NY Art Book Fair, via At Observed

As the fall equinox comes and goes, the New York Art Book Fair has once again come to New York City, opening its doors at MoMA PS1 for the thirteenth annual edition of what has become one of the city’s most unique and energetic exhibitions of young artists, publishers, writers and thinkers, each representing a small part of the national and international art publishing community.  Free and open to the public, the event draws more than 35,000 individuals including book lovers, collectors, artists, and art world professionals each year.  (more…)

NADA has announced the gallery list for the 2018 edition of its Miami fair, which will now serve as the central fair of the organization’s yearly programming after its 2019 New York fair was cancelled.  (more…)

The Met is looking into plans to lease its space at the Breuer Building to the Frick Collection as the museum undergoes renovation in 2020.  The plan would save the museum $45 million. “Our objective in expanding our programming to The Met Breuer was to present the modern collection and other strengths of our encyclopedic holdings, and to enable our curators to organize cutting-edge exhibitions. We are extremely pleased with the visitor response and critical acclaim for these programs and look forward to building on what we have learned in the years ahead at The Met Fifth Avenue,” says President Daniel Weiss.  (more…)

Jeffrey Deitch has an interview in the LA Times this week, as he tours the newspaper around his new space in Hollywood. “For people coming from different parts of America, coming from different countries,” he says, “this is a really L.A. space. And that’s what I wanted — an only-in-L.A. space.” (more…)

Ellen Berkenblit, Untitled (2018), via Anton Kern

The Clock Unlocked is the first exhibition to spanning over four decades in the life and work of New York painter Ellen Berkenblit, on now at Anton Kern.  Running through a range of expressive and often enigmatic arrangements, the exhibition presents a roving and exploratory walk through Berkenblit’s practice, tracing evolutions and ongoing interests through any number of touchstones and points of entry.  Arranged instinctually and without chronology, The Clock Unlocked is just that, a diary of paintings and drawings reveals the artist’s idiosyncratic ‘alphabet’— the core of her visual language presented in the same idiosyncratic attitude towards time and space. (more…)

Artist Mary Kelly is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing her own work and her views on the recent move towards increasingly hostile international relations and hard borderlines between countries. “Living all over very different places gives you insight about how different cultures and political systems work, but it also shows you in some way how things are connected,” she says.  (more…)

Hauser & Wirth is planning a location in the resort town of St. Moritz, Switzerland, Art News reports. The 4,000 sq. ft space will be the ninth location for the gallery. (more…)

Chinese art and antiquities have been spared from Trump’s trade tariffs, the Art Newspaper reports. “The free exchange of art is beneficial to all and may provide an avenue toward mutual understanding leading to better relations on other fronts as well,” says dealer James Lally. (more…)

Writer Olav Velthuis has a piece on the state of the art market this week in The New York Times, noting the challenges and threats posed by the current fair system. “The fairs have existed since the late 1960s, but only in the last two decades have they developed into the market’s potentate,” he says. “Almost half of all gallery sales are nowadays conducted at the fairs, up 16 percentage points from 2010. Gallery owners on average participate in five fairs a year. Not because they like them so much as because they have to.” (more…)

Sally Tallant, director of the Liverpool Biennial; Lauren Haynes, curator of contemporary art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas; and Dan Byers, director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have all been selected to curate sections of the 2019 Armory Show, Art News reports. “Curators often have their finger on the pulse,” Director Nicole Berry says. “They can provide new and exciting works that challenge the viewers that they might not see at other fairs. It is important to us to have art on view that isn’t being seen elsewhere. We want to have that sense of discovery—something special and interesting.” (more…)

Artist Geta Brătescu has died at 92, according to gallery Hauser & Wirth.  “Geta Brătescu was a true artist who even in the darkest times maintained her sense of playfulness and freedom,” Iwan Wirth, the cofounder and president of the gallery, said in a statement. “Her powerful life force went in so many directions, from drawing and graphics and photography, to animated videos and tapestry, that even in her 90s she embodied the spirit and passion of a young person. That Geta lived to see her art embraced so enthusiastically on the international level at the 2017 Venice Biennale and at her first New York solo exhibition at our gallery last year, means so much. She will be dearly missed.” (more…)

A Nazi-looted Renoir was officially returned this week to the sole heir of the art collector from whom it was stolen, Art Newspaper reports. “Nobody told me about the painting,” says Sylvie Sulitzer, who received the work. “We never talked about the war at home. It was taboo.” (more…)

The estate of Diane Arbus will now share representation Fraenkel Gallery and David Zwirner, Art News reports. “I am honored to have been entrusted to help the Estate and Fraenkel Gallery with the extraordinary legacy of Diane Arbus, whose radical work remains as relevant today as when her photographs were taken,” Zwirner says. “The Estate and Fraenkel Gallery’s handling of Arbus’s work has been exemplary and we are thrilled to partner with them.” (more…)

White Cube will now represent the Al Held Foundation, Art News reports. “Looking at his abstract paintings today, you can see that he was way ahead of his time, and as such, his work speaks to a number of contemporary practitioners of abstraction,” John Good, the gallery’s director of artist estates, said in a statement.  (more…)

Louis Marchesano will become the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new senior curator of prints, drawings, and photographs. “I’m especially excited about working with colleagues across the museum and thinking creatively about new exhibitions and research projects,” he says. “This is a great moment to be joining the PMA given its ambitious campaign to transform and renew the institution.” (more…)

Jenny Holzer is interviewed in The Guardian this week, as the artist prepares to show a new body of work discussing gun violence and shooting deaths in the United States. “I wanted to collect what we did very, very, quickly after the Parkland shooting,” she says. “Wanting to show the work at Tate made me assemble the stills and video, and go back into the animation. I wanted to be able to show the content to another group of people.” (more…)

Artist Pyotr Pavlensky, known for his acts of transgressive protest, has been released from detention for charges of setting the doors of the central Banque de France building on fire. Pavlensky has performed similar acts of protest in Russia, which had a hand in his exile from his home country.  (more…)

Josh Roth, head of UTA Fine Arts, has died at the age of 40, after suffering what was reported as heart failure. “Josh was a dear man and a great colleague, and we are devastated by his loss,” UTA chairman Jim Berkus and CEO Jeremy Zimmer said Monday in a statement. “His friendships and contributions were deeply felt. He constantly inspired his colleagues and those he represented with his impeccable taste, thoughtfulness, creativity and absolute dedication. Most importantly, Josh was a wonderful man — devoted to his family, kind in spirit and generous in every way. UTA is heartbroken.” (more…)

Steve McQueen is embarking on an ambitious project that will see him attempt to shoot all year 3 seven- and eight-year-olds in the UK for a show at Tate Britain. “We live in London and we all think we know London, but we don’t and to have a reflection of our immediate future is I think quite urgent,” he says. (more…)

Cy Twombly, Untitled (1967), via Levy Gorvy

If you follow Brett Gorvy on Instagram, it’s immediately apparent that the Lévy Gorvy partner is a master of narrative, spinning long, anecdotal tomes around the images and artworks that he posts in his feed.  Gorvy’s vision and passion for art, and for the stories that surround each of the works that passes through his lens, is almost unparalleled anywhere in the art world, and his move in the past few years towards a gallery position should come as no surprise.  Yet Gorvy has plenty more tricks up his sleeve, and his most recent venture, a curated exhibition at his gallery, showcases just how deep his care and skill towards his profession go. (more…)

Anthony Pearson, Untitled (Embedment) (2018), via Marianne Boesky

Marking the first show of the fall season at Marianne Boesky’s Chelsea exhibition space, artist Anthony Pearson returns to his long-running experimentations with hydrocal for a new selection of  works.  The artist’s work as a lingering, enigmatic engagement with this material functions as an explicit practice in deep intellectual and physical engagement with a few materials, exploring the behaviors, reactions, and open possibilities of his intentionally limited material vocabulary. 

Anthony Pearson, Untitled (Embedment) (2018), via Marianne Boesky

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Frieze Los Angeles, which will run February 14 through 17 at Paramount Pictures Studio in Hollywood, has announced its initial gallery list, with a heavy focus on blue-chip galleries that speaks to the impact it is looking to make on the West Coast.  (more…)

The Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale has been reopened, with a restored interior that The National Gallery of Canada is hoping will improve the working conditions for its chosen artists. “I give always very much importance to the conservation, as much as possible, of the original design,” says designer Alberico Belgiojoso “Nature changes, while architecture stays at it is.” (more…)

A federal appeals court in New York has rejected a claim to a 1908 Matisse painting owned by the National Gallery in London by the grandchildren of the woman in the work. “The alleged taking of the painting was committed by a private actor” not “a sovereign”, the panel of judges said. “The National Gallery’s refusal to compensate appellants for that taking after the fact does not provide a basis for jurisdiction over a foreign sovereign and its instrumentality.”  (more…)