David Shrigley will serve as the guest director of the next edition of the Brighton Festival, Artforum reports. “The great thing about Brighton Festival is that you see things that are really thrilling and wonderful that you’ve never heard of before,” Shrigley said. “What I’m looking forward to about the role of guest director is having the opportunity to not only see a lot of stuff and program stuff but also make some artwork myself and have it presented in the place where I live.” (more…)

Francis Bacon, Head with Raised Arm (1955), via Christie’s

The week of auction sales in London concluded Friday evening, as both Phillips and Christie’s held their Contemporary and 20th Century Evening Sales, achieving modest results that did little to bolster a distinctly quiet sale the night prior at Sotheby’s.  For those looking for a strong confirmation of the market’s strength in a turbulent political climate worldwide, the sale offered little in the way of stability, with some top lots failing to find a buyer, while others just managed to sell at estimate.

Adrian Ghenie, The Collector 4 (2009), via Phillips

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Do Ho Suh at Victoria Miro, via Art Observed

On a cloudy Wednesday morning in London’s Regent’s Park, the doors opened on this year’s edition of the Frieze art fair, marking the latest edition of an event that has long billed itself as the premiere at event in the British capital.  This year’s opening continued to show why, as strong sales and an increasingly attentive approach towards curating and showing works made for an immersive and nuanced whole. (more…)

An article in The Guardian this week asks a group of artists and art professionals, among them Marina Abramovich, Tacita Dean and the ICA’s Stefan Kalmár, what the biggest question facing artists today might be, with a range of answers offering an interesting perspective on the field as a whole. “Just doing art, being in the studio, is not enough,” Abramovic says.  “You have to think about what you can do as a human being.” (more…)

Sotheby’s is boasting an impressive Alberto Burri from his Neo Plastica series for its November Post-War sales in New York, the Art Market Monitor reports. One of the artist’s most sought-after pieces, the work has long been considered among the most seminal of his early works. (more…)

The Whitney has unveiled plans for a David Hammons sculpture set to be built out into the water of the Hudson river on the land across the street from the museum. The piece references the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, serving as a ghostly monument to the creation of the artist’s Day’s End on the same site.  (more…)

Cy Twombly, Untitled (1962), via Sothebys

After closing out the second day of proceedings across town at Regent’s Park yesterday, collectors and dealers flocked to Sotheby’s London for the first of the week’s Contemporary and Post-War Evening Sales.  Held in conjunction with the cutting edge works on view at Frieze London this week, the sale at Sotheby’s seemed to offer something of a moment of reflection for the contemporary market, looking back at some of the masters of the 20th Century, while also offering buyers a chance to bring them home. (more…)

The New York Times has a piece this week on the current crop of collectors opening private museums and exhibiting their collections across the country. “The interest in creating a private museum has increased as interest in art overall has increased. It runs from the very small to the very large. It’s not as narrow a topic as you might think,” says Mac MacLellan, president of the central region at Northern Trust Wealth Management.  (more…)

Portrait of a Young Girl with Blond Hair, a small painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir was stolen from an auction house in the Paris suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye this week, Artforum reports. The painting is estimated to be worth between $30,000 and $35,000. (more…)

Francis Bacon, Study of Red Pope 1962. 2nd Version 1971 (1971), via Christie’s

Making its stamp on Frieze auction week in London, the big auction houses are planning a string of major Contemporary and Post-War Evening Sales in the coming weeks, marking the first time the secondary market will be tested in the second half of 2017.  With sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips packed into a pair of evenings in the British capital, the first days of October should offer an interesting look at how the market has continued to respond to turbulent world events, unstable buying patterns, and the demanding pace of the current market schedule.

Andreas Gursky, Los Angeles (1999), via Phillips

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The New York Times looks inside artist Howard Hodgkin’s art collection, which will hit the auction block later this month at Sotheby’s. “What appealed to Howard was when it broke away from the norm, when it was an extra something or other,” his partner, Antony Peattie says. (more…)

Roy Lichtenstein’s Female Head will come to auction for the first time ever this November at Sotheby’s in New York, estimated to sell for as much as $15 million. To stand in front of this painting is to understand and appreciate Roy Lichtenstein’s enduring engagement with beguiling blondes, as well as his brilliance as one of the trailblazers of Pop Art,” says Grégoire Billault, head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art department in New York. (more…)

A sexually-explicit sculpture by Dutch art and design collective Atelier Van Lieshout has been pulled from the FIAC sculpture show in Paris’s Tuileries Gardens, the Art Newspaper reports. “Online commentaries point out this work has a brutal aspect; it risks being misunderstood by visitors to the gardens,” says Jean-Luc Martinez, the director of the Louvre. (more…)

David Geffen has pledged $150 million to the planned expansion and renovation at LACMA, the LA Times reports. “There is no great city without a great museum,” Geffen said. “Los Angeles is the city of the future, and with the involvement of those who support art and architecture here, the creation of this building is a very important event.” (more…)

NADA Miami Beach is launching an Acquisition Gift fund for the PAMM, providing the institution with resources to purchase new works from its galleries and represented artists. “We are very appreciative of NADA’s generous gift to the museum,” curator María Elena Ortiz said in a statement. “With such a variety of exhibitors and works on display from around the world, I look forward to selecting an artwork that will complement PAMM’s collection, which highlights Miami’s diverse community and pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas.” (more…)

Snapchat is preparing to launch a series of augmented reality projects alongside Jeff Koons this week, featuring the artist’s works in environments spread around the globe. “Discover Koons’s innovative digital installations scattered across the world to experience them for yourself, and learn a little more about them,” the company wrote in a statement. (more…)

The Guardian profiles a piece on the Tate St. Ives’s impressive expansion project, which was done in the face of fierce protests by local residents. “It has been a very fine balancing act between the gallery and the community,” says Mark Osterfield, the executive director of Tate St Ives since 2007. “There’s a real danger in situations like this that the big institution is perceived to be taking over a place, so we didn’t want to slap an ‘iconic’ new building up on the hill.” (more…)

Gallerist Sarah Kay, who previously served as director at White Cube in London, is opening a new exhibition space in New York’s East Village, WWD reports. “I think this was always the end goal,” Kay says. “It was always a dream, even though I did a number of different things to get to this point.” (more…)

Artist Yoko Ono is selling a Basquiat painting from her collection at Sotheby’s upcoming Post-War and Contemporary Sales this November in New York, Bloomberg reports. The work is presented as a tribute to boxer Muhammad Ali, and is expected to fetch upwards of $12 million. (more…)

A group of experts have released an opinion this week that Leonardo da Vinci may have painted a nude version of the Mona Lisa, the Telegraph reports. Researchers point to the artist’s work Joconde Nue as bearing a striking similarity to the sitter in Da Vinci’s famed portrait. “The drawing has a quality in the way the face and hands are rendered that is truly remarkable. It is not a pale copy,” says curator Mathieu Deldicque. “We are looking at something which was worked on in parallel with the Mona Lisa at the end of Leonardo’s life.”  (more…)

Art Basel has agreed to continue its programing at the Miami Beach Convention Center for another five years, extending its residency at the site through 2023. The Convention Center will add a series of additional renovations to its space as part of the deal. “This agreement is comparable to locking in the Super Bowl for five years,” Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine said in a statement. (more…)

Frieze London, via Art Observed

The flagship event of London’s bustling art week, Frieze London opens this week at Regent’s Park, opening the month of October with one of the fall’s largest art fair events around the globe. Bringing over 160 galleries from around the globe to the fair’s grounds, the fair will turn 15 years old this year, looking back on its run as an increasingly vital part of the international art circuit, and one of the main players in the shifting landscape of the art market’s move towards more temporary, globally distributed events. (more…)

The Tate Modern’s most recent installation project, a massive swing set built by Danish Collective Superflex, gets a profile in The Guardian this week, emphasizing its attempts at encouraging reflection through social interaction.  “We’ve made sure the carpet is very thick so it is extremely comfortable, you can rest,” says Superflex member Rasmus Nielsen. “You can come here and take a nap.” (more…)

Los Angeles’s Institute of Contemporary Art gets a profile in the LA Times this week, showcasing the institution’s new exhibition space downtown and its vision for the future. “We have an important program that’s different from a collector’s museum or a collecting museum or a smaller organization,” says director Elsa Longhauser. “People are so interested in having cultural experiences—there’s a hunger—and I don’t think you can have too many.” (more…)