Artist Ann Hirsch saw videos of hers removed from Vimeo this week, only to be reinstated a few hours later.  The works were originally removed over content the site said could “sexually stimulate” viewers.  “For everyone talking about feminism and #MeToo and the rediscovery of women artists, it’s frustrating,” she says. “They’re also forgetting about the people making work now and their voices are being lost. It’s happening now to me and so many other women.” (more…)

The latest edition of the Made in L.A. Biennial has announced its artist list for this year, including Kahlil Joseph and the late Nicola L. as well as Aria Dean and Jill Mulleady. (more…)

Patrick van Maris is leaving his position as president of The European Fine Art Fair (Tefaf) at the end of May, Art Newspaper reports.  “I am proud of the changes accomplished together,” he says of his work with the fair. (more…)

Issy Wood, Slouching towards the maxillofacial unit (2018), via JTT

Issy Wood’s paintings and sculptures carry a peculiar cultural charge, moments of collision and fusion that mark her objects with both the signifiers of the art historical and with the banal moments of daily life. For her current show, daughterproof at JTT in New York, the artist continues this process, putting forward a selection of works that seem to mark the passage of culture and time against the body itself.   (more…)

CNN has a piece this week on the business behind removing and selling street art murals, and the legality that drives who can remove and sell a piece. “Generally, when you purchase a building, you own the fixtures within the building, whether they’re ceiling fans or [a] fine art mural painting on a wall,” says Paul Cossu, a partner at legal firm Pryor Cashman and part of the firm’s art law group. “Of course, what an owner can do with a fine art mural after acquiring the building will depend, in part, on whether the mural is protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act.” (more…)

Two men have confessed to stealing the Gustav Klimt recently discovered in the wall of a Piacenza gallery, as well as to returning the work. “They said they returned the painting four years ago,” says Guido Gulieri, the pair’s lawyer. “But we don’t yet know the details of how it came to be [in the recess] and what exactly happened to the painting in the intervening years. They had confessed before but were not believed.” (more…)

The inaugural edition of Desert X AlUla in Saudi Arabia has announced its artist list, including work by Lita Albuquerque, Wael Shawky, Superflex, and more. This edition of the event has earned strong condemnation for its part in the country’s push to rebrand itself as open and free after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  “Unless artists are willing to make their host’s state control of expression an explicit subject of their work, those who participate cannot escape compromise from the polluted context,” says critic Christopher Knight. (more…)

UK Universities are reporting a 28.5% drop over the past decade in Art History class enrollment, Art Newspaper reports. “It is important that we do not lose sight of the humanities which are absorbing and important areas of study and can also lead to excellent career options,” says Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. (more…)

Collector Isabel Dos Santos, the daughter of former Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos, gets a profile in the NYT this week, detailing her global holdings in property and art, and underscoring how she maneuvered her proximity to power to build her global empire. “We have there some situations of money laundering, some of them of doing business with herself,” Hélder Pitta Grós, Angola’s attorney general, said in an interview. (more…)

Ai Weiwei has a piece in The Guardian this week, discussing his recent move to the UK, and the racism he experienced while living in Berlin. “In Britain they are colonial. They are polite at least,” he says. “But in Germany, they don’t have this politeness. They would say in Germany you have to speak German. They have been very rude in daily situations. They deeply don’t like foreigners.” (more…)

Simone Leigh will head to Hauser & Wirth, Art News reports. “We are delighted and honored to have started working with Simone at the end of last year,” says Cristopher Canizares, a partner at Hauser & Wirth. “Hers is a powerful, profound, original voice, and we are looking forward to her first exhibition with the gallery in London in the fall during Frieze.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal looks at the opening of The Momentary, a multidisciplinary arts space that is set inside a former Kraft cheese factory, and which serves as a satellite to the nearby Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. “We would love to create an art place…that talks about living artists, that doesn’t feel like a museum at all,” says director Lieven Bertels. (more…)

A major work by artist Joseph Wright of Derby, Two Boys with a Bladder (1769-70), will leave the UK for the J. Paul Getty Museum after a buyer was unable to be found. “We look forward to sharing this spectacular painting with our visitors and scholars in the context of our other 18th-century collections,” says director Timothy Potts. (more…)

A gloomy portrait in the national collection of Norway has been authenticated as the work of Vincent Van Gogh, The Guardian reports. “The Oslo self-portrait depicts someone who is mentally ill,” a statement from the Van Gogh Museum reads. “His timid, sideways glance is easily recognizable and is often found in patients suffering from depression and psychosis.” (more…)

A dentist in Neuss, Germany is accused of trying to present 20 fake Picasso works as authentic, using fake certificates to sell them to auction houses. “If you see the Picasso estate and tell them these works fell from the sky or you picked them up from the bric-a-brac market, there is little chance anyone will believe you,” says a lawyer for Picasso’s son Claude Ruiz-Picasso. (more…)

The Guggenheim will open a major retrospective of the the work of Alex Katz in 2022, Art News reports.  The show will be organized by Katherine Brinson, curator for contemporary art at the Guggenheim; Nancy Spector, artistic director and chief curator; and Levi Prombaum, a curatorial assistant who worked on the two part Robert Mapplethorpe show last year. (more…)

Ugo Rondinone, thanx 4 nothing (A Tribute to John Giorno) (Installation View), via Gladstone

When the poet John Giorno passed away late last year, he left behind a lifetime of artistic adventurism and exploration, a reputation for his tireless support of the arts and his energetic commitment to collaboration, connection and creativity.  It makes sense then, that one of the first shows to celebrate the artist since his passing would be a collaboration with his husband, artist Ugo Rondinone, at Gladstone Gallery.  Open now, the show features the artist’s captivating 2015 video piece thanx 4 nothing, (more…)

A painting discovered inside the walls of an Italian art gallery has been confirmed as a Gustav Klimt. “It’s with no small emotion that I can tell you the work is authentic,” Piacenza prosecutor Ornella Chicca said in a statement. (more…)

The new edition of Felix LA is set to open next month, with William J. Simmons taking on curating the special projects. “I was thinking through imagination at this time when we’re beleaguered by questions of identity,” Simmons says. “We’re all kind of afraid. Where is the optimism in all of this? Where is queer and feminism optimism in all of this? These are artists who are engaging with hope and fear and criticality — and more often than not, they turned out to be queer people, or women-identified artists, or both.” (more…)

Zoé Whitley, the current senior curator of London’s Hayward Gallery has been tapped as the new head of Chisenhale Gallery. “I’ve been inspired by Chisenhale Gallery’s program since I first became a curator,” Whitley said in a statement. “I’m honored to have been selected to lead its next chapter as director and excited by the challenges and possibilities for artistic collaborations to come.” (more…)

The Honolulu Biennial will switch to a triennial format for 2022, with Melissa Chiu, the director of Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden taking on curator duties. “The Honolulu Biennial has had tremendous impact in Hawai’i in a very short period of time, and, in thinking about the opportunities ahead, the Honolulu Biennial Foundation unanimously agreed that a triennial format was the best platform for our future growth and success,” the foundation’s board of directors said in a statement. (more…)

Artists Tschabalala Self has an interview in Art News this week, giving the magazine a tour of her New Haven studio. “I think people expect me either to have this super noncritical admiration for black American pop culture tropes, which I don’t have, or to have this disdain for it, which I also don’t have,” she says of her work. “I’m someone who just has to absorb all of it. I’m not personally invested in attaching value judgments.” (more…)

The Park Avenue Armory and National Black Theatre has invited ten New York City cultural institutions for 100 Years | 100 Women, a project celebrating the 19th amendment to the US Constitution giving women the right to vote. The show will feature 100 women artists. “I expect a very lively, informative and massive gathering in our Drill Hall next May when the Armory, with National Black Theatre and our other amazing partner organizations, present to the public the micro-commissions of 100 women artists that reflect on the realities of conferred citizenry since the 19th Amendment was passed 100 years ago,” says Rebecca Robertson, the founding president and executive producer of Park Avenue Armory. “The chorus of the different artistic voices will no doubt offer many perspectives on where we have been and where we are going.” (more…)

Jamie Botín, the head of Grupo Santander, has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for smuggling the Picasso work Head of a Young Woman (1906) out of Spain.  The work was discovered aboard Botín’s yacht, with the businessman claiming he was sailing to Geneva to store the work. (more…)