The LA Times has a piece this week on the closure of the Marciano Foundation, noting issues with unionizing labor alongside organizational breakdowns and a lack of internal structure. “[Maurice Marciano] didn’t really know how expensive it is to run his own private museum,” says an unnamed source. “He did it in a very generous, very first-class generous way.” (more…)

Jonathan Paul

Continuing its own intriguing and honed perspective on booth its surroundings in Los Angeles and on the model of the art fair, SPRING/BREAK has once again touched down in the City of Angels, launching a supplementary event that offers an ample supply of artists and galleries presenting in a concept that stands as a stark contrast to the traditional fair model.   (more…)

Korakrit Arunanondchai at Clearing, all images via Art Observed

As Frieze opens up shop for the week on the West Coast, the bevy of satellite fairs and event openings are underway across the city.  One particular highlight, and also a second-time event for Frieze Week, Felix LA, the joint effort of collector Dean Valentine and dealers Al and Mills Morán, has returned to the rooms and public spaces of the iconic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles for the week.  One of the more compelling fair entries of the week, the work’s program, which sees gallerists taking over rooms in the hotel, allows a unique mixture of intimate exhibitions and adventurous concepts that felt well-suited to the well-heeled patrons of the contemporary art market, both looking for a good piece of work and a unique experience shopping for it.   (more…)

Clément Chéroux, senior curator of the photography center at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, is heading to MoMA’s to serve as the museum’s chief curator of photography. “It was a pleasure to work at SFMOMA for three years and to have the support of a fantastic Bay Area photo community,” Chéroux said in a statement. “I am very excited to be part of the energy of the new MoMA and to work with the team and collection to develop great projects.” (more…)

Billionaire Mark Pincus, founder of online gaming firm Zynga, has pledged $3 million to James Turrell’s Roden Crater project. “The project itself feels, to me, like modern-day pyramids,” he says. “The ambition and scale and scope of it is something that has the potential to be something that people, many generations from now, will be able to experience and get something amazing from—maybe something beyond what we can imagine today.” (more…)

A piece in Art Newspaper asks why so many private museums are already shuttering. “It’s more fun building a museum and a collection and opening it than running it,” says Adrian Ellis, the founding director of AEA Consulting. (more…)

Oil and ranching heiress Anne Marion, founder of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico has passed away at the age of 81. “Anne Marion was one of the most generous, admirable, and inspirational people I have ever known,” says Marla Price, director of the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, where Marion was an active benefactor. “Her great leadership and generosity to the museum has continued until the present, and her loss is heartbreaking for everyone involved with the Modern.” (more…)

Russian provocateur and artist Pyotr Pavlensky, whose prior stunts involved setting the doors of a Russian security organization aflame, has taken reportedly taken responsibility for interfering in the Parisian mayoral elections, leaking compromising sexually graphic videos of candidate Benjamin Griveaux online. “He is someone who is always playing up family values, who says he wants to be the mayor of families and always cites as examples his wife and children. But he does the opposite,” Pavlensky is quoted. (more…)

Yayoi Kusama will stage another major show of her Infinity Rooms at the Tate Modern this May, the museum has announced.  The show will feature two such works as well as documentation of early performance pieces by the artist.  (more…)

Fast Company has a piece on the renovation of the Rothko Chapel in Houston and a look at the space’s improvements. “The Chapel was built with a vision that brought together modern art and a sacred space to promote human unity, solidarity, justice and peace,” says Christopher Rothko, Opening Spaces chairman and the artist’s son. “The universality of this vision is very relevant for us today and I believe will remain so for generations to come.” (more…)

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Lorna Simpson, all images via Art Observed

As the early hours of the second Frieze Los Angeles Art Fair draw to a close this evening, and the sun sets over the Pacific, the fair seems to have once again hammered home its vital engagement with the city, and with its thriving art scene, launching another strong event spread across the grounds of the Paramount Studios.   With strong sales reported and an energetic atmosphere across the fair, it would seem that the small-scale and focused approach of the fair had once again seen the fair brand making its case as an arbiter of thoughtful, curated approaches towards the market and its participants.

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Artist Amoako Boafo criticizes Stefan Simchowitz over the collector’s attempt at flipping one of his works at auction tonight at Phillips. “Now he wants to make profit from it,” he says. “It’s only sad. The painting is so recent.” (more…)

A piece in the Art Newspaper this week documents a series of court cases around gallery-artist splits, noting the various ways and legal issues around the break of a business relationship in the art world. (more…)

Artist Luchita Hurtado gets a profile in the WSJ this week, as she finds a more responsive market for her work. (more…)

Residents of the luxury flat next to the Tate Modern, who sued over the the museum overlook’s vantage point into their apartments, have lost their court appeal.  “These properties are impressive, and no doubt there are great advantages to be enjoyed in such extensive glassed views, but that in effect comes at a price in terms of privacy,” the ruling judge stated. (more…)

David Hockney, The Splash (1966), final price: £23,117,000, via Sotheby’s

With the bustle of LA’s numerous art fairs opening their doors across the Atlantic and all the way across the country, one could be understood for overlooking the string of auctions taking place in London this week.  Yet a trio of sales went over all the same this week, testing the secondary contemporary market just as the primary market was having a test of its own in Los Angeles.  The results were mixed, with a number of strong performances, but a sense of stagnation also seems to have set in over some artists, particularly with the future of British trade with Europe looking so unsteady.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Mosque (1982), final price:£3,951,729, via Christie’s (more…)

As part of its summer show Automania, MoMA will park a series of cars in its outdoor sculpture park.  The exhibition will include a series of automobiles in the museum collection never shown before. (more…)

Barbara Kruger is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing her work and the contemporary moment. ”There are moments of recognition and significant changes but we’re living at a time where global white grievance is rampant,” she says, “and there is also a reaction against those symbolic changes. In these brutal and threatening times, I believe it necessary to vote strategically – to push back against the emboldened tide of white grievance and vengeance-driven populism.” (more…)

Collector Pamela Joyner is interviewed in Art Newspaper this week, discussing her collection and her passion for the works she owns. “My favorite part of the response is when I go to the museum and encounter really young people interacting with the art,” she says. “So in the first venue where we opened, I will never forget a school group of about 40 kindergarteners sitting on the floor looking up at my Mark Bradford waterfall painting. They were not squirming–it was like their mouths were dropping. It was just adorable: They were very orderly, asking questions. (more…)

Blain Southern is closing all of its current spaces, after several high profile departures.  “Despite the support of dedicated gallery staff, I deeply regret that I have been unable to secure the gallery’s future long term,” says Harry Blain. “I want to thank all the artists, collectors, institutions, museums, staff and everyone who has worked with the gallery over the last decade.” (more…)

A piece in Art in America this week looks at how museums are working to make their collections more accessible to the blind.  The piece details various naming strategies and techniques for describing and representing works. (more…)

The NYT has a powerful interview with Anselm Kiefer this week, as the artist takes Karl Ove Knaussgard to his studio, and his childhood home of Donaueschingen, as he reflects on his life and the evolution of his work. “What we see is a picture constructed with workmanlike clarity,” he says. “And yet we are moved, overwhelmed even. Despite the simplicity of the composition, the picture speaks to us. And we feel that our own uncertain approach to the world has been laid bare.” (more…)

In the latest twist behind the case of the Gustav Klimt work discovered in the walls of the the Ricci Oddi modern art gallery in Piacenza, prosecutors in Piacenza are questioning Rossella Tiadina, the widow of former gallery manager Stefano Fugazza. “The decision to question his widow was prompted by a diary entry discovered by police in which Fugazza contemplates a fake robbery to gin up controversy around the show. “I wondered what could be done to give the exhibition some notoriety, to ensure an audience success like never before,” he writes. “And the idea that came to me was to organise, from the inside, a theft of the Klimt, just before the show (exactly, my God, what happened), for the work to then be rediscovered after the show began.” (more…)