Tracey Emin is featured in The Guardian this week, as she reviews works by Egon Schiele, one of her principal inspirations.  “You could see the anguish he was going through: ‘I am in pain. I am drawing this, but I am drawing this in a different way, because I see it differently from other people. I see it through the eyes of pain.’” (more…)

Rodrigo Hernandez at Galeria Madragoa, via Art Observed

Returning to its home at Warteck, a former schoolhouse on the banks of the Rhine, the Liste Art Fair continues to build on its position as one of the central hubs for the week of Art Basel.  The fair, which prides itself on a careful curation of young galleries, dynamic, forward-thinking works, and a roster of performances that remains one of the week’s main draws, Liste’s program marks it as one of the essential stops for both collectors and art lovers during a bustling week in the Swiss city. (more…)

Creative Time is embarking on a new project that sees a series of artist-commissioned flags flying over the organization’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan, including work by Tania Bruguera, Alex Da Corte, Jeremy Deller, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Yoko Ono.  “We live in a very dark political time, bombarded by bad news every morning, so it’s important for people not to feel outnumbered by bad ideas,” Nato Thompson, Creative Time’s artistic director, says. “We can produce a community and we can resist, collectively.” (more…)

The Met has announced a shake-up in its administration structure, placing president Daniel H. Weiss at the head of the museum, and putting the directorship of the museum under his supervision.  “He has worked hard, he’s gained the confidence of the board, of the curators, of the executive staff — he is the natural person to lead and run the museum at this time,” says Daniel Brodsky, chairman of the museum’s board of trustees. “There is really no one else to consider other than Dan.” (more…)

London’s Institute of Contemporary Art is growing its supervisory council, adding Wolfgang Tillmans, Russian collector Delya Allakhverdova and Lebanese patron Maria Sukkar.  “These new appointments align with my ambition to make the ICA a truly progressive and radical contemporary arts organization ready of the 21st century. Seventy years on, this need is felt more acutely than ever,” says director Stefan Kalmár. (more…)

The Financial Times focuses on sales at this week’s Art Basel fair, noting the ever-increasing popularity of blue-chip works in an uncertain financial market.  “Ten years ago, everyone raced upstairs for the exciting new artists, now they rush downstairs for the opportunities in the blue-chip, postwar market,” says art adviser Hugo Nathan. (more…)

Khadija Saye, a 24-year-old London artist currently showing at the Venice Biennale, is currently missing following the massive tower block fire in the British capital.  “We’ve been calling the hospitals, but I know from my own experience after the London riots people will be in hospital with no belongings, many of them will be unconscious,” says Labour MP David Lammy, whose wife mentored and employed Saye for some time. “So of course we hope and pray that she is amongst them and not perished in that building as I suspect hundreds will have done at the end of this count.” (more…)

Houston’s Menil Collection will close its doors for eight months for a major renovation project, including a full restoration of the building’s floors, the Houston Chronicle reports.  The piece notes the damage to the museum’s stained-black pine flooring, which has resulted from years of foot traffic.  “Everything I do in the building has to consider his architecture,” facilities manager Steve McConathy says of Renzo Piano’s original design for the building. (more…)

Andy Warhol’s first self-portrait will go on sale in London in the coming weeks, estimated to sell for £7 million at Sotheby’s June 28th.  “The artist’s first self-portraits – created using a strip of photographs taken in a New York dime store photo booth – have never felt more relevant to contemporary culture,” says Sotheby’s senior specialist in contemporary art, James Sevier. (more…)

Art Market Monitor looks at Marcato Capital’s gradual sell off of its holdings in Sotheby’s, even as the auction house’s value continues to increase.  The publication’s analysis indicates that, despite its activist push on the auction house’s business structure and goals, Marcato was unable to see major gains. (more…)

Mitchell-Innes & Nash has taken on the estate of General Idea, a three-artist collaborative that worked for over 30 years through a mixture of politically and socially-engaged art.  “They reinvented the idea of artist activism,” says Lucy Mitchell-Innes. “They took on ideas—those often demonized or ignored—with a boldness that was unheard of at the time. [General Idea] came of age in a period that saw pivotal changes in queer conceptualism and postmodernism. They led the charge in decentralization and intervention within the institutional framework.” (more…)

Following the failure of UK authorities to find a buyer for Parmigianino’s £24.5m The Virgin and Child with Saint Mary Magdalen and the Infant St John the Baptist, the work’s export bar has been lifted, sending it to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.  Getty director Timothy Potts calls the acquisition “a rare opportunity to enrich our collection with a masterpiece from one of the most accomplished Italian artists of the 16th century.” (more…)

Art Basel, via Art Observed

The 48th edition of Art Basel opened its doors today for the first official day of its week-long run in the Swiss city, and capped its VIP preview with an impressive array of sales that underscored the fair’s lynchpin position in the summer market calendar.  Attendees poured into the halls of Messe Basel early this morning, jockeying for position and a first crack at the exhibition’s premier works, and bringing down a rain of early sales that indicated a return to form for a Western market that had struggled in the past year.  The hallways were packed for the opening day, with collectors Peter Brant, Don and Mera Rubell, and Uli Sigg rubbing elbows with Beatrix Ruff, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Phyllida Barlow and Wolfgang Tillmans. (more…)

A group of animal rights activists have attacked the Athens studio of artist Aboubakar Fofana, who is currently participating in Documenta 14.  Fofana’s work, which features a group of 54 dyed sheep, each representing a nation in Africa, has earned fierce protest over the animals’ confinement.  “I’m not treating [the sheep] badly,” Fofana says of the issues over the sheep’s presence in the work. “I’m not putting chemicals on them; it’s more like dyeing hair. In my culture, we use indigo and henna to dye hair black.”  (more…)

Los Angeles’s Broad Museum has signed on to host a sweeping Jasper Johns retrospective which will also show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.  “The Broad Art Foundation has been lending art for over three decades, so the logistical, practical side of taking on a show of this magnitude is something we are ready to handle,” director Joanne Heyler said. (more…)

In one of the more unique angles on Art Basel reporting, Bloomberg has a piece on the influx of collectors, advisors, and bankers to Basel this week, as over $3 billion in art hits the market, spotlighting the wealth management services various banks are looking to sell alongside those works.  “Our clients are here, so we are,” says Deepak Soni, chief executive officer at Vontobel Swiss Wealth Advisors. (more…)

The New Yorker joins James Turrell on a visit to the new wing of Mass MOCA, where the artist is installing a series of works.  “Generally, we don’t see light this way, because we see light illuminating things,” he says. “But my interest is in the thingness, the physicality, of light itself.” (more…)

Artist Wu Tsang is creating an underground library space, The secret life of things is open in Basel this week at Club de Bâle, located at Rheinsprung 5, for the Art Basel Parcours section.  The three-year long project, made in collaboration with writer Fred Moten, features films, sound works and printed texts. (more…)

LACMA has added three new members to its board, including collector Allison Berg, Spotify executive Troy Carter and Carter Reum, founder of LA brand-development and investment company M13.  “With LACMA’s ambitious building campaign underway, we value these forward-thinking leaders who have a vested interest in shaping the cultural landscape of Los Angeles,” director Michael Govan says. (more…)

An article in the BBC questions how a museum may shape the perception of an artist’s work by including dark details from their past in the exhibition itself, pointing to a recent show in London where the museum includes details of an artist’s murder and suicide, and asking how these power dynamics might play out in various situations.  The piece also points to the controversy surrounding Carl Andre’s work, who was acquitted of the death of artist Ana Mendieta, but whose work is still the subject of fierce protest as a result of her unsolved death. (more…)

The Estate of California businesswoman Madeleine Rast has willed $9 million to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in D.C., the largest donation the museum has ever received.  “You can’t help but cry tears of joy,” says director Susan Fisher Sterling. “She felt we were doing the job she wanted us to do. She was eager to support an institution that was thriving.” (more…)

Michaël Borremans, Black Mould/The Badgers Song II (2015), via David Zwirner

As June rolls on, the art world returns to the Swiss city of Basel for the annual flagship art fair of the Art Basel fair franchise, taking over the Messe Basel for four days of high-profile sales, special projects and artist talks that sit at the center of a week of exhibitions, shows and satellite fairs.  Art Basel marks the latest entry in a bustling calendar of European art events that included the opening of both the Venice Biennale and the latest edition of Documenta in both Athens and Kassel in the past weeks, and should offer one of the last indicators of the European market’s strength before autumn.

Ashley Bickteron, Small Yellow Catalog: Cigarettes, Purple Pigment, Cheese Doodles, Broken Glass (1991), via Lehmann Maupin

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Marta Minujin, The Parthenon of Books, via Art Observed

With the early days of summer behind us, curator Adam Szymczyk’s bold and expansive Documenta 14 has opened in both Kassel and Athens, marking the high point of the summer’s crowded European exhibition schedule.  Continuing the event’s long-running tradition as a two-site exhibition project, this year’s show is one of Documenta’s most fully-realized in this framework, with massive exhibition plans and equally lofty concepts split between each location.

Miriam Cahn, via Art Observed

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The estate of painter James Rosenquist has named Thaddaeus Ropac as its global representative, the Financial Times reports.  “Jim’s work and legacy is in great hands,” says Mimi Thompson Rosenquist, board director of the estate and the artist’s widow.  The gallery is offering his work The Meteor Hits the Swimmer’s Pillow at Art Basel this week. (more…)