The Drawing Center will offer free admission for the next three years, thanks to a gift from the Cy Twombly Foundation. (more…)

Eyal Weizman, director of Turner prize-nominated group Forensic Architecture, has reportedly been barred from entering the US after being flagged as a security risk.  “In my interview the officer informed me that my authorisation to travel had been revoked because the ‘algorithm’ had identified a security threat,” he said in a statement. “This much we know: we are being electronically monitored for a set of connections – the network of associations, people, places, calls and transactions – that make up our lives. Working in human rights means being in contact with vulnerable communities, activists and experts, and being entrusted with sensitive information. These networks are the lifeline of any investigative work. I am alarmed that relations among our colleagues, stakeholders and staff are being targeted by the US government as security threats.” (more…)

Pace, Gagosian and Acquavella Galleries have won a bid to sell the prized collection of financier Donald B. Marron, beating out the auction houses. The galleries will organize private selling exhibitions in late April. (more…)

The NYT has a piece this week on the increasing focus and emphasis auction houses and dealers are placing on Instagram to sell work. “I often get contacted by collectors about specific objects I’ve shown on Instagram, and then that turns into a different conversation,” says Matt Carey-Williams, the London-based deputy chairman for Europe and Asia at Phillips. (more…)

Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca has tapped Alessandro Bianchi as its general manager. He previously worked at Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in Milan, the Teatro Regio in Turin, and the Fondazione Nazionale per la Danza in Reggio Emilia. (more…)

A piece in the Art Newspaper this week charts a group of African collectors working to keep art on the continent by buying it themselves. “The African creative industry is experiencing a solid renaissance … as a result of the growth in the local auction market, which heightened buyer confidence,” says Sandra Mbanefo Obiago, a Lagos-based art dealer. (more…)

As the UK negotiates its new trade deal with the EU, the Art News notes that a clause inserted in the deal by Greece appears to require the return of the Elgin Marbles. “It is the mentality that has changed, the fact that Britain is distancing itself from the European family, it is 200 years since the Greek revolution,” id Lina Mendoni, the country’s culture minister last month. “I think the right conditions have been created for their permanent return.” (more…)

Architect David Adjaye and artist Cai Guo-Qiang have been named the winners of the 2020 Isamu Noguchi Award.  The award is given to those who “share Noguchi’s spirit of innovation, global consciousness, and commitment to East/West cultural exchange,” according to a statement. (more…)

Arts Council England is threatening to cut funding for organizations failing to meet goals for diversity, The Guardian reports. “The pace of change has been too slow,” says Abid Hussain, ACE’s director of diversity. “Certain communities are significantly under-represented and we need to change that. We need to be very clear: if organizations are not delivering, they could lose their funding.” (more…)

A 17th century painting in the holdings of the Allentown Art Museum has been confirmed as the work of Rembrandt. “We’re very thrilled and excited,” says Elaine Mehalakes, vice president of curatorial affairs at the institution. “The painting has this incredible glow to it now that it just didn’t have before. You can really connect with the portrait in the way I think the artist meant you to.” (more…)

The High Line’s 2020 season has been announced, featuring work by Guillermo Galindo, David Horvitz and more, united under the title The Musical Brain. “Usually when you think of a sound or music show, you don’t necessarily visualize objects or sculptures,” curator Cecelia Alemani says. “But we made an effort to have a physical presence because we realized that, if you were to do like a just a sound show on the High Line, the audience would miss half of it because it’s already so loud. So we invited artists to really think of sculptural embodiments of sound and music.” (more…)

The Kunsthalle Vienna is currently experimenting with a collective structure, with shared directorial and curatorial authority split between Natasa Ilic, Ivet Curlin and Sabina Sabolovic. “When you have been working as a collective for 20 years, discussion and exchange is really the basis of your work method,” the trio say. “We are tying to demystify curatorial and managerial work and think about it in more democratic terms. Ours is a progressive model.” (more…)

Garage Magazine’s new cover features an unlikely collaboration between Maurizio Cattelan and Kendall Jenner, with the Italian artist reprising his work Stephanie (2003) with Jenner in place of Stephanie Seymour.  “In retrospect, the banana episode seems like a way to think about everything from fake news to viral fame to institutional distrust to wealth inequality,” says editor-in-chief, Mark Guiducci. “In the way that Jeff Koons was the artist of the glittery neon aughts, Maurizio Cattelan is the artist of our dystopian era. Like it or not.” (more…)

SCMP has a piece on Kit Bencharongkul, the son of Thai business tycoon Boonchai Bencharongkul, who runs his father’s Museum of Contemoprary Art in Bangkok, and is pushing to keep the museum’s cutting-edge focus.  (more…)

New York Magazine profiles the efforts to construct Destination Crenshaw, a new social and arts site akin to New York’s High Line, which many see as a way to continue the healing and development of a long-neglected community. “It’s wide enough to be a real place for gathering, sitting, and hanging out,” says architect Zena Howard. “There are places to sit, stop, and look down at the events happening below. We even designed it so you could bring back the Sundays with the lowriders and have a show.” (more…)

Jasmine Wahi, founder and co-director of Project for Empty Space in Newark, New Jersey, has been named the Holly Block Social Justice Curator at the Bronx Museum. “A city like Newark that has been predominantly a city of color and outside the mainstream has a stigma,” she says. “I feel it gives me a bit of insight into working in the Bronx, which is also a city mainly made up of people of color from all different backgrounds. That is the appeal for me, and that is also what gives me the experience with people who are beyond just the art world. I’m really hoping to make an impact at a wider community level.” (more…)

Nicolas Party, Portrait with Snakes (2019)

Currently on view at Hauser & Wirth’s Los Angeles exhibition space, the Swiss artist Nicolas Party has inaugurated his representation with the gallery, opening up an impressively arranged exhibition of new works just in time for the bustle of Frieze Week in the Californian metropolis. Born in Lausanne, Party’s figurative technique has earned him critical admiration for his familiar yet unsettling landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, celebrating and challenging conventions of representational painting, taste, and form. (more…)

The Aspen Art Museum will close its Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room show 11 weeks early due to an unresolved building code violation.  “The AAM and the City of Aspen have reviewed the museum’s [Kusama] installation to ensure its compliance with municipal building codes,” the museum says. “It is the determination of both parties that fulfilling the artwork’s need for natural light and appropriate space and code requirements cannot be achieved equitably within the museum’s layout at this time.” (more…)

LA Times critic Christopher Knight has won the $50,000 Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation’s lifetime achievement award.  “He was always the one who chose the important things and wrote in detail and beautifully,” says Executive Director Susan C. Larsen. “The most outstanding thing about his career, that lifts him and distinguishes him across the country, is his fearlessness. He’s not afraid to tackle the issues everyone talks about.” (more…)

Bloomberg reports that David Geffen was the buyer of David Hockney‘s The Splash at Sotheby’s last week. “Everyone was thinking about Brexit,” says gallerist and former auctioneer Brett Gorvy. “No one wanted to consign unless there was a financial situation that guaranteed security.” (more…)

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The Cooper Hewitt’s ouster of director Caroline Baumann is profiled in the NYT this week, as some point to controversy behind her wedding and a perceived conflict of interest in her work with a wedding dress designer. “I know the circumstances of the investigation that led to Caroline’s dismissal and I must say I am appalled that this was its conclusion,” says philanthropist and Cooper Hewitt Board Secretary Judy Francis Zankel. “I have been working with her long enough to know without a doubt that she has been unfairly accused and unjustly judged.” (more…)

Artist Dawoud Bey gets a profile in The Guardian this week, as he opens a retrospective at SFMoMA. “What I hope to create is work that makes it apparent that black people exist not only in a social world,” Beys says at the press preview for the SF Moma opening, “but they also have rich interior lives as human beings.” (more…)

Artist Pyotr Pavlensky is once again facing possible imprisonment over his recent stunt leaking a politician’s sex tape. “[Candidate Benjamin Griveaux] despises his constituents,” the artist says in a statement. “He was the only candidate to use his family to promote a political image. He told a big lie; he began his campaign with a big lie.” (more…)