive balance between personal freedom and care for our relationship with others,” says Bart De Baere, head of Antwerp’s The Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst. (more…)

The Met has announced a string of layoffs this week as COVID-19 related losses now push past $150 million. “While we are not immune from the impact of this pandemic, the Met is a strong and enduring institution and will remain one,” says president and CEO Daniel Weiss. “Our two primary objectives continue to be doing all that we can to support the health and safety of our community and to protect the long-term financial health of the Museum.”

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Dike Blair, Untitled (2020), via Karma.  The gallery is hosting a show of the artist’s work in its Online Viewing Rooms

As the weeks progress and institutions remain shuttered over COVID-19 concerns, many arts organizations are responding with online virtual education programming related to the arts, often accessible globally at no cost. Art Observed has compiled a selection of these resources, from online classes and exhibitions to panel discussions and online interviews. There has perhaps been no better time to develop and hone one’s skills, as regards both creating and appreciating art, and through these links, Art Observed hopes to enable its readers to branch out, exploring new concepts and skills from the safety of their homes, while helping to relieve some of the pressures and tedium of social distancing.
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