The Freelands Foundation has awarded the Hepworth Wakefield as the fourth recipient of its $132,000 Freelands Award, which will support a major exhibition of photographer Hannah Starkey. “This project comes at an exciting moment when Starkey is reassessing her art in the light of recent political events, such as the MeToo movement, that have such a vital bearing on her new work,” says museum director Simon Wallis. (more…)

Bloomberg has a piece on the massive Portia Munson work on view at P.P.O.W.‘s Art Basel Miami Beach booth, and efforts to sell it during the fair.  “This is really why we do this, “ says collector Steve Wilson, who ultimately bought the work. “I love exposing the world to this kind of art, and helping living artists, and putting it all together.” (more…)

Camille Kachani at Zipper Galeria, via Art Observed

Turning the corner onto the iconic drag of Ocean Drive, one’s attention is immediately drawn to the slender white tent laid out along the ocean skyline, a gleaming structure that houses the Untitled Art Fair underneath its minimalist structure.  Its annual home, placed squarely in the midst of boozey beachgoers, restaurant soundsystems, and the annual flood of Art Basel Miami Beach visitors, the fair has one of the more unique positions in a week full of unique offerings, one that balances some of the most familiar sights of the city with the impressive work on view inside.  Compounded by the floor to ceiling windows in the fair tent, the fair is an annual must-attend for those looking to get their dose of dynamic contemporary art and Florida sun in one go. (more…)

A number of museums are closed in France this week as protests and strikes over President Macron’s retirement reforms continue nationwide.  Other museums are choosing to operate only partially, like the Grand Palais.  “Because of the circulation problems, a lot of people can’t come to work so we can only keep one exhibition open,” says a spokesperson. (more…)

A piece in Art Newspaper spotlights the continued efforts of the Yuz Museum and LACMA to show Yuz founder Budi Tek’s collection of Chinese contemporary art in Shanghai despite a government crackdown on Islam.  “I do not consider that to be a problem at all,” Tek says. “It is never in my mind that whatever happens in Hong Kong will affect our program, or our [future] achievements.” (more…)

A large-scale march against climate change has been scheduled for Friday 6 December, outside the government centre in downtown Miami.  “We are reaching an irreversible tipping point, beyond which glacier ice melt will raise sea levels to catastrophic levels here in Miami, where more than 2.4m people live less than 4ft above the high-tide line,” says activist Will Charouhis adds. “Even the most conservative estimates show that some Floridians will soon be forced to move and will become some of our nation’s first climate refugees.” (more…)

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Pace Gallery and its artists get a feature and large-scale photoshoot in Vanity Fair as the gallery celebrates its new complex in Chelsea. (more…)

Jim Dine at Ben Brown, via Art Observed

Closing its doors this evening, the week of sales at Art Basel Miami Beach has kicked off, capping off a strong week for galleries in South Florida, and a strong opportunity to close out the year with a flourish.  Commanding a roster of over 200 galleries from around the world, the marquee event of the fall market season in the U.S., and one of the biggest social events of the art world calendar has gotten underway, with thousands flocking to the sun and sand of the Florida metropolis. (more…)

Andrea Fraser gets the profile treatment in the NYT this week, as she looks at an art world that has adopted and implemented activist practices that seem to echo her pioneering work during the 1980s.  “I’m on three boards and two councils, so it feels like I’ve gone to seed or something,” she says. “But it’s sort of the part of the evolution of what I do and institutional critique — realizing that you also have to step up.”   (more…)

Starting in 2020, New York non-profit Artadia will significantly expand its grant-making programs, providing funds to artists based in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Houston. “Funds are fantastic, but it’s really about validation—being told that your work matters,” Carolyn Ramo, Artadia’s executive director says. “Our goal is to celebrate these artists in the cities they live and work and also create a national conversation around their practice.” (more…)

In an unexpected twist, this year’s Turner Prize will go to all four artists nominated, after the group asked to be judged as a collective.  The gesture, a show of solidarity amidst a fractious election season, was praised by many.  “In coming together and presenting themselves as a group, this year’s nominated artists certainly gave the jury a lot to think about,” says Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain. “But it is very much in the spirit of these artists’ work to challenge convention, to resist polarized world views, and to champion other voices. The jury all felt that this made the collective a worthy winner of the Turner Prize.”  (more…)

A Paul Gauguin work made during his time in Tahiti has sold for €9.5 million (about $10.5 million) at a Paris auction.  The work had previously been on loan to the Met, and was sold to “an international collector.” (more…)

David Hammons gets a profile in the New Yorker this week, as the artist prepares his monumental installation outside the Whitney.  “I had met David, but I didn’t really know him,” says president Adam. “He was looking at the river, so I went over and said, ‘You know, Gordon Matta-Clark did his famous pier cut right down there.’ David didn’t say anything, but a few days later we got a small drawing by him in the mail, with no explanation, no message of any kind.”  (more…)

Protests turned violent outside the Hong Kong Museum of Art just one day after the museum reopened, with police firing tear gas onto crowds nearby.  “It was all peaceful and we walked towards Hung Hom. Then the police blocked the road and we had to head back here, and now we just got tear-gassed for no reason,” said one protester. (more…)

Byron Kim has won the Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize, an award given annually to mid-career American painters. “It was really surprising,” the artist says.  (more…)

A piece in The Guardian this week notes museum-goers increasing dissatisfaction with the crowds of visitors at museums, as many start to give up on trying to see shows.  One visitor describes a visit to London’s National Gallery as “like being in a nightclub. You couldn’t even see the pictures – you were being pushed around by the crowd. It was scary.” (more…)

Artist Michael Rakowitz has spoken out against the relationship between MoMA and “toxic philanthropy,” requesting that his work in a MoMA PS1 be paused.  “It is not the artists who need to depart,” reads a protest statement, “it is museums’ dysfunctional and abusive relationship to toxic philanthropy that should go away.” (more…)

Artist Anne Hardy has erected the Christmas decorations at the Tate Britain this year, rendering an apocalyptic landscape outside the museum. “It is a challenging site but the gift of it is that it [Tate Britain] is an amazing object,” she says. “I work with found materials a lot in my work and I thought that was the way to approach this – as a found object. What could it become that it isn’t now?” (more…)

Sotheby’s has named a recently rediscovered Rubens work as a star in its Old Masters sale next month. “It’s a sweet spot of Rubens’s career,” says Otto Naumann, senior vice president of Old Masters at the auction house. “He’s determined to impress. It’s got raw energy to it. He’s working with a very loaded brush to make everything very three-dimensional.” (more…)

The Tate Modern’s Frances Morris gives an interview with The Gaurdian this week, as she discusses her Sunday routine, and her occasional jaunts to the museum when not working. “I like going as a punter, she says, “but when you know all the people working it’s impossible to be invisible. Sundays are perfect for people-watching in the exhibitions. I love to see how people interact with our galleries. I don’t have time to during the week.” (more…)

Art News taps Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, the Message is Death as the most important work of the decade. “I began to learn that what I was manipulating was not the images but the space the juxtaposition of the images was opening up, or disrupting,” Jafa says of his work. “Think about a river: the river ain’t the bank and it ain’t even really the water.”  (more…)

The Rubell family open their new exhibition space in Allapattah this week, and talk to the Miami Herald about the new space’s vision. “The word ‘museum’ indicates a public space,” says Mera Rubell. “We wanted everyone to understand it’s a public space, and people know exactly what a museum is. If you walk like a duck and talk like a duck, maybe you are a duck, right? (more…)

A piece in SCMP charts the development of the K11 Musea, a massive cultural-retail destination opening in Hong Kong. “Our firm has the experience, and we’ve done mixed-use projects that involved intensive collaboration before, but this was by far the most complicated building I’ve ever worked on,” says architect Forth Bagley about the project. (more…)