Dutch aristocrat Baron Willem van Dedem’s donation of four Old Masters paintings will go on view at the UK’s National Gallery this week. “We are honored that the National Gallery acknowledges the quality and rarity of these four paintings that our father and grandfather collected over a period of more than 50 years,” says the baron’s son, Frits van Dedem. “It gives us great pleasure that the gallery has decided to showcase these extraordinary works of art with the public.” (more…)

China has lifted an 11-month ban on South Korean art that was the result of a U.S.-installed anti-missile system in the country. “It is not surprising that exchanges in art are affected by political issues. Diplomacy and politics are always stronger than art and culture. What was surprising was that, this time, the ban and embargo were so strong and visible,” says Eun Yong Kwon, a visual arts planner at the Korean Arts Management Service in Seoul. (more…)

Artist Carsten Höller will build one of his signature slide works at Bonn’s Bundeskunsthalle next year, Art Newspaper reports. Höller, who has built several of these slides at various museums around the globe, has billed this one as “an efficient, environmentally friendly and time-saving means of transport.” (more…)

A group of artists have signed an open letter to Documenta, offering alternatives and critiques of the exhibition’s profit motives and economic structure. “We are compelled to write to propose an improved structure for Documenta that does not prioritize revenue above all other priorities, and defends its future artistic and curatorial autonomy and progressive political mission,” the letter reads. (more…)

Enrico Castellani, via Art Observed

Enrico Castellani, one of Europe’s pioneering avant-garde artists in the year’s following WWII, has passed away at the age of 87 in his home of Celleno, Italy, near Rome.  Castellani was a relentlessly inventive and creative painter, having worked closely with a number of groups and collectives including Cobra group, Group Zero, and the Neo-Concrete artists in Brazil.   (more…)

Ashley Bickerton, Catalog Terra Firma Nineteen Hundred Eight Nine #2 (1989), Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Bali-based artist Ashley Bickerton’s first U.S. survey dedicated to his multimedia work serves as a compact retrospective of his four-decade long career, shaped by various geographical and ideological milestones that show a continued response to the artist’s ongoing quest for meaning and space for contemplation in modern age. The exhibition, on view now at The FLAG Art Foundation proceeds a larger survey, Ornamental Hysteria, which opened in the spring of 2017 at the Damien Hirst-owned Newport Street Gallery in South London, including a total of 51 familiar and new works by the artist. The artist offers a range of work from both his current time in Bali and his long residency in New York, where Bickerton emerged in the 1980’s alongside Jeff Koons and Peter Halley. The show offers selections from various periods of his career, mostly including sculpture and painting, two mediums that have always remained intertwined since his early days. (more…)

A group of over 100 artists, writers and critics have signed an open letter condemning Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “We reject Trump’s collusion with such racist manipulation and his disregard for international law,” the letter reads. “We deplore his readiness to crown the Israeli military conquest of East Jerusalem and his indifference to Palestinian rights.” (more…)

Spanish law enforcement has seized a selection of paintings and artifacts  from the Lleida Museum in Catalonia this week, continuing fierce tensions in the region over Catalonia’s attempted independence from Spain. “Aragonese authorities have a great interest in recovering pieces in Catalan museums, but have no desire to recover other objects from Sijena that are, for instance, in the Prado in Madrid,” says Santi Vila, Catalonia’s former cultural minister. “Why? For political reasons.” (more…)

Jannis Kounellis at Luxembourg and Dayan, via Art Observed

A contingency is a future event or circumstance that is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty, one that may rely on distinct conditions or concessions made in the present. This conditional framework serves as the namesake of the most recent exhibition of work on view at Luxembourg and Dayan this month, one that poses its exploration of the Italian post-war as contingent on a viewer’s willingness to freely-associate between various modes of practice in contemporary art. (more…)

Lucy and Jorge Orta at Jane Lombard, 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…)

Lin May Saeed at Jacky Strenz, via Art Observed

As far as fairs go each year in Miami, few can compare with the unique flair and spirit of the New Art Dealers Association’s annual production in Miami, taking over hotel lobbies and ballrooms with a collection of works from young artists, smaller galleries and inventive projects that always make for an engaging, freewheeling time matched only by the fair’s impressive eye for vintage Miami charm.  So when the brutal storms that ravaged the southern tip of Florida this year made for some complications in planning at the fair’s annual haunt up-beach at The Deauville, it seemed as if some of the wind had been kept from its sails. Taking over Ice Palace Studios in an area close to downtown Miami, NADA’s most recent iteration manages to make the best of an unfortunate situation, adding the familiar atmosphere and communal spirit of the fair to an intriguing new locale on the other side of Biscayne Bay.

Molly Zuckerman Hartung at Rachel Uffner, via Art Observed

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A conflicting report in the Wall Street Journal notes that the buyer of the da Vinci piece last month at Christie’s is actually Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, noting that another prince served as a proxy buyer for the work.  The news comes as the Louvre Abu Dhabi has claimed that it will be showing the piece in its museum. (more…)

Allan McCollum at Thomas Schulte, via Art Observed

The doors have opened on the latest edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, bringing a stream of collectors and dealers into the Miami Beach Convention Center for another year of the fair’s high-profile sales, and an annual look back at the year for the art world.  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.

Kevin Beasley at Casey Kaplan, via Art Observed

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A new amendment to the Republican tax bill would strike artist residences from qualifying low-income housing. Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican senior senator from Kansas, changed language in the bill shortly before it was signed this past week. (more…)

Galerie Balice Hertling has opened a second space in Paris at 239 Rue Saint-Martin, only a few blocks from the Centre Pompidou. Art consultant Sibylle Rochat has also joined the gallery as a partner. (more…)

The buyer of the $450 Million Leonardo da Vinci has been identified as Saudi prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, the New York Times reports. The news comes shortly after an announcement by the Louvre Abu Dhabi that the painting was coming to the institution.  (more…)

A proposed $50 million Rothko Pavilion at the Portland Art Museum is steps closer to reality, after the museum raised over half of its funds for the expansion. “What sealed it for me was, they have a chance to be one of the most accessible art museums on the West Coast,” says City Commissioner Nick Fish. (more…)

Major wildfires in Los Angeles have prompted the shut-down of the Skirball museum and Getty museum, CNN reports.  The massive fires are producing so much smoke that they can be seen from space, and have left acres of forest and homes ravaged.   (more…)

Material Art Fair is moving locations next year to Frontón México, an Art Deco building that signals the fair’s growing scale and influence during Mexico City Art Week. “There’s a lot more work that needs to be done here, not only in terms of continuing to strengthen the fair but also in terms of strengthening Mexico City’s contemporary art community in general,” says co-founder Brett Schultz. (more…)

Collector Jorge Pérez has accused Miami-Dade County of slashing the budget for his namesake museum after it launched an exhibition of Cuban art. “They could have taken the money from other museums on an equal basis,” he says. “They only took it from PAMM. This was definitely an orchestrated move and it was punishment for our show.” (more…)

Responding to a petition, The Met has stated that it will not removed a Balthus painting from view at the museum, one which features the artist’s young sitter with her underwear exposed. “Moments such as this provide an opportunity for conversation, and visual art is one of the most significant means we have for reflecting on both the past and the present and encouraging the continuing evolution of existing culture through informed discussion and respect for creative expression,” the museum says. (more…)

The Ford Foundation has given Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum a $200,000 grant to support public programming, which will be used in part to upgrade its tech infrastructure. “We are eager now to share our equally impactful public programs with the wider audience they deserve,” says director Ann Philbin. “By investing in a critical pillar of our activities, Ford is giving us the ability to strengthen our infrastructure, share this important work more broadly, and realize the full potential of our public programs.” (more…)

Artist Lubaina Himid has become the oldest artist to win the Turner Prize, announced today in Hull. “I won it for all the times where we put our heads above the parapet,” she says, “we tried to do things, we failed, people died in the meantime … for all the black women who never did win it even though they had been shortlisted … it feels good for that reason.” (more…)

Vincent Honoré, senior curator for the Hayward Gallery in London, will organize an entire edition of the Independent Art Fair in Brussels, including commissioned presentations by galleries and institutions, and an expanded talks program. “Vincent brings a strong vision and track record of exhibitions that go beyond the traditional brick-and-mortar format,” says fair founder Elizabeth Dee. “We’re looking forward to delivering a truly unique context for future art experiences.” (more…)