Robert Morris, Untitled (Williams Mirrors) (1976-77), all photos via Anna Corrigan for Art Observed

Now through January 14, Sprüth Magers in Berlin is hosting a historical exhibition of works by Robert Morris, exploring a series of six works developed over the course of the artist’s career, and often drawing on the use of mirrors and reflective surfaces to expand the viewer’s perception of space.  Pulling from some of the earliest works in Morris’s conceptual practice up to a work completed in 2014, Refractions traces Morris’s engagement with movement, space and the body, often in relation to the gallery space itself.

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The New York Times has a preview of Benjamin Genocchio first turn as executive director of The Armory Show, including new site-specific installations on Pier 92 and 94 by Yayoi Kusama and Ai Weiwei, as well as a revival of Jeffrey Deitch’s 1995 exhibition examining the impact of artist Florine Stettheimer.  “I wanted to make the building an asset,” Genocchio said, and is working with curator Eric Shiner to install projects “to allow you to better see the vast industrial structure.” (more…)

NADA has announced its exhibitor list for its new edition of NADA New York, which moves to March this week in correspondence with Armory Week.  The fair’s competition with Independent NY sees NADA bringing a notably international focus this year, and 30 first-time exhibitors.   (more…)

The UK’s new culture secretary, Karen Bradley has stated her intent to put the country’s creative industries “at the heart” of its new industrial strategies.  She is working in conjunction with business secretary Greg Clark, who also spoke on his commitment to the arts.  “It’s impossible to separate London’s economic success from its cultural success, from theatre to architecture, music to fashion, design to dance – people choose to live and work and flock to London because it’s a hotbed of innovation and excitement,” Clark told a crowd at the second anniversary party for the Creative Industries Federation.   (more…)

New York City will soon get its own version of the Fourth Plinth, a lone stand on the High Line that will serve as the stage for an ongoing series of works.  “It’s like you leave the city for a while and go somewhere else,” curator Cecelia Alemani says of the installation site.  “And it’s given us really the only place where we’ll have the ability to put long-term pieces, which will be like a punctuation in a beautiful piazza.” (more…)

Laurie Anderson and Lawrence Weiner have been awarded the 2017 Wolf Prize in Tel Aviv this week, an award that celebrates “the radicalism and avant-garde at the core of their work, and for inspiring generations to come.”  The award comes with a $100,000 Prize and will be bestowed later this year at a ceremony hosted by the Knesset.   (more…)

Paris’s Grand Palais will close for a two year renovation period, the Art Newspaper reports, leaving a number of fairs and other exhibition projects searching for new space in 2020.  “The Grand Palais has no equivalent in [other] Western capital cities as a central and stunning exhibition space,” says Franck Prazan, director of Applicat-Prazan gallery. “But it is highly important not to lose track during refurbishment. For this reason, one should absolutely avoid relocating to non-strategic locations.” (more…)

Conceptual artist Luis Camnitzer has started a petition calling on Donald Trump to commission Christo to design and build the wall between the United States and Mexico.   Christo had previously worked on a Running Fence project in California during the 1970s, as the artist notes in his petition.  “Though only 24.5 miles long then, in full length today it would transform a racist project into a public art event, and help improve the image of the U.S. with a cultural veneer,” he continues. (more…)

Artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby is featured in the Financial Times’s new podcast series “Everything Else,” as she reflects on her work and its relation to her personal life.  “If I had to put it simply I’m interested in capturing a life I know and I’ve lived, the life and stories of a cosmopolitan Nigerian woman,” she says, “and even though I’m using my life to explore it, it’s really something global, as people are making these jumps in culture and space.” (more…)

The Louvre’s attendance is still struggling, as tourists continue to avoid Paris in the wake of the past years’ terrorist attacks.  Total attendance in 2016 is down to 7.3 million, after reaching a record attendance number of 9.3 million only two years ago. (more…)

Germany’s commission on Nazi-looted art has decided that Hanover’s Sprengel Museum should return Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s Marsh Landscape With Red Windmill to the heirs of its original owner.   (more…)

A group of artists and art critics are calling for an “art strike” on inauguration day, asking art institutions and educational facilities to close their doors that day.  “I’m interested in action and protest and people expressing their feelings about this situation that we’re in,” Joan Jonas says. “I’m concerned about minorities, immigrants, corruption and security.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper has a piece on global uncertainty in the art market this week, as departures at top auction houses continue to change the market landscape as a new surge of right wing politics in Europe and the U.S. add to uncertainty.  The piece charts a series of threads, including the battles of Big Data, as contributing to the unstable forecasts for 2017.   (more…)

The Art Newspaper looks inside Trump’s proposed tax plan, and how its update of Ronald Reagan’s changes to laws on tax deductions for charity may harm non-profits and art institutions.  Trump’s plan, which caps deductions, would discourage the wealthy from making large donations to institutions as a way to avoid paying taxes.  “The system as a way of supporting museums as well as hospitals and universities is the envy of all those European countries where support comes from the state,” says Julián Zugazagoitia, director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. (more…)

The city of Hull is in the process of installing a massive wind turbine blade created by artist Nayan Kulkarni, and spread across the center of the city.  “Carefully positioned it will force us to drift around its arabesque edges, our sight taking the place of the breeze,” the artist said of the work.  “The twisting wing although inert and at rest in the street, speaks of movement, but not of freedom.” (more…)

The students and staff at Central Saint Martins art school have opened a temporary school at the Tate Modern’s new Switch House building, part of an initiative to persuade the UK government to include art and other creative subjects in the English Baccalaureate.  “The threat to arts education is the umbrella issue underpinning our project this week at Tate Modern,”Alex Schady, the art program head at the school, says.  “Now is a good time to put a spotlight on arts education; it is crucial that the arts are a mainstay of the curriculum, we need daring thinkers from diverse backgrounds. There have been dramatic drops in people taking up art A-level.” (more…)

Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect (1975), via Marian Goodman

Reflecting on the far-reaching impact of artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s career, Marian Goodman Gallery has opened an exhibition of works by the American artist, combining collages, drawings, video and other works that trace the artist’s enigmatic explorations of space and use, and the artist’s place as a negotiator between these states of stillness and movement.

Gordon Matta-Clark, Cut Drawing (1974), via Marian Goodman

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The New York Times profiles Google’s work with its new Tilt Brush, a three-dimensional, virtual reality system artists are invited to experiment with to create immersive digital works.  “You would never want to create an artistic tool with only engineers,” says developer Drew Skillman. “That’s just absurd.” (more…)

Andrew Kuo, 100% (9/25/2016) (2016), via Art Observed

Andrew Kuo’s work functions at an intersection of the cognitive and formal.  His paintings, jagged and winding swirls of color executed in meticulously arranged grids, draw on histories of formally precise, minimalist painting from across the 20th century.  Yet at the same time, his work twists these forms through a framework of subjectivity, using corresponding texts at the bottom of his paintings to turn them into charts and datasets of sorts.  The amount of time dwelling on various subjects, personal details or grand metaphysical questions are implied through his works, often tinged with a wry sense of humor.

Andrew Kuo, TRIP (7/15/2016) (2016), via Art Observed

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President Obama has signed the bill granting immunity to foreign states loaning art works and antiquities to the U.S., a bill that has seen strong support from American art institutions.  “It will help to ensure that foreign government lenders are not discouraged from lending works of art to American museums,” says Christine Anagnos, executive director of the American Association of Art Museum Directors. (more…)

Vanity Fair has a piece on the ongoing battle over the estate of Peggy Guggenheim, and the contentious family relations that underscore the fight for her impressive collection of works.  “It was rather a joke,” the piece quotes Guggenheim on leaving her collection to the Guggenheim Foundation, “since I wasn’t on very good terms with my uncle.” (more…)

The St. Louis Art Museum is facing criticism for its loan of a George Caleb Bingham to serve as the backdrop for Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony.  “We object to the painting’s use as an inaugural backdrop and an implicit endorsement of the Trump presidency and his expressed values of hatred, misogyny, racism and xenophobia,” a petition by art historian Ivy Cooper reads. “We reject the use of the painting to suggest that Trump’s election was truly the ‘verdict of the people,’ when in fact the majority of votes — by a margin of over three million — were cast for Trump’s opponent.” (more…)

Artist Mark Dion is featured as part of the New York Times’ “Show Us Your Wall” series, taking the newspaper on a tour of his Upper Manhattan home and studio, which is filled with antiques, oddities and ephemera the artist has collected over the years, and which makes up a portion of his practice.  “Every weekend, I’m at the flea market,” he says. “Pretty much every day, I stop into thrift shops and antique stores and Goodwills. It’s a long battle to acquire the materials that have the right kind of patina.” (more…)

David Gursky, the president of global development and publisher of Art & Auction for Louise Blouin Media, has left the company, following the layoff of Modern Painters editor-in-chief Scott Indrisek. “It was voluntary,” Gursky told the New York Post. (more…)