The New York Times has a lengthy piece this week asking various artists, musicians and celebrities what they’d like to see from a rehabilitated and financially strong Met Museum, with a number of imaginative and unique answers and solutions to the museum’s financial and leadership woes.  “I was at a talk where a prominent museum director was asked by a colleague, What was the most important lesson he had learned while on the job? His response was ‘I learned to listen to artists,'” says Glenn Ligon. “One thing the new director needs to do is make the galleries in the Met places where artists actually want to show their work. They need to make proper galleries to show their contemporary collection. And if they don’t change the galleries right away, they need to at least rotate the collection once in a while so it doesn’t feel like it is a storage area that someone left the door open to.” (more…)

The Hirshhorn Museum has announced a gala this coming November to honor a group of 31 female artists including Lorna Simpson, Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Yayoi Kusama. “Each year, the Hirshhorn celebrates incredible artists from around the world who throughout their careers continue to challenge and inspire us,” Melissa Chiu, the Hirshhorn’s director, said in a statement. “This year, I am especially proud to honor 31 outstanding female artists—from pioneers of performance and video art to emerging painters and sculptors—whose collective contributions to the field have transformed the way we look at art and set the stage for generations of creative talents yet to come.” (more…)

Chateau Shatto at Foxy Production, via Foxy Production

Doubling down on its hospitality duties, Foxy Production played host to French gallery Sultana this month, as well as Château Shatto (using a distinctly play on the French language, but based in Los Angeles) for CONDO New York.  Each gallery opted for a group showing, though artists from each show remained distinct from each other, resulting in a pair of group exhibitions in Foxy Production’s long, narrow space.  On Sultana’s side, Celia Hempton, Jacin Giordano, Jesse Darling, and Walter Pfeiffer were on view, while Château Shatto had brought works by Jean Baudrillard, Body by Body, Aria Dean, and Jacqueline De Jong. (more…)

Adrián Villar Rojas, Untitled from the series ‘The Theater of Disappearance (2017) via Art Observed

On view through July 21st, Adrián Villar Rojas’ Untitled, from the series ‘The Theater of Disappearance’ transforms the first floor of Marian Goodman’s London gallery space from a white-washed, airy viewing space to a room devoid of any natural light. Running concurrently with exhibitions of the same name at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria and the NEON Foundation in Athens, the London exhibition is an immersive display. Like the parallel exhibitions, Marian Goodman Gallery features a new site-specific work which wholly claims the exhibition space, changing the domain of perception and creating a rupture. (more…)

The self-professed “art detective” Arthur Brand is now claiming he is 100% positive that the paintings stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum are in Ireland, CBS News reports. “We have had talks with… former members of the IRA – and after a few Guinnesses, after a few talks – you can see in their eyes that they know more,” Brand says. (more…)

The Art Newspaper spotlights new measures and methods artists, art dealers and curators are exploring to survive in the current art market, from temporary shows and pop-up exhibitions to selling work directly online, bypassing gallery models entirely. “There’s a sense of things being cyclical,” says curator Holly Willats. “Despite the overwhelming difficulties, artists are finding new initiatives to continue to make and exhibit their work.” (more…)

Former Tate head Nicholas Serota has gone on record calling for the protection of artists during and after Brexit negotiations, claiming that their right to travel and move in and out of the country is essential to the British nation. “We owe much of how we see ourselves – especially our romantic side – to the perspective of incomers,” Serota says. “Where would the visual arts in this country be without the contribution made by artists like Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud in one generation, Chris Ofili, Mona Hatoum or John Akomfrah in another?” (more…)

The Met has set a new attendance record this year, counting 7 million visitors over the last 12 months, a boost in visitors created by the addition of the Met Breuer to the museum’s exhibition program. “The Met is thrilled to see our visitors responding so enthusiastically to our collection, exhibitions, and programs” said Daniel H. Weiss, President and CEO of The Met. “We’re honored that so many people decided to spend their time with us this year.”  (more…)

The Shed, the soon-to-open New York City arts center headed by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Alex Poots, has appointed Emma Enderby as one of its curators. Enderby formerly worked as an associate curator at New York’s Public Art Fund. “Emma’s experience in contemporary visual art and across other artistic disciplines is impressive and wide-ranging. Her work in New York and internationally reflects the Shed’s commitment to creating a local and global program,” Poots said in a statement. “I’m thrilled to begin working with her.” (more…)

Artist Arthur Jafa has been tapped to direct the most recent video for rapper JAY-Z, whose new album 4:44 was released this month.  The video is only available for subscribers to Tidal, the artist’s music-streaming service, but a short preview of the eight minute-long video is available on his artist page. (more…)

Ai Weiwei has publicly called for the release of dissident activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who is currently in the custody of the Chinese government, and who is suffering from liver cancer. “I think the government should release him. This is a historic mistake,” he said. “The government should just release him and have a better record – because this is going to be remembered by the whole world … what they are doing.” (more…)

Artist Martine Syms is the subject of a profile in the New Yorker this week, as the artist closes her first exhibition at MoMA this month. “I wanted to give the museum a social life,” Syms says. “Ideally, you’ll hear it from the hallway.” She gestured to the emptiness of the atrium outside of the gallery. “I wanted to enlarge it all, to make it obnoxious.” (more…)

The landscape of Armory Week is changing in 2018, with the ADAA Art Show holding its dates to February, while the Armory Show and NADA will open a week later in the second week of March. “After the ADAA and our partners at Henry Street Settlement confirmed the dates for the rental of the Park Avenue Armory for the 2018 fair, the Armory Show informed us that their leadership had decided to push the fair back a week for the first time in many years,” says ADAA president Adam Sheffer. (more…)

The Dia Foundation is expanding its collection of Asian art from the 1960s and 1970s, adding works by Kishio Suga and Lee Ufan to its collection. “Since arriving at Dia, I have had a strong desire to deepen the institution’s commitment to reflect a greater understanding of the seminal work that was being made internationally during the period that Dia has championed,” says director Jessica Morgan. “The addition of Lee Ufan and Kishio Suga to Dia’s collection was a natural progression for our foundation. Both artists were contributing to parallel conversations around Minimalism and post-Minimalism in the 1960s and 1970s, and are still developing their resonant and influential practices today.” (more…)

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has revived a lawsuit by the Cassirer family, pushing Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum to return a Camille Pissarro work believed to be Nazi loot. “The Cassirers have created a triable issue of fact whether (the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection) knew the painting was stolen from Lilly (Cassirer) when TBC purchased the painting,” Circuit Judge Carlos Bea wrote. “There is a triable issue of fact as to the Baron’s good faith.” (more…)

Artist Conrad Shawcross is profiled in Bloomberg this month, as the artist explores new modes of funding his projects. “It really became about how to get things made,” he says of his work. “It’s about how to get people to be enthused about helping.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper takes a closer look at the work of Ukrainian artist Oksana Zhnikrup, who created a trove of statuettes for mass production in Russia, and whose work serves as the bedrock for Jeff Koons’s recent Seated Ballerina pieces.  Koons bought the rights to Zhnikrup’s family in 2006, says Elena Korus, a Ukranian art historian. “Of course they weren’t against it” she continues. “There was no longer any factory and this art had been forgotten.” (more…)

Hanne Darboven, Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (1980-1983) (detail), via Art Observed

The Dia Art Foundation has opened a dialogue between the work of Kishio Suga and Hanne Darboven at its Chelsea exhibition space this winter, a discourse over decades and continents, time frames and objects through conceptual engagements with each artist’s respective local and social contexts.  Compiling Darboven’s expansive piece Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (Cultural History 1880–1983, 1980–83) in conversation with a series of Suga’s historical and recent works, the pair of shows delve into the act of addressing and working with history, in exchange with the inherently material practice of making art.

Kishio Suga, Law of Halted Space (2016) via Art Observed    (more…)

Art dealer Glafira Rosales, one of the central figures in the Knoedler Gallery fraud case, has been ordered by a NYC court to pay $81 million to the victims of the fraud. “Glafira has taken responsibility for her role in the situation and regrets any harm that people have suffered,” her attorney, Bryan C. Skarlatos said. (more…)

Marguerite Humeau, Riddles (Installation view), via Art Observed

French artist Marguerite Humeau is showing new works at Clearing Gallery this summer, marking a continued engagement with processes of deep historical research and engagement with varied mythological traditions in her work, the new exhibition draws particular interest from the myth of the Sphinx, investigating the creature as a fitting metaphorical subject and thematic for the landscape of modernity.  Here, Humeau takes on the state of modern surveillance, translating the Sphinx into a fitting metaphor for the modern technological landscape, and a convenient point of connection between the massive communicative power of modern tech and the mythic power of Greek civilization. (more…)

Ousted Met director Thomas P. Campbell is interviewed in Art Newspaper this  week, and offers his take on a range of issues, including the museum’s currently postponed expansion project. “We can’t go out into the marketplace to buy works of art that are $50m, $60m or $70m apiece,” he says. “What we can do, and what the Met has always done, is build beautiful galleries so that donors and collectors will see us as a worthy destination.” (more…)

The Art Dealers Association of America has added four new members, including Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York.  “We are delighted and proud to welcome these four renowned galleries as new members of the ADAA,” the organization said in a statement. “Through the wide range of artists and estates with which they collaborate, their diverse specialties, and vital contributions to art historical scholarship, each of these galleries will make important additions to our association. These four galleries advance the unique expertise and best practices that the ADAA represents and upholds.” (more…)

Leo Fitzpatrick is profiled in Vogue this week, as he opens a show he curated at Marlborough Contemporary in Chelsea. “I didn’t go to art school; I didn’t even go to high school. For me, everything was discovery,” he says. “When I was growing up, it was very intimidating to go to a gallery. I didn’t like that. I thought art should be for everybody, including kids who come to the gallery to steal a beer. Maybe they’ll see something.” (more…)

Artist Maria Balshaw is profiled in The Guardian this week, as she steps into her position at the head of the Tate, and lays out her vision for the museum moving forward. “It’s not about taking positions left or right politically, but about holding a space where things that are at issue in our world can be explored, because that’s what artists do,” she says. (more…)