The New York Times reports on Larry’s List, the Hong Kong-based agency that compiles comprehensive profiles on collectors around the world.  Its first published report, has placed 8,000 to 10,000 collectors worldwide shopping at major fairs like Art Basel.  “Collectors are much more influential than they were 20 years ago and that influence is increasing,” says founder Magnus Resch . “More collectors are opening their own spaces and taking a leading role in museums, influencing the direction they take. They’re also pushing up the auction prices of their favorite artists.” (more…)

The popular Egon Schiele exhibition at the Neue Galerie has been extended through April 20th, the museum announced today, continuing the record breaking exhibition for an additional four months. (more…)

The lawsuit between Sotheby’s and collector Lancelot William Thwaytes has been decided in favor of the auction house. Sotheby’s sold a work for Thwaytes, attributed to a follower of Caravaggio, for £42,000 in 2006, only to have the work authenticated as a true Caravaggio weeks later.  Mrs Justice Rose ruled there had been no negligence in the case, stating that Sotheby’s is “entitled to rely on the connoisseurship and expertise of their specialists.” (more…)

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Ancient Rome; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus (1839), all images courtesy Tate Britain

On view at the Tate Britain is the first exhibition devoted entirely to the work of Joseph Mallord Wiliam Turner, created between the years of 1835 and his death in 1851. The show brings together major series of works including a group of square pictures highlighting Turner’s tendency towards innovation, even at the end of his life.

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The Wall Street Journal looks at the current state of museum fundraising, with a number of museums competing for donations and gifts in what some call a crowded market.  “These big capital campaigns for the gold-plated arts and cultural institutions probably put the most pressure on the people who are on that party circuit,” says Michael Hamill Remaley, senior vice president for public policy and communications at Philanthropy New York. “But the 1% is not hurting.” (more…)

Frieze Art Fair has announced that Abby Bangser will take the newly formed Artistic Director position for the Americas and Asia, working to support the organization’s director, Victoria Siddall.  “Abby brings fantastic gallery, institutional and collector relationships to this new role,” Siddall said in a statement, “and I am thrilled she is joining our team. She has shown her passion for and commitment to Frieze and her insight as an American will be invaluable to us, ensuring that the fairs continue to deliver at the highest levels.” (more…)

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston is embarking on an ambitious $450 million expansion project that will seek to place it as one of the city’s cultural hubs.  “It’s all about shaping space,” says , architect Steven Holl. “The collection of buildings there is already outstanding. It’s very delicate, not a site that calls for over-exuberance.” (more…)

Gagosian Gallery in London will reportedly recreate the studio of sculptor Henry Moore for an exhibition next month.  The exhibition will be curated by Richard Calvocoressi, director of the Henry Moore Foundation. (more…)

Louise Lawler, Dots and Slices (Traced) (2006/2013), via Sprüth Magers

In 2013, Louise Lawler performed a series of “tracings” at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, taking previously executed photographs from Lawler’s broad body of work, and converting the image down to a simple vector graphic in partnership with artist and children’s book illustrator Jon Buller.  These tracings are currently the subject of the artist’s most recent solo exhibition at Sprüth Magers Berlin, as Levine returns to her particularly subtle brand of institutional critique. (more…)

Sotheby’s February 3rd auction of Impressionist works in London will include a Claude Monet deaccessioned from the collection of MoMA, the New York Times reports.  The work, Les Peupliers à Giverny is anticipated to bring $13.8 million to $18.4 million. (more…)

Artist Sebastien Errazuriz has created a new project for Time Square’s ongoing “Midnight Moment” arts series, a digital video showing the artist yawning on the area’s countless digital video displays in an attempt to trigger yawns among viewers.  “I intuitively trust that at times it is the importance of leaving a pause or a blank space that allows us to highlight and be aware of everything else that is in that space.,” Errazuriz says.  “At times the simplest projects are the hardest to do. You cannot hide behind a simple project, the truth is exposed, distilled and present.” (more…)

Secretary of State John Kerry will award painter Kehinde Wiley with the U.S. State Department Medal of Arts next week, during a ceremony on January 21st.  The medal awards substantive commitment to the U.S. State Department’s cultural diplomacy outreach through the visual arts,” according to a release. (more…)

Artist Theaster Gates is interviewed in the most recent edition of BOMB Magazine, talking about his influences, his work at the University of Chicago, as well as its surrounding communities.  “One of the advantages that I have, being embedded in this Washington Park community and as an administrator at the University of Chicago, is that I come with a certain amount of cultural, intellectual, and political empathy,” Gates says. “This empathy allows me to feel more like an insider, and to experience a win for this community as a win for me too. It’s not just a political win, it’s also a “way-of-living” win.” (more…)

A new study released by the National Endowment for the Arts notes that attendance of art events has been on a steady decline over the past two decades, with only 33.4% of US adults attending some sort of cultural event during a calendar year. (more…)

Frieze London has announced that curator Clara M. Kim will take the helm for Spotlight, the special section of London’s Frieze Masters this fall.  Adriano Pedrosa, who led Spotlight since 2012, will still organize the section at Frieze New York in May. (more…)

Artist Vito Acconci has contributed a new architectural design proposal to the Tasmanian capital of Hobart, a twisting, maze-like bridge linking two of the city’s main memorial sites.  “All the surfaces of the maze are riddled with holes, from tiny to less or more than tiny; each of the many multiple mazes surrounds an empty open space,” says a spokesman from the artist’s studio. “You retrace your steps back and forth, and find your way from one maze to another, up and down and up again.”   (more…)

The North Carolina Museum of Art has received a major donation of modern and contemporary art from the collection of Jim and Mary Patton this week, including works by Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly and Robert Motherwell, among others.  “This transformative gift significantly expands the breadth and scope of the Museum’s permanent collection and will allow our visitors to have an even more engaging and exciting experience in our modern and contemporary galleries,” says NCMA Director Lawrence J. Wheeler. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal profiles the ongoing collaboration between Rem Koolhaas and Dasha Zhukova to create the new home for Zhukova’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow’s Gorky Park.  “The building is basically a found object,” Koolhaas says. “We are embracing it as it is.” (more…)

Marina Abramovic brought her performance work in collaboration with Costume National to the Art of Elysium Benefit Gala last night in Los Angeles, inviting guests to enjoy dinner in individually numbered beds.  “Usually these parties are always boring, always the same,”Abramović said.  “There are so many ways of entertaining, [but] I am proposing in my way as an artist the possibility of entertaining that’s never been used before.” (more…)

Marlene Dumas is interviewed in The Guardian this week, in the run-up to her Tate Modern Retrospective, opening early next month.  “When I start work on a painting, it’s total kitsch!” Dumas jokes during the interview. “When I painted myself pregnant, I couldn’t do the legs, and the blond hair made it look like a bad Klimt!” (more…)

The New York Times notes the attractive benefits for wealthy collectors founding their own private, tax-exempt museums to house their art collections, allowing the collectors to deduct full market value for their donations even when the museum may be housed on the same property as their home.  “I’m not against it being done, but it’s got to be done well,” says Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art. “If there’s to be a public forgiveness for taxes there should be a clear public benefit, and it should not be entirely at the discretion of the person running the museum or foundation.” (more…)

Andy Warhol, Shadows (Installation View), Photo by Brian Forrest. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NewYork.

In the late 1970’s, Andy Warhol embarked on a new printing project, replicating a single photographic image of the artist’s studio bathed in shadow, a single “cap” of light hovering just to the left of center.  Reproducing the image over one hundred times in a series of color pairings, shades and contrasts, the work created a haunting, surreal environment, currently on view at MOCA in LA for a landmark exhibition of the piece on the West Coast. (more…)

Mario Schifano, Propaganda (1965), *All artwork images Courtesy of Artist Rights Society and Luxembourg & Dayan, installation shots Courtesy of Luxembourg & Dayan

Luxembourg & Dayan is presenting the New York leg of the gallery’s acclaimed London show from this past summer, Mario Schifano: 1960-67, which celebrated the seminal post-war Italian artist’s impressive career. Titled The ‘60s, the selection for thisshow delivers an ambitious look at a crucial period in the late artist’s life and career. Less known compared to his fellow counterparts, such as Pistoletto or Manzoni, Schifano had his breakthrough in the New York art scene with the infamous New Realists show at Sidney Janis Gallery in 1962.  (more…)

The New York Times profiles the work and life of Ray Johnson, an artist who left a subtle but lasting impact on the discourses of pop, conceptual and abstract art over the course of the last half century, before taking his own life in 1995.  “He was a guerrilla fighter against materialism and fame, and in a sense he’s still fighting today,” said Frances F. L. Beatty, president of Richard L. Feigen & Co., which represents Mr. Johnson’s estate. (more…)