Dutch Museums are pushing ahead on a €4.5m plan to build a practical guide advising on colonial collections and repatriation. “We will examine the diverse routes that objects took to enter museums—were they sold under duress or looted in times of war, traded or exchanged or given as gifts, and if so, was this in a colonial context?” says Wayne Modest, the director of content at the National Museum of World Cultures. “We will also look at how to jointly decide on the future of an object and whether there are various modes of return that are possible. And, finally, this is about reconciliation—how do modes of return or restitution help us to reconcile with the past?” (more…)

A piece in the New York Times this week catalogs a series of outside investigations and complaints at the Detroit Institute of Arts, particularly around a “lack of facility with race-related issues.” “The Board wants anyone with concerns, new or lingering, to come forward, and be heard,” the museum said in a statement.  (more…)

Caitlin Keogh, Waxing Year 3 (2020), via Overduin and Co.

Painter Caitlin Keogh‘s works are orchestrations of symbolism, blending together a range of images and patterns that give the final composition a dizzying series of touchpoints, and ultimately arrive at a final composition that seems to rarely rest on any single image. Such is the case with her new show of works currently on view at Overduin and Co. in Los Angeles, a selection of pieces that emphasize shifting grounds and a composite sense of reality.  (more…)

Financier Leon Black is currently in discussions with the trustees of MoMa regarding his future with the museum and ties to Jeffrey Epstein. “I would love to show at MoMA but you have to stick to your ethics,” says Nan Goldin. “How can MoMA stand by Leon Black?” (more…)

Six artists and one collective have pulled their work from a show at Chicago’s MCA over complaints about access, equity and labor.“I was very disappointed to learn how employees were being treated and did not want to lend my work to a show whose sponsoring institution was operating in contradiction to the show’s very premise,” said the artist Folayemi Wilson. (more…)

Michelle Grabner (Installation View), via James Cohan

Marking a range of new explorations in an already diverse and wide-ranging body of work, artist Michelle Grabner opens a new show of works this month at James Cohan in downtown Manhattan. Marking a renewed engagement with restoration and material, Grabner’s installation meditates on simple gestures and repetition as a manner to explore an expansive interior world.

Michelle Grabner, Untitled (2021), via James Cohan (more…)

John Russell, Well (2021), via Bridget Donahue

Well, John Russell‘s new exhibition on view through this weekend at Bridget Donahue in New York consists of a single work, an 87 x 22 ft Vinyl print of “Hell,” as the gallery describes it, a sprawling digital collage that twists a range of horrifying graphics and symbols into a teeming mass of spectatorship. (more…)

Robert Grosvenor, Untitled (2019), via Paula Cooper

Exploring divergent production approaches and interlocking conceptual outputs, the current exhibition at Paul Cooper’s 26th street exhibition explores the work of Robert Grosvenor and David Novros, exploring the pair’s shared interests and many years of friendship.  Grosvenor, a sculptor, and Novros, a painter, met as members of the artists’ cooperative and gallery Park Place, a hotbed of avant-garde art in the 1960s. Contemporaries and mutual admirers of each other’s work, their shared sensitivity to architectural space and approach towards particular conditions for viewing art make for a unique show plan.  (more…)

Charles Ray, Clothes Pile (2020), via Matthew Marks

Pursuing a timely and intriguing exploration of the current contexts of confinement and isolation as expressed in our Covid-19 dominated world, Matthew Marks Gallery has opened a new show, Home Life, at its 523 West 24th Street. Featuring new works by Alex Da Corte, Robert Gober, and Charles Ray, all exhibited for the first time, together with earlier works by Nayland Blake, Nan Goldin, and Ken Price, among others, the show takes the domestic and the personal as a springboard for broader ideations around the expression of self and society in the most intimate environs.  (more…)

A piece in Art Newspaper details the recent trend towards creative agencies representing artists in pursuit of large-scale commissions and other projects. “We focus exclusively on building and actioning a bespoke strategy for each artist that we work with,” says Rebecca Davies of Southern & Partners. (more…)

The staff at Mass MOCA is pushing to unionize. “We don’t have specifics yet, but some of the things that have come up already are better pay, better COVID safety precautions [and] benefits like paid family leave and more flexible working situations,” says Amanda Tobin, the museum’s associate director of education. (more…)

The Paris Biennale is permanently discontinued, Art Newspaper reports. Once considered among the world’s most prestigious fairs, the event has folded to pursue new projects. (more…)

Jonathan Monk, Not Me, Me (Installation View)

Jonathan Monk’s investigations into memory, ephemera and artistic process emerge from his practice as an inveterate observer, participant and collector of both popular culture and conceptual art, a constant observer and documentarian whose works explore the wide ranges of history, politics, sociology and memory in a way that brings the viewer with him through a maze of references and touchpoints. In a new series of works on view at Lisson this month, particularly a set of collages entitled Exhibit Model Detail with Additional Information, Monk charts and revisits some of his own exhibition history using photographic evidence of previous solo shows, harking back to the first museum presentation featuring wallpaper of his own past work at Kunsthaus Baselland in 2016. (more…)

Following the announced closure of Metro Pictures, Cindy Sherman will head to Hauser & Wirth, Art News reports. “Cindy is already established in the history of modern and contemporary American art, thanks in no small measure to the extraordinary work of Janelle Reiring and Helene Winer of Metro Pictures, her gallery since the early 1980s. We are excited to build upon their achievements and to introduce the artist’s work to ever-broader audiences and new generations worldwide,” says Marc Payot. (more…)

Ai Weiwei has moved to Portugal, and is currently planning a large-scale sculptural tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev. “To this day we don’t see anyone like Gorbachev in China,” he says. “But if China doesn’t have political reform like what Gorbachev initiated, there will be no good result of China’s economic development.” (more…)

Metro Pictures will close by year’s end, the gallery has announced, ending its run as a major player in New York’s art market. “We have decided to announce this difficult decision far in advance of our closing in order to give the artists we represent and our staff time to pursue other options and to allow us to participate in their transitions,” the gallery said in a statement. (more…)

Etel Adnan, Horizon 8 (2020), via Lévy Gorvy

Currently on at Lévy Gorvy in Paris, the artist Etel Adnan has curated a selection of works in collaboration with Victoire de Pourtalès, centered around a poetic and nostalgic text by the artist. Exploring her movements between Lebanon, California, and France, the text, and the show at large considers the importance of physical and aesthetic displacements, using her own personal horizon, and the questions raised by such mutations as a way to explore broader questions of social and cultural dynamics. (more…)

Lucas Blalock, M_M_M_M_M_ (Daisychain) (2020), via Eva Presenhuber

Open now at Galerie Eva Presenhuber’s New York exhibition space, artist Lucas Blalock has brought together a body of new works under the title Florida, 1989, marking his second solo exhibition with the gallery. Drawing on memory and trauma, Blalock’s work in the show explores his own history, and its traces appearing throughout his work.  (more…)

Jordan Kasey, Umbrella (2021), via Nicelle Beauchene

On view this month at Nicelle Beauchene in New York, painter Jordan Kasey has assembled a body of new works drawing lines through the melodramatic and the comical, playful and surreal paintings that draw on the artist’s sense of light and space, while exploring the act of gesture and tension.  (more…)

Kayode Ojo, Overdressed (Blush) (2018), via Martos

“What is the Lost & Found in art? Is there such a place? Is it a state of mind, of curiosity? Existing everywhere at all times? To occasion, over and again, a parallel with life, its flow? The tide comes in and the tide goes out, and what washes up randomly upon the shore? As many go about putting a lost year behind us, we wonder how to find our way back to ourselves, to one another, to those gone. Belongings. What belongs to us, and to whom do we belong? Can a gallery be thought of as a Lost & Found?” (more…)

LaToya Ruby Frazier has a piece in the NYT this week, showcasing new work and talking about her critical approach towards American culture. “I am showing these dark things about America because I love my country and countrymen,” she says. “When you love somebody, you tell them the truth. Even if it hurts.” (more…)

MoMA has covered up the name of late architect Philip Johnson on wall signs amid allegations of his fascist views. “To move forward with the exhibition thoughtfully, honoring the communities that the artists and their works represent, we feel it’s appropriate to respect the exhibition design suggestion and cover the signage with Johnson’s name outside the Architecture and Design galleries on an interim basis,” a MoMA spokesperson said. “To confront this matter, the Museum currently has underway a rigorous research initiative to explore in full the allegations against Johnson and gather all available information. This work is ongoing.” (more…)

Italy is looking to combat its crush of tourists in major cities by leasing works from the Uffizi in Florence to smaller museums and spaces around the country, CNN reports. “We already have over 3,000 works of art on display in the Uffizi — that’s enough,” Uffizi director Eike Schmidt says. (more…)

A piece in the New York Times this week notes the shifting relationships galleries are taking towards physical spaces, including the possibility that galleries may soon abandon their physical locales.“The question is whether galleries will continue to have space in London,” says Frieze’s Simon Fox. The organization has opened its own gallery space at No. 9 Cork Street that works with a range of galleries and dealers. “The answer to that, in time, might be ‘no.’”  (more…)