The New York Times profiles Italy’s new, nationalist Government and its aggressive stance on promoting and defending its culture. “Being from the League, it’s our way of seeing the country, the society and the world,” Lucia Borgonzoni, Italy’s under secretary for culture, says. (more…)

The Art Newspaper profiles Hermitage Museum head Mikhail Piotrovsky and his efforts to spearhead cultural diplomacy through his museum.  “The last bridge to be blown up should be a cultural one,” he says. (more…)

Sister Wendy Beckett, the formerly cloistered Roman Catholic nun who became an international star for her BBC documentary series on art and art criticism, has passed away at the age of 88.“Nothing is more humiliating than being on television,” she said of herself, underscoring her humility and charm even in the face of her widespread recognition. “You make such a fool of yourself.” (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly, Color Panels for a Large Wall II (1978), via Matthew Marks

In 1978, Ellsworth Kelly was commissioned to create a painting for the lobby of a new building in Cincinnati. His piece, Color Panels for a Large Wall, was the resulting work, a 30-by-125-foot painting that clocked in as his largest ever made. Yet the artist’s work in this vein would live well beyond this specific installation, reprised in several iterations of shows and installs in Amsterdam, New York, and Munich. In 2003, Kelly reconfigured the painting’s eighteen panels — from two rows of nine to three rows of six — when it was installed in its permanent home at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. (more…)

One of Louise Bourgeois’s first large-scale Spider sculptures will leave its home in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo for a tour of Brazilian art museums. The tour is designed as an effort to “democratize” the museum’s holdings, according to Eduardo Saron, the institute’s cultural director. (more…)

Bruce Nauman, Disappearing Acts (Installation View), via Art Observed

The long-awaited career retrospective of artist Bruce Nauman is now open in New York City, filling both MoMA PS1 and the sixth floor of MoMA’s main exhibition building in Midtown with the artist’s challenging, often outrageous body of work in sculpture, video, light works, and other formats.  The show, which is on view through February, is an intriguing and in-depth look at the work an artist always looking to push the boundaries of his craft, and often the viewer’s comfort level. (more…)

A group of four independent art dealers are opening a collaborative space in Brussels, Art News reports. La Maison de Rendez-Vous, as it is called, will be operated by LambdaLambdaLambda,  Lulu, Misako & Rosen and Park View/Paul Soto. “The project began with Paul [Soto, owner of Park View/Paul Soto] wanting to open a second space in Brussels, and then just developed momentum out of our time together in Buenos Aires and other cities,” the group said in a statement. “We also have similar approaches to programming which tends to be more curatorial than commercial. The fact that we all inhabit such different geographies and times zones is a bonus in terms of the diversity that we’ll naturally bring to the table.” (more…)

Patrick Charpenel, executive director of El Museo del Barrio in New York, and Franklin Sirmans, director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, will curate two new themed sections at its 2019 New York Frieze fair. “It is an honor to collaborate with these institutional leaders who are at the forefront of shaping the art and ideas of today,” says fair creative director Loring Randolph. With their contribution, Frieze New York 2019 will offer an experience that is both dynamic and challenging—pushing the boundaries of what an art fair can be.” (more…)

The Rijksmuseum’s 24-hour branch at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport is due to reopen in late January, Art Newspaper reports. The branch had previously been closed over fears of leaking water that may damage works. (more…)

Moscow citizens are calling for the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art to end its sponsorship agreement with the Russian real estate developer the PIK Group over unsavory business practices and corruption.  An open letter alleges the developer “does not aim at improving the environment and people’s lives, but rather at obtaining super profits and enhancing its own image through the patronage of cultural projects.” (more…)

Brazil’s Ministry of Culture, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo have selected Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca to represent the nation at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, who curated this year’s edition of the Bienal de São Paulo, will curate the pavilion. (more…)

Hannah Wilke, Untitled (1974-77), via Alison Jacques

Bringing together works from the early 1960s through to 1987, Alison Jacques Gallery in London is currently presenting an exhibition spanning three decades of the American painter, sculptor, photographer, video and performance artist Hannah Wilke’s work, in partnership with The Hannah Wilke Collection and Archive, Los Angeles. This is the first time since Wilke’s death in 1993 that her paintings on canvas from the 60s have been exhibited. 
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A partnership with the Smithsonian Institution and Fulbright Commission will allow researchers from Brazil’s destroyed National Museum to continue their research. “We have lost part of our collection but not our ability to produce knowledge,” the museum’s director, Alexander Kellner, said in a statement. (more…)

New York Magazine profiles 15 Orient, the living room gallery opened by Michel Gondry’s son Paul in their Brooklyn home. The space has already hosted a number of exhibitions in the past year. (more…)

The New York Times spotlights a push for a museum dedicated to Judy Chicago in her home city of Belen, New Mexico, and the controversy her work has raised in the city. “If Judy Chicago wants to be successful in a museum, well bless her little heart,” says John K. Thompson, a resident and retired stockbroker. “But not in a sleepy little town in the middle of New Mexico. A lot of her art is very sexual, more fitting for some liberal city far from here.” (more…)

Stanley Whitney, In the Color (2018), via Lisson Gallery

Color inspires and informs the work of Stanley Whitney, whose paintings explore the many possibilities for juxtaposition and movement across the canvas, each drawing on irregular rectangles in varying shades of strength and subtlety. His work creates fluctuating series of intensities and reliefs, draw on the composition of adjacent nodes, a structure that seems to welcome exchanges between freedom and constraint, open space and riding control, all bound together by the evolving exchanges in color.   He returns to New York this fall for his fourth exhibition with Lisson Gallery, marking the first solo show of the artist to occupy both of New York gallery spaces. Investigating his profound and nuanced relationship to color and its spatial effects throughout his career, the show includes paintings and drawings dating back to the 1990s in one gallery, and a suite of brand new works in the other.  (more…)

Blinky Palermo, To the People of New York City (1976), via Art Observed

One of his most iconic bodies of work, German artist Blinky Palermo’s To the People of New York City comes home this fall, placed on view at Dia: Chelsea.  Part of Palermo’s Metal Pictures series (or Metallbilder), the pieces reflect the artist at the peak of his abilities, and underscore his enduring contributions to the the landscape of the 20th Century avant-garde. (more…)

The trailer for Mapplethorpe, the biopic of the life and work of Robert Mapplethorpe, has been unveiled, starring Matt Smith as the photographer. The film explores the intersection of his art and his sexuality along with his struggle for mainstream recognition. (more…)

Tate Britain will rehang the last 60 years of its gallery displays with only female artists including Bridget Riley, Rachel Whiteread, and mroe the Guardian reports. “This presentation, 60 Years, will offer a significant moment to recognise and celebrate a selection of Britain’s most important artists working from the 1960s to the present day,” says Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson. (more…)

European biennial Manifesta has named the artistic team for its 13th edition, comprised of Katerina Chuchalina, Stefan Kalmár, Marina Otero Verzier, and Alya Sebti. The event will open in Marseille in 2020. “Marseille, with its great port city multiculturalism, and all its complexities and struggles, is for us maybe the ultimate test of how Marseille, France and Europe are facing the most important conflicts of our time,” says Manifesta’s director, Hedwig Fijen. “The appointed artistic team has our confidence to create a critical response to the current state of affairs in Europe and an artistic vision how we can look at global issues through the spectrum of Marseille.” (more…)

Loic Gouzer, who has served as Christie’s co-chairman of postwar and contemporary art for the past seven years, has announced he will depart from the auction house at the end of the year. “Those who know me best know that my two great passions in life have always been art and the environment,” he said in a statement. “I intend to spend the next few months concentrating on conservation and climate issues before coming back to the art world with a new project.” (more…)

Salvador Dali’s Lobster Telephone will remain in the UK after being purchased for £853,000 by the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS). “This major acquisition cements our position as one of the world’s greatest collections of surrealist art,” says Simon Groom, NSG’s director of modern and contemporary art. “Before this acquisition we had nothing of this kind.” (more…)

Agnes Martin, Affection (2001), From The Collection Of Laura Arrillaga-andreessen, © 2018 Estate Of Agnes Martin:artists Rights Society (Ars), New York

Having traveled from coast to coast for exhibition in New York City, Pace Gallery’s current show examined the shared aesthetic space of painter Agnes Martin and the meticulously crafted blankets of the Navajo (Diné) people of the American Southwest touches down for a striking last show of 2018.  The exhibition, which explores the shared use of parallel lines and tight grid-work in both the painter’s canvas and the blanket-maker’s loom, makes for a fascinating investigation of two aesthetically distinct visions that found their most compelling articulation amongst the landscape of the American desert. (more…)

Sarah Lucas, Au Naturel (Installation View), via Art Observed

One of the most eagerly-anticipated shows of 2018, artist Sarah Lucas has touched down at the New Museum, bringing with her an expansive body of works that runs the full expanse of her craft.  Curated by the New Museum’s artistic director, Massimiliano Gioni associate, Margot Norton, the show, Lucas’s first in an American institution, spans three floors and any number of aesthetic modes, moving from sculpture to photography, wallpaper to video in ways that both explore each object and twist the original historical contexts of their works (gallery shows, museums and her renowned Venice Biennale show from 2015 all get their due here) into new configurations. (more…)