Lorna Simpson, Five Properties (2018), via Hauser & Wirth

Marking her first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth London with a body of new works, artist Lorna Simpson’s Unanswerable features new and recent paintings, photographic collages and sculpture.  Continuing the artist’s pioneering approach to conceptual photography, which features powerful juxtapositions of text and staged images, often bringing into question the nature of representation, identity, gender, race and history, the show is a fitting reintroduction to Simpson’s work for a broader audience, and one that marks the continued impact and importance of her practice today.  (more…)

Thomas Dane Gallery now represents Dana Schutz, Art News reports. Schutz will have her first show with the gallery in October 2019 in London.  (more…)

The New York Times explores the recent trend in museum curating towards “transhistorical” exhibitions, pairing contemporary works with pieces from deeper into the art historical canon. “What it is trying to do is to say that history lives,” says Sheena Wagstaff, chairwoman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary art department. (more…)

Firehouse, Engine Company 31, a historic fire station in Lower Manhattan will host “Bring Down the Walls,” a new project by Creative Time that will mix workshops and exhibitions each day with live performances and DJ nights each night.  (more…)

Eva Rothschild will represent Ireland at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Ireland’s Minister of Culture, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht has announced.  “My intention is to make a sculptural environment which engages with current social changes through embodiment, presence, and materiality,” Rothschild says. “I want to create a situation that suggests multiple sculptural possibilities for rearrangement and reordering in which it becomes difficult to distinguish renewal from collapse.” (more…)

The Documenta exhibition has appointed executive Sabine Schormann, formerly of of Lower Saxony’s Sparkasse bank and the foundation of VGH insurance, as its new CEO. “I see my role as an enabler. I want to strengthen public perception and ensure the greatest possible development of Documenta without intervening artistically,” Schormann says.

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The Tate has announced its shortlist for the 2018 Turner Prize, including Forensic Architecture, Naeem Mohaiemen, Charlotte Prodger and Luke Willis Thompson in its list of nominees.  The winner of the £25,000 prize of the will be announced in December. “Following a thoughtful and rigorous debate, this year’s jury has chosen an outstanding group of artists, all of whom are tackling the most pressing political and humanitarian issues of today,” says Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain. “This shortlist highlights how important the moving image has become in exploring these debates.”

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The New York Times has a piece on Berlin this week, spotlighting the city’s long history as a home for artists and liberal-minded thinkers. “There are big spaces, like TriBeCa and SoHo in the old days,” says painter Sean Scully, who keeps a studio in the city. “It reminds me of that.” (more…)

Julian Opie is featured in The Guardian this week, with the artist reviewing recent works and their processes.  “Making art is a fairly odd decision, but people have been doing it since for ever,” he says. “If doodling while on the phone I’m inclined to draw a 3D cube and then another. It’s the fastest way to create imaginary space, another world. I live in London and move through a labyrinth of extruded rectangles like an ant on a computer board. I understand space and see movement by the changing views on these shapes. By simply adding flat squares to the sides of my extruded rectangles I create modern buildings.” (more…)

Sotheby’s will set a new world auction record with Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (sur le côté gauche) at this month’s Impressionist and Modern Sale in New York, with an estimate of more than $150 million. The figure is the highest estimate ever placed on a work of art, and has already been confirmed as a record breaker. “This painting reimagines the nude for the modern era,” says Simon Shaw, the co-head worldwide of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art department. (more…)

A piece in the New York Times this week notes the increased focus by museums towards Latinx artists.  “We’re at a really important point in history where plural curatorial voices can show not just a survey,” says Marcela Guerrero, who was recently hired as the Whitney’s first curator specializing in Latinx artists. “We can now go deeper and start unpacking what Latino art really is.” (more…)

Anicka Yi is interviewed in Frieze this week, discussing her practice and what she sees as the next steps for women in the arts. “In general, I learned fairly early on that cisgender, straight-identifying females tend to not help other women,” she says of her early experience in the arts. “It’s not even a conscious malicious act, in most instances. It’s a deep conditioning that somehow distancing yourself from the perceived ‘weaker pack’, with all its attendant baggage, might advance your uniqueness as an individual, making you less prone to be judged as a ‘vulnerable woman’.” (more…)

Cristian Valsecchi will will take over as manager of the Fondazione Prada, Art News reports. Valsecchi is currently secretary general of Fondazione Torino Musei and Associazione dei Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani (AMACI), and formerly served as a professor of economics for arts and culture at the University of Bergamo. (more…)

LACMA’s annual Collectors Committee Weekend resulted in an unprecedented acquisition of women artists, with new works purchased by Martha Boto, Betye Saar, Jennifer Bartlett and Julie Mehretu, as well as a sculpture by Ruth Asawa. (more…)

Doug Aitken, New Era (Installation View), via Art Observed

Walking into the shadowy depths of 303 Gallery this month, viewers are confronted with an almost completely destabilizing series of visuals.  Huge explosions of color and line expand out from the center of television screens placed in the pitch-black space, swirling movements and patterns created by arrangements of various technologic peripherals and paraphernalia.  Accentuated by the hall of mirrors the artist has constructed inside the gallery space, the video creates a alienating effect, the feeling of being awash in technologic constructs we are inventing faster than we can fully comprehend their effects on communication, knowledge or expression. (more…)

Mark (Installation View), via Team Gallery

The word “mark” takes the center stage in Team Gallery’s ongoing group exhibition, featuring works by Erica Baum, Louise Fishman, Suzanne McClelland, Shannon Ebner, and Al Loving. Aptly and simply titled mark, the exhibition gathers a group of two dimensional works in print and painting that loosely investigate the impact of visual culture on personal and collective memory. Initiated through varied linguistic and social traits of the word finding to its current use and connotations in modern English, the various approaches here explore differing meanings of the “mark,” each of which serve as tactics to examine societal codings of information, ethics, and culture. (more…)

Peter Halley, Barbara Bloom, Ashley Bickerton, Joan Wallace and Jeff Koons get together for a piece in the New York Times this week, dining at Katz’s and discussing the 80’s scene downtown. “SoHo had this hierarchy and the gallery structure, but when all these artists opened these fresh, young galleries, there was no hierarchy there,” Koons says of spaces in the Lower East Side. “It was really about showing exciting works. Things weren’t set up as business-oriented. I went through some of the SoHo galleries, but I was never completely accepted there. And as outsiders we finally had a place where we were embraced.” (more…)

The Tate is looking to appoint its first trustee to represent the interests of people aged 16-25, and will lower prices for younger visitors, the Art Newspaper reports. Tate head Maria Balshaw is reportedly seeking “a cultural entrepreneur and digital native” to help represent the interests of a new generation at the museum. (more…)

The newly opened Tate archives get a spotlight in the Art Newspaper this week, profiling the struggle and logistics behind opening the Tate Britain and Tate Modern as separate branches of the same institution. “I was always worried about appearing isolationist in regard to British art,” the piece quotes former Modern head Nicholas Serota.  (more…)

Bloomberg has a piece this week on the market growth for contemporary black artists, including in its piece the news that MoMA has acquired Chris Ofili’s famous Holy Virgin Mary, from collector Steve Cohen. “Collectors are very interested in what artists of color have to say now,” says dealer Jack Shainman. “For many years it didn’t matter.” (more…)

Sean Raspet, Receptor-Binding Variations (Installation View), via Bridget Donahue

Taking over the large main room of Bridget Donahue this month, artist Sean Raspet has assembled a strangely minimalist arrangement of objects along the walls of the space.  Small white machines jut out into space, each humming quietly and dispensing a subtle scent.  These timed micro-diffusers are each emitting a scent designed by the artist, an experiment in scent reception that plays on his interests in synthetic compounds and their phenomenological capabilities. (more…)

The WSJ spotlights the rise and fall of Tony Podesta, paying particular attention to his lavish spending on art and arts institutions. “When he stepped down from the firm he expressed his ongoing gratitude to all of them and his commitment to continue his advocacy for the issues and ideals he’s always fought for,” says a spokeswoman for the Podesta Group. (more…)

Jeff Koons and Gagosian Gallery are facing a lawsuit over three allegedly undelivered sculptures by the artist, filed by collector and MoMA trustee Steven Tananbaum. “Behind the ostensible façade of Jeff Koons’ art world triumphs and record-breaking auction prices,” a filing by litigator Aaron Richard Golub charges, “lurks a well-oiled machine, more specifically an established, archaic System as old as the hills applied to the art world to exploit art collectors’ desire to own Jeff Koons sculptures.”  (more…)

Max Hollein gets a profile in the NYT this week, as he prepares to take the helm at The Met. “Max Hollein set benchmarks in terms of mobilizing citizens for culture and museums,” says Felix Semmelroth, San Francsico’s former cultural affairs director. “He left deep, deep traces in the city.” (more…)