The Guardian has a piece on Nicholas Serota’s vision for the Tate, and how the director ultimately built the museum into its current form as a titan of the global art world. The piece traces Serota’s impact on the museum collection, attendance, and other factors over the course of a lengthy review of his work and impact. (more…)
The New York Times has a piece on a Michele Marieschi work currently set to go on sale at Sotheby’s following several decades of abortive wrangling over the work’s provenance and history as potential Nazi-loot. “Our preferred solution would have been to get the painting back for my parents-in-law during their lifetime, or failing that, to their heirs,” says Stephen Tauber, who worked to secure the work’s return to his family but settled for a portion of the work’s proceeds at auction. “We brokered a compromise, which we signed. It is not really satisfactory, but it is acceptable. It was the best that we could achieve. Ideally, it would have been returned in total to our family. That wasn’t possible, so we settled for what we could get.” (more…)
Master art forger Shaun Greenhalgh is profiled in the Guardian this week, taking the newspaper through a number of his most famed forgeries, and his experiences selling one of his first forged Degas works to an art dealer. “I wasn’t cock-a-hoop that I’d fooled them,” he says of the experience. “I’ve always had a tinge of guilt – I probably get that from my mother. Something within me knew it wasn’t right.” (more…)
Tracey Emin is profiled in GQ this month, as the artist reflects on her process, and her perspective on the politics of the market against the artist’s own vision. “I know artists who make the same work, day in day out. They make it and they sell it,” she says. “They make it again, sell it, buy a bigger home. That is not being an artist. Being an artist is about making art, not making money.” (more…)
Rodney Graham, Media Studies ’77 (2017), via Art Observed
Currently spread out across 303 Gallery’s spacious 21st Street exhibition space in Chelsea, photographer Rodney Graham has returned with a body of new works, continuing his playful and incisive understanding of cultural archetypes. Drawing from a range of situations and signifiers, the artist’s body of new works, a series of chromogenic transparencies mounted on light-boxes, play on both Graham’s observations of his native Vancouver, and more broadly, his understanding of the conventions of the image in modern creative production. (more…)
The LA Times has a piece this week on LACMA’s vision for its permanent collection in its proposed expansion project helmed by Peter Zumthor. The museum will exhibit its permanent collection as a series of ongoing temporary exhibits. “The big risk for LACMA’s plan is how it changes our relationship to art we love — and through it, our relationship to the museum,” says writer Christopher Knight. (more…)
Annette Messager, Avec et sans raisons (Installation View), all images via Marian Goodman
On now through May 27th, avec et sans raisons by Annette Messager is on view at the Marian Goodman Gallery in London, comprising Messager’s first solo show at the gallery and first exhibition in London since 2009. The title of the exhibition reveals the 73-year-old artist’s penchant for wordplay, suggesting both a possession or lack in the faculty of reason, as well as the existence and/or deficiency of motivation. Following through with the suggestion of its title, the exhibition contains works that possess a clear rationality while simultaneously toying with concepts of the absurd. (more…)
The Tate has announced an ambitious schedule of exhibitions for next year at its various exhibition spaces, with shows including a survey on Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, R.B. Kitaj and Paula Rego, and a solo exhibition dedicated to the work of Joan Jonas. (more…)
Peter Blum’s 57th Street gallery space will close this summer, as the dealer relocates downtown, the Art News reports. “After having been informed that our building on West 57th street, along with four neighboring buildings, will be torn down for another high rise, we looked at many different places and areas which would suit our needs for a substantial size gallery in an area which was not overrun and still felt like ‘New York,’ ” said director David Blum. (more…)
Miami Beach’s Bass Museum is set to reopen on October 8th, following a $12 million renovation that saw a number of delays and set-backs. “We worked within the existing footprint of the Bass museum, but we somehow were able to increase the usable square footage dramatically,” says architect David Gauld. (more…)
Curator Martin Roth is facing criticism for his work in co-organizing this year’s Azerbaijan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, due to the country’s current authoritarian regime. “There is a lot that needs to be improved in Azerbaijan,” Roth said in response. “If you no longer speak to each other, everything will be lost.” (more…)
New York’s Artists Space has found a new home at 80 White Street in TriBeCa, with an opening date set for sometime next year. “The successful conclusion of our search for a new exhibition venue is great news for Artists Space itself and for the arts community as a whole, which has been justifiably concerned that economic pressures are making downtown New York untenable for artists and arts organizations alike,” says director and curator Jay Sanders. (more…)
The Telegraph has a piece on recent placements of art in homes and apartments as a way to boost real estate sales, noting many collectors’ practices leasing works to private homes rather than holding them in private collections. “In the 18th century many great houses were built around the works of art, collected by people taking the grand tour of Europe,” says Andrew Kafkaris of Bruton Street Management. “We are returning to that situation today, with homes being built or refurbished around art collections.”
Mass MoCA’s recent expansion is profiled in the WSJ this week, and its goal of becoming a destination museum for New Yorkers. “Year ’round, our attendance consists of about 40% New Yorkers,” says director Joseph C. Thompson, “and during the summer it’s about 70%.” (more…)
Former mayor Michael Bloomberg has donated $75 million to The Shed, a new arts center under construction in the Hudson Yards development project. “I’ve always believed the arts have a unique ability to benefit cities by attracting creative individuals of every kind, strengthening communities, and driving economic growth,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “The Shed will help New York achieve all three goals.” (more…)
Deutsch Bank is embarking on plans for a new cultural hub in Central Berlin, the Art Newspaper reports, located in the Prinzessinnenpalais at 5 Unter den Linden. The institution already holds one of the largest corporate art collections in the work. “We are working on an exciting program,” says Klaus Winker, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank. (more…)
New York’s Foundation for Contemporary Arts is launching a new grant for supporting artists, seeded by a $1 million gift from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. “Roy was always both amazed and very happy to not just not have a day job but also be able to do his work,” Dorothy Lichtenstein, the artist’s wife and president of the artist’s foundation says. “This is a great way for an individual artist to get support.” (more…)
The Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate will serve as the 2019 home of the Turner Prize exhibition, The Guardian reports. “This is a truly transformative opportunity for Margate to be part of something which invites conversations on an international scale, connecting our audiences to outstanding contemporary art and inspiring future generations of creative talent,” says director Victoria Pomery. (more…)
Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has posted a $10 million reward for the return of any works from the infamous theft at the institution, with the caveat that anyone coming forward must do so by the end of the year. “These works of art were purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner for the ‘education and enjoyment of the public forever,’ ” says Steve Kidder, president of the museum’s board. “It is our fervent hope that by increasing the reward, our resolve is clear that we want the safe return of the works to their rightful place and back in public view.” (more…)
Robert Therrien, Transparent Room (2010), via Art Observed
Cataloguing a range of Robert Therrien’s nuanced explorations and elaborations on the physical and psychological landscapes of the everyday, Gagosian Gallery has brought a body of new and recent works to its 24th Street exhibition space in Chelsea. Marking the artist’s first exhibition in New York in ten years, the show marks a fitting continuation of Therrien’s interests in domestic space, memory and form through a series of sculptures, large-scale environments and works on paper. (more…)
Collector Alan Gibbs gives the Wall Street Journal a tour of his massive sculpture park in Kaipara Harbour, New Zealand. “It’s hard to hide this place,” he says of the park, which holds works by Anish Kapoor, Sol LeWitt and Maya Lin, among others. “People see things from the road. That’s how it first got known.” (more…)
Ai Weiwei will mark the East Coast debut of “Trace” (2014), one of his popular lego portrait pieces from his show at Alcatraz Island several years ago, at the Hirshhorn this summer. “Throughout his distinguished career, Ai has redefined the roles of both an artist and an activist,” director Melissa Chiu said in a statement. “With this new presentation, visitors will experience a special focused consideration of Ai’s most influential and critically acclaimed recent works.” (more…)
Art dealer Perry Rubinstein will serve a six month prison sentence after cutting a plea deal in his court case for grand theft by embezzlement, Art Newspaper reports. Rubinstein was arrested after failing to pay former Disney CEO Michael Ovitz on the proceeds from a pair of Richard Prince works he sold. (more…)
An article in the New York Times looks at the landscape of African Modern and Contemporary art, and asks if the recent market popularity might indicate a certain type of “gentrification” in its consumption and production. (more…)