Following layoffs at the Marciano Art Foundation, former workers are protesting at LAXArt, which currently counts Olivia Marciano as a board member, as a way to force a public comment.  “I can’t say I’m not sympathetic,” says LAXart Director Hamza Walker. “I run a nonprofit art space, just trying to keep it afloat and keep a hospitable back of the house.” (more…)

Two landscapes by Peter Paul Rubens intended as companions will be reunited for public display for the first time in more than 200 years, after the Wallace Collection decided it would begin lending works for the first time. “We are hugely supportive of this because the general public is the beneficiary,” says National Gallery director Gabriele Finaldi. “Things can happen now that couldn’t happen before that will be extraordinarily interesting and exciting for the public and scholars.” (more…)

The Baltimore Museum of Art will only collect works by women in 2020, Art News reports. “You don’t just purchase one painting by a female artist of color and hang it on the wall next to a painting by Mark Rothko,” says director Christopher Bedford. “To rectify centuries of imbalance, you have to do something radical.” (more…)

Calvin Marcus gives the NYT a tour of his studio in LA, and talks about his wide-ranging practice.  “Each painting comes from a very different place,” he says. “Sometimes I have these ideas for pictures that I want to make, and then I’ll draw it, or take a picture and then draw from the picture. From these sketches I move into a color-study process where I figure out how to build the rest of the picture.” (more…)

The Saul Steinberg Foundation has given 64 of the artist’s drawings to the Parrish Art Museum. “Saul Steinberg is someone who is a major figure not only for the East End of Long Island but is also a national treasure,” says Terrie Sultan, director of the Parrish. “One of the things we really hope to do at the Parrish is to collect in depth [the works of] many artists who are part of the national story of visual art, especially if they have relationship to East End of Long Island.” (more…)

David Turner, one of the suspects in the famed art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, has been released from prison, Art News reports. “They think that I was the person who committed the robbery, which is false,” Turner once said  of the heist. “They thought that if I was facing serious charges, I would be motivated to help facilitate the return of the paintings. Well, they got the serious charges against me, and now I am going to die in prison.”  (more…)

Nan Goldin staged another “die-in” with the Pain Group this week in London, protesting the V&A’s Sackler Courtyard. “Tristram Hunt needs to be re-educated about the fact this is not history,” Goldin says. “These deaths are happening now. And when it comes to the money donated, the V&A did not need this fancy, chic courtyard. It should concentrate on the exhibits and art inside the museum and stop this expansion.” (more…)

The Keith Haring carved from the walls of a New York Youth Center has sold at Bonhams for $3.86 million. “The mural was not intended for someone that could pay nearly $4m for it,” says Gil Vazquez, the acting director and president of the Keith Haring Foundation. “It was meant for the kids that lived there once upon a time to enjoy. Context is important but so is history. Time will tell if this sets a bad precedent.” (more…)

Formerly deputy director at the Whitney, Donna De Salvo has joined the Dia Art Foundation as senior adjunct curator of special projects. “For me, it’s a continuation of the work I’ve been committed to my whole career,” she says. (more…)

A break-in at the Dulwich Picture Gallery has Scotland Yard looking into the the attempted theft of two Rembrandt paintings.  “The intruders were detected by the gallery’s robust security systems and, thanks to the immediate intervention of security staff and the swift response of the Metropolitan Police, the paintings were secured at the scene,” a statement says. (more…)

The Chicago Tribune spotlights artist Theaster Gates‘s Black Monastic project, and the artist’s aims at exploring the history of black sound and how it is present in today’s contemporary music. “There’s been those types of songs you hold on to no matter what. And you’re like, this is so good, and I don’t know what to do with it,” says music director Peter CottonTale. “If you can relate in that aspect, I took all those songs … and I just finished all of those.” (more…)

The Monnaie de Paris has nixed its contemporary art program after only five years, Art Newspaper reports. “Through its programming of exhibitions, events and meetings, it will be a natural space of sharing, creation and innovation,” says Marc Schwartz, the director general of the Monnaie. (more…)

Charlap Hyman & Herrero, Shell Lamp I, Moulded plastic, and Astrologia Zodiac Black Natural Abaca Round Rug, Hemp, 2018; Chiarastella Cattana, Dune, Jacquard woven textile, 2019; Yali, Vignole Table, Glass top, iron base, 2019. © Annie Schlecter.

Currently on view for the week at 109 Thompson Street is the pop-up exhibition ‘Conversation Piece: Design is Dead’, a shoebox of a gallery space that designer Adam Charlap Hyman has dramatically transformed into an underwater grotto. The eponymous title of the show is the frequent tagline of Enzo Mari, a maverick Italian designer highly critical of modern design with a host of catechisms to prove it. He attributes the solipsism of design—namely, its death—as ‘the overlaying of icons without any reference to history… In most cases the essence becomes a confusing mess, created without logic.’ (more…)

Ed Ruscha, Hurting the Word Radio #2 (1964), final price: $52,485,000, via Christie’s

With the closing of sales last night in New York, the major auction houses have drawn the curtain on a busy year on the secondary market, capping a trio of strong outings for Post-War and Contemporary Art that have once again underscored the state of the art market currently.  A number  of guaranteed sales and high estimate prices seem to have eradicated much of the surprise at the higher end of the market, but its value-setting functions remain intact, as a number of records fell over the course of the past two evenings, and a group of artists made the jump from heritage prizes to certified blue-chip bets. (more…)

The LA Times has an exposé on the stalled funding for LACMA’s new expansion, noting ballooning costs and a drop off in donation pledges following an impressive start to its fundraising campaign. “I can’t say it strongly enough: It’s not a question of whether there’s money in L.A for such a project: There is,” says director Michael Govan. “The question is, will people decide that’s what they want to do with it.” (more…)

George Soros’s Open Society Foundations has pledged $15 million towards cultural repatriation efforts.  “The legacy of colonial violence has deep implications for the ways that racism and imbalances of power are perpetuated today,” says Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Open Society. “This isn’t just about returning pieces of art, but about restoring the very essence of these cultures.” (more…)

The Rio Art Museum may close after delays in funding by the city’s prefecture for payroll. The prefecture “has been working incessantly to circumvent Brazil’s crisis,” the Rio de Janeiro municipal secretariat of culture said in a statement, “which affected economic activities, and thus the collection for the municipal coffers, and resulted in high unemployment rates”. (more…)

MoMA’s Glenn Lowry and artist Nan Goldin have ranked as #1 and #2 on ArtReview’s Power 100 list.   (more…)

A work attributed as a copy of a Botticelli, currently held in a Welsh Museum, has been identified as an original by British art historian Bendor Grosvenor. “Despite all the overpaint, parts of it reminded me of Botticelli’s most famous painting, The Birth of Venus,” he says. “I’m now convinced that Botticelli played an important part in its production, and am delighted it has once more gone on public display.” (more…)

The newly discovered Artemisia Gentileschi at auction this week has broken the artist’s sales record, selling for nearly â‚¬4.8m on Wednesday.  “The interest in older paintings is growing,” says Matthieu Fournier, director of the department of old masters at Artcurial. “For the first time, we are seeing contemporary art collectors migrate towards classical art.” (more…)

Nicole Eisenman has joined the roster of Hauser & Wirth, Art News reports.  “It is a dream come true that a collaboration is possible,” says partner Marc Payot. (more…)

The massive storm surge in Venice has caused substantial damage to property, but has not caused damage to works of art in museums and in the Biennale, Art Newspaper reports. We are essentially unable to protect ourselves”, said the engineer Pierpaolo Campostrini, one of the procurators at The Basilica of San Marco. (more…)

Frieze LA has released the info on its 2020 L.A. fair, Art News reports. Running from February 14 to 16, it will return to the Paramount Studios lot.“I look forward to seeing how the curators will interweave international artists into this year’s program, expanding conversations around what is unique about L.A. as a context and constellation of creative communities,” says Bettina Korek, executive director of Frieze Los Angeles. (more…)

As Yvonne Rainer revives her 1965 work Parts of Some Sextets, she looks back at her career, and considers her way forward at 84. “I wanted it to have a very strict structure,” she says of the work. “I left it to the mechanics of the strategy that I had laid out and to hell with aesthetics and choice.”  (more…)