After years of planning and adjustment, The Smithsonian will not open a location in London, settling instead for a two-year exhibition at the V&A East, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s satellite space. “It was intriguing, and it was worthy of attention,” says Steve Case, the new chairman of the board of regents. “It is not the highest of our priorities.” (more…)

Latifa Echakhch will represent Switzerland at the Venice Biennale next year, Art News reports. Echakhch’s work at the Swiss pavilion will be in collaboration with composer Alexandre Babel and curator Francesco Stocchi, featuring a new work incorporating rhythm and sound. (more…)

Steve McQueen gets a profile in The Guardian this week, as he prepares to open his first Tate Modern retrospective, and reflects on the arc of his career and work. “What I do as an artist is, I think, to do with my own life experience,” he says. “I came of age in a school which was a microcosm of the world around me. One day, you’re together as a group, the next, you are split up by people who think certain people are better than you. It was kind of interesting to observe that.” (more…)

Zineb Sedira will represent France at the 2021 Venice Biennale, the Art Newspaper reports. “Sedira’s multiple identities as a French-born Algerian living in England inform her serene, often haunting photographs and video installations, which consider questions of memory, displacement, and the transmission of history,” reads a statement on the Guggenheim website. (more…)

Fischli/Weiss, The Raft (1982/83), via Sprüth Magers

Currently on view at Sprüth Magers’s London exhibition space,  Should I paint a pirate ship on my car with an armed figure on it holding a decapitated head by the hair? marks the fifth exhibition by the pair of Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss at their London gallery. The exhibition presents a concise overview of the artists’ transformations of the commonplace in the form of three seminal works from throughout their collaborative career, a subtle investigation of their core themes in a minimal selection of pieces. (more…)

Experts are warning of a surging market in fake prints, as photo reproduction technology gets increasingly powerful.    “In the last few years we have confiscated hundreds of fakes that forgers and dealers said were by Lichtenstein, Georg Baselitz, Picasso, and others, that came from Italy, Spain, and Portugal,” says Elena Spahic, an officer with the Bavarian Police in Munich. (more…)

A group of galleries have written to Art Basel Hong Kong expressing concerns about the current political situation in Hong Kong, and pushing for concessions from the fair on booth fees and other costs.  “VIP registration numbers are consistent overall with previous years—and especially strong from the Asian region, where we have actually seen an increase in VIP registration from mainland China.” reads a reply from global director Marc Spiegler and Adeline Ooi, the fair’s Asia director. “We fully acknowledge that this year is not business as usual, and we are thus doing everything we can to support all the galleries coming to Hong Kong.” (more…)

A piece on Russia’s new culture minister, Olga Lyubimova in the BBC notes her past statements about a sense of disdain for the arts. “I’ve been to the British Museum, National Gallery and a few dozen more European and Russian museums and reckon I wasted my time there,” reads a blog post she wrote years ago. (more…)

Thomas Campbell gets a profile in Art Newspaper this week, as he sizes up his new position at Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and looks forward to the coming years.  “We’re hitting the 125th anniversary of the de Young in April and the 100th anniversary of the Legion in 2024, so it’s a good time to examine where we’ve come from, who we are, and what our priorities are,” he says. “I’m prioritising being an institution of thought leadership, audience engagement and connoisseurship, for example.” (more…)

Hans Haacke, All Connected (Installation View), via New Museum

Artist Hans Haacke’s works, ranging from kinetic art to environmental art, conceptual art and institutional critique, culminates in his critiques of social and political systems, orchestrated in masterful form this winter at the New Museum.  The retrospective marks the first major American museum exhibition of Haacke’s career, focusing on the influence of the corporate world on contemporary art. (more…)

Officials in Washington, D.C. are looking to incorporate more diverse historical monuments into the city’s fabric, Art News reports, with legislation proposing new monuments to historically resonant women and people of color.  “This legislation aims to properly recognize and honor remarkable persons who left indelible marks on society: men, women, and migrants,” says Kenyan McDuffie, the councilmember. “These bills aim to channel an important dialogue carrying around our country to reconcile symbols and monuments that have often complicated, and in some cases blatantly racist, history behind them.” (more…)

The Shed will recognize its employees’ union voluntarily, Artforum reports.  “The Shed fully supports our talented and hard-working visitor experience staff in their decision to organize,” says Maryann Jordan, the institution’s chief operating officer. “We welcome UAW Local 2110 and anticipate forging a constructive relationship with their representatives as we have done with the several other unions already in place at The Shed.” (more…)

A Florida court has put a temporary block on a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room at the center of the controversy around dealer Inigo Philbrick, preventing the work from leaving Miami-Dade County.  “Without an injunction, FAP [Fine Art Partners] will lose the ability to be made whole because it will lose a unique, one-of-a-kind work,” says Valerie R. Manno, a judge in Miami-Dade County’s Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court, wrote in the temporary injunction issued on Wednesday. “An injunction will allow FAP to litigate its case without fear that the Kusama will disappear into the night.” (more…)

New York ’s Department of Cultural Affairs is overseeing partnerships between ten nonprofit arts organizations and city agencies to create programming on a range of civic and social issues including homelessness, workers’ rights, and climate change. “We are thrilled that DREAMing Out Loud has been renewed for a second year and will continue to help young writers find their voices, readers and careers in publishing,” says NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment commissioner Anne del Castillo. “New York is the ultimate city of immigrants, and we’re fighting every day to make the creative economy accessible to all.” (more…)

Kim Gordon, The Bonfire 2 (2019), via 303

Taking over the exhibition spaces at 303 Gallery’s Chelsea space this winter, Kim Gordon presents a body of new works that mix together a range of cultural vantage points and disparate iconographies through multi-media works, photographs and painted canvases.  Her second solo exhibition with the gallery, the show is a striking look at the artist’s nuanced and expansive oeuvre, one which has earned her increasing recognition in recent years.

Kim Gordon, Los Angeles June 6, 2019 (2019), via 303

(more…)

Pace Gallery has announced the calendar for the first full year of its performance series, Pace Live, including a fundraiser to benefit restoration of Nina Simone’s North Carolina home.  “The proviso is that whoever we invite has a connection to the legacy and work of Nina Simone, which pretty much includes everyone,” says Mark Beasley, who organized the series. (more…)

The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s CEO, Timothy Rub, apologized to gathered attendees at a “town hall” style meeting this week, leaving some unsatisfied. “I hoped for strong policy statements that empower staff, like, ‘This is how we will respond consistently to reports of harassment,’ ” says Sarah Shaw, a museum educator. (more…)

The New York Times has a piece on the Benin Bronzes, and the attempts to have the works repatriated from the UK.  “I want people to be able to understand their past and see who we were,” says Godwin Obaseki, governor of Edo State in Benin. (more…)

The Swiss-born, New York-based artist Tobias Madison has pled guilty to charges of domestic assault, Art Newspaper reports.“The People believe that each of the charged crimes in this case, and their underlying facts as articulated in the criminal complaint, can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Assistant District Attorney Kirstie Raffan. (more…)

Brooklyn gallery Koenig & Clinton is closing Art New reports. Dealers Leo Koenig and Margaret Liu Clinton said in a statement that they “remain grateful to the many: artists, collaborators, colleagues, critics, and patrons that enriched the gallery’s mission of organizing museum-quality exhibitions that were made accessible to so many publics.” (more…)

German art dealer, collector and socialite Angela Gulbenkian is facing a lawsuit over the sale of a Warhol print on behalf of its owner and allegedly keeping the profits. “The dispute lies in whether [the adviser] and Gulbenkian had the authority to sell the picture,” says Chris Marinello, the chief executive of Art Recovery Group. (more…)

Mark Dion, Bureau of Censorship (1996/2019), via Art Observed

The year 2020 is being heralded as a crucial moment for society, a moment to respond to massive political upheaval and environmental crises. With immigration on the rise around the globe, and social tensions inflamed over crises of leadership at the heads of global superpowers, the world is at a crossroads. This concept sits at the core of Songs in the Dark, a group show currently on at Tanya Bonakdar that illustrates how artists deal with the world at its tipping point; how artists find beauty in the darkness of their own times, how they straddle the personal and political in their work, and how they make art as activism. (more…)

The latest round of coveted United States Artists Grants have been announced, including Nari Ward and Cameron Rowland. “Artists like Cameron [Rowland] and Martine [Syms] are winning a lot of things at the same time,” organization president Deana Haggag says, “We’re just trying to give a chance to have some sense of spaciousness, and young people, in particular, don’t know the first thing [they] would do with a lump sum. We’ve seen it make a pretty big difference for artists in that stage.” (more…)

Performance Space New York has announced a radical, artist-led restructuring process.  “The artists have received keys to the spaces, have moved into our business offices, and will move into our theaters next month. … Our total annual production budget is at the artists’ full disposal to pay themselves a wage and develop their programmatic platforms,” reads a letter signed by executive artistic director Jenny Schlenzka and Sarah Michelson, a celebrated choreographer leading the artist-led cohort in a project called “02020.” (more…)