A large group of artists, among them Tracey Emin, Anish Kapoor and Jeremy Deller, have signed an open petition opposing the vote on a British exit from the EU.  “From the smallest gallery to the biggest blockbuster, many of us have worked on projects that would never have happened without vital EU funding or by collaborating across borders,” the letter reads. “Leaving Europe would be a leap into the unknown for millions of people across the UK who work in the creative industries, and for the millions more at home and abroad who benefit from the growth and vibrancy of Britain’s cultural sector.” (more…)

The Romanian government has launched a crowd-funded campaign to buy a nationally treasured Constantin Brancusi sculpture that is currently for sale.  “I am calling on Romanians to take individual responsibility because I want BrâncuÈ™i to unite us, not divide us,” prime minister Dacian CioloÈ™ said. (more…)

An article on the challenges for conservators in fixing microscopic eruptions on Old Masters paintings, caused by metal soap bubbles forcing their way to the surface of the piece.  “Every paint has its own peculiar chemical composition,” says physicist Jaap Boon. (more…)

The New York Times notes the last show at Artists Space’s 38 Greene Street location before it moves to a new space.  The space is currently seeking a new location after a long dispute with its landlord. (more…)

The New York Times reports on the closing of Lee’s Art Shop in Midtown, a longtime mainstay of the city’s arts community that is leaving its West 57th Street location as towering condo buildings continue to rise around it.  “What’s going on here is destroying New York’s sense of place, particularly for an artist,” says photographer Kate Simon. “What would Truman Capote write now, ‘Breakfast at Nordstrom’s’?”

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The Art Newspaper looks at a new generation of young Chinese artists, and the sizable gender imbalance in the field.  “Still very few 80s-born women artists succeed,” says  artist Zhang Ruyi. “The number is more than that of the past overall, but still there are relatively few, especially compared with the number of male artists.” (more…)

Tom Wesselmann, Sunset Nude with Big Palm Tree (2004), via Art Observed

Mitchell-Innes and Nash has opened its doors on a broad, yet impressive career retrospective of the work of Tom Wesselmann, the iconic pop painter whose renditions of mass commodities, American landscapes and the human form defined him as one of the most original voices coming out of the Post-War landscape.  Perhaps best known for his large, shaped canvases depicting lipstick-clad mouths breathing out cigarette smoke, Wesselmann’s interests in painterly technique and the American subject were constantly evolving over the course of his career, even as some of his formal containers and pictorial content remained the same.

Tom Wesselmann, Interior #2 (1964), via Art Observed

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Luc Tuymans, Murky Water (2015), via Art Observed

Luc Tuymans works at the tenuous grasp of the image on reality, exploiting momentary glimmers, flashes of light, and seconds of spatial repose, all executed through his signature, muted color palette in an attempt to delve even deeper into the slight seconds that constitute his subject matter.  Here, at his new show with David Zwirner, the artist has turned towards themes of decay and isolation, lending his already staid pieces an increased degree of melancholy. (more…)

The Knoedler Gallery forgery scandal made it to 60 Minutes this week, exploring the case and its cast of characters through the perspective of historian Jack Flam.  Flam was asked to identify a Motherwell Elegy, and found that the artist’s signature appeared as if it had been copied meticulously from other works, and later discovered evidence of orbital sander use on the canvas, which was often used to age canvases.   (more…)

Simon de Pury is interviewed on Charlie Rose this week, as he releases his memoirs, reflects on the course of his career, and his views on buying work.  “I’ve seen people who are brilliant business people, but when they buy art, they only want to buy bargains,” he says.  “But no great collection was built on bargains.” (more…)

The Louvre has invited artist JR to install one of his signature works on the surface of its iconic glass pyramid, obscuring its surface to mirror the palatial architecture behind it.  The installation is part of the artist’s recently opened retrospective at the museum, Contemporary art – JR at the Louvre. (more…)

A version of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe will travel from London’s Cortauld Institute to Hull for a show at the Ferens gallery, thanks to a £9.4m grant from the British government.  The project will also help fund renovations and improvements to the institution’s galleries.   (more…)

The Guardian takes a tour of the soon to open Tate Modern expansion, with high praise for its spacious design, management of exhibition areas, and views.  “We realized we were getting vulnerable in terms of what we could do on this site,” says director Nicholas Serota, explaining the £260m expansion, which has been in the works since the mid-2000s. “There were some substantial buildings arriving, so we would soon have a lot of neighbors who would oppose us doing anything of any scale.” (more…)

Philip Guston, Untitled (1958), via Art Observed

In one of the season’s more historically resonant offerings, Hauser and Wirth has opened its 18^th Street Gallery to a rare exhibition of Philip Guston’s 1950’s abstractions, collected as a presentation of his impressive output as a member of the New York School. Exploring the artist’s varied investigations of the canvas and mark in tandem, the show presents Guston’s work as a fascinating historical progression towards his more honed, expressive figuration of the late 1960’s and onward.

Philip Guston, Painter, 1957-1967 (Installation View), via Art Observed

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The Marciano Art Foundation has announced that its private Los Angeles museum is set to open its doors sometime early next year, housed in a converted masonic temple.  Philipp Kaiser, who curated the Swiss Pavilion at next year’s Biennale, will organize the first show in the space. (more…)

Protesters occupied Brazilian government buildings this week, rallying against Acting President Michel Temer’s decision to ax the nation’s culture ministry.  Temer took power this past week after previous president Dilma Rousseff was forced out of office. (more…)

Dozens of protesters have been appearing at Creative Time’s current Fly by Night project, asserting that the pigeons used to perform artist Duke Riley’s piece are unwilling participants, even though experts have inspected the piece and approved.  Mixing art and animals is a very risky business,” says Rita McMahon of Upper West Side’s Wild Bird Fund, “but I was very impressed.”  (more…)

Joan Punyet Miró, the grandson of Joan Miró, is auctioning off a seleciton of the painter’s work to help the Red Cross address the current refugee crisis in Europe.  “I consider myself as the torch-bearer for his wishes and try to do what he would do if he was still alive,” he says.  “Miró was a man who endured many hardships throughout his life. He went hungry, and lived in exile through the Spanish Civil War.”    (more…)

Olafur Eliasson is interviewed in the New York Times this week, as he prepares his summer installation at the Palace of Versailles.  “At Versailles, people tend to think only about King Louis XIV, but it is actually the ground from which our modern idea of democracy grew — ideas of unity, freedom of speech, freedom of thinking,” he says. (more…)

Artist Grayson Perry has created new work inspired by his interactions with the world of high finance, an immense phallus decorated with bank notes and the picture of George Osborne.  “It is stating the bleeding obvious but that’s kind of what needs stating,” he says.  “For all the obfuscating around it – the claims that their behavior is just rational thinking – the bleeding obvious is that most of the bankers, particularly at the top, are men and they are just as subject to the animal spirit as anybody else.” (more…)

Isa Genzken, Mach Dich hübsch! (Installation View), via Art Observed

Isa Genzken is one of Germany’s most notable contemporary artists. Born in 1948, her work spans sculpture, installation, film, photography, collage, and painting, and she has continued to drive the German arts community forward with an inventive approach to digital media and created computer-designed sculptures that dates to the 1970’s.  Drawing on influences of American minimalism and conceptual art, alongside pop art, Genzken’s ready-mades and mannequin-based works also enter into conversation with Dadaist and Surrealist influences. (more…)

Malaysian businessman Jho Low, currently under FBI investigation for business dealings related to the controversial 1Malaysia Development Bhd. fund, has sold one of his trophy artworks, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Dustheads. The purchase set the sales record for the artist’s work several years ago, but was sold for a loss at $35 million in what some believe is an effort to liquidate purchases made with the funds in question. (more…)

David Zwirner will represent the estate of Josef Albers, the New York Times reports.  “He’s really one of the few artists of the 20th century whose life and work span both halves of the century, connecting the idealism of the German Bauhaus in Europe with postwar America,” said David Leiber, one of the gallery’s directors. (more…)

Phillips is claiming to have set a record for the highest price paid for a Latin American artist’s work, after selling a Diego Rivera piece for $15.7 million in a private transaction.  “This is, by my estimation, the best easel painting in private hands outside of Mexico, a celebration of indigenous culture,” said August Uribe, Phillips’s deputy chairman of the Americas. “Rivera made a purposeful break from European modernism to create a national identity through the visual arts.” (more…)