The Museums Association, Britain’s governing body for arts and historical institutions, is strengthening its ethics code, including sanctions and penalties for museums selling off parts of their collections for financial gain.   “We recognize local authorities face a tough time,” says MA Director Sharon Heal.  “We just want to caution that if you’re going down this road, follow the process and you’re acting in the public’s best interest.” (more…)

Painter Peter Doig is highlighted in the Wall Street Journal this week, as he opens a broad exhibition of works at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel.  “I think you only have so many ideas that you think are good ideas,” Doig says. (more…)

The 2015 Edition of the Armory Show has announced its list of exhibitors for its March opening, with 197 galleries attending.  The fair will run from March 5th through the 8th.  The selection process for the upcoming edition was particularly rigorous and I am thrilled to see a number of notable galleries returning to the fair,” says Executive Director Noah Horowitz, “as well as a strong presence of young, geographically diverse galleries who have chosen to show with us for the first time.” (more…)

A recent article on Arnet reviews the story over assailant Andrew Shannon’s attack on a Claude Monet painting, and notes that he is not the first to punch one of the artist’s Impressionist masterworks.  In 2007, a group of vandals entered the Musée D’Orsay and punched a hole in another of the artist’s Argenteuil landscapes.   (more…)

Ryan Foerster, Green Day (2012-2014), via C L E A R I N G

For C L E A R I N G’s second exhibition in its new 5,000-square-foot Bushwick space, the Brooklyn and Brussels-based gallery presents a sprawling showcase of multimedia work by Canadian artist Ryan Foerster. Winding fluidly through the venue’s four airy rooms, strewn across the floors and walls in a seemingly impromptu array, the featured works exploit the possibilities of the photographic medium while charting the artist’s latest forays into installation, video, and sculpture. (more…)

Amid charges of plagiarism, Jeff Koons’s work Fait d’Hiver has been pulled from exhibition at the artist’s expansive Centre Pompidou retrospective. The work’s owner made the request for its removal, while the museum made a point of expressing its desire to leave the work in the show.  “It is essential that museums be able to continue to give an account of these artistic endeavors,” said president Alain Seban. (more…)

The Metropolitan Opera, currently in need of cash, has collateralized two of its Marc Chagall works as part of a line of credit from Bank of America.  The organization has placed The Triumph of Music and The Sources of Music as collateral, both of which hang in its lobby, until it can balance its budget. “Recent changes at the Met – including the implementation of our historic new union agreements, and a program of institution-wide cost controls – are expected to lead to balanced budgets in fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2016 while significantly strengthening the long-term financial prospects of the institution,”  says Met spokesman Sam Neuman. (more…)

Anish Kapoor will be the next artist given a solo show at the Palace of Versailles, the organization announced this week.  Kapoor’s show will run from June to October of 2015, and was chosen “because he has something particular to say in this setting,” says Chief Administrator Catherine Pégard. (more…)

The trailer for Woman in Gold has been released, a film focusing on the attempts of former refugee Maria Altmann to reclaim the Gustav Klimt masterwork Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, stolen from her family during the reign of the Third Reich. (more…)

The Detroit Free Press reports on the $100 million sale of Paul Cézanne’s La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue du bosquet du Château Noir by the The Edsel & Eleanor Ford House in 2013, which would make it one of the 15 most expensive works ever sold.  “This was really a once-in-a-lifetime offer,” says Ford House president Kathleen Mullins. “The family thought it was a way to guarantee the estate would be taken care of the way Eleanor would have wanted.” (more…)

Michael Anthony, the executive chef of Gramercy Tavern, has been named as the head chef for the Whitney’s new Meatpacking District location.  The museum will include two restaurants: Untitled, a fine dining establishment run out of the museum’s ground floor, and the Studio Cafe, which will be located on the Museum’s 8th Floor. (more…)

As the U.S. renews diplomatic relations with Cuba, critics and market leaders are predicting a new rush of interest in the island’s arts community.  “I believe Cuban art has been a best-kept secret among a few collectors,” says collector Howard Farber, “and now that Cuba is opening up to us I think more people will discover a genre that’s fresh and great.” (more…)

Louise Bourgeois, Arch of Hysteria (1993), all photos via Emily Heinz for Art Observed

The first sight of the Louise Bourgeois Suspension exhibition at Cheim & Read must be the closest simulation available of watching artworks ascending to heaven. There is a sense that each of the pieces are being called upwards, as their weight hangs below them, pulling them back towards the ground. However, the works don’t fight this strange, heavenly magnetism, and in fact, seem to accept to their celestial trajectory.

“Hanging is an ambivalent gesture,” says Jerry Gorovoy, her assistant and close friend of thirty years, who was kind enough to expand upon her works on the opening night of the show.  “It’s as though they’ve given up.” It’s this sense of the works’ submission that makes the tension of their bold physical presence so palpable.

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Camille Henrot, The Pale Fox (2014), all photos by Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Camille Henrot’s The Pale Fox is an immersive journey through the artist’s conceptual creative process. Imagined as a multidimensional extension of the artist’s award-winning film Grosse Fatigue, 2013 (Silver Lion at the 55^th Venice Biennale), this itinerant exhibition is currently presented at Bétonsalon – Centre for art and research in Paris.

Camille Henrot, Baby (2014) and The Principles of Being (2014), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

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R. H. Quaytman, O Tópico, Chapter 27 (Installation View)

Currently on view at Gladstone Gallery’s 21st street location is O Tópico, Chapter 27, R. H. Quaytman’s latest chapter in her ambitious, ongoing project of cohesive, site-specific installations.  Quaytman started her serial painting project in 2001 with eighty paintings she made to be exhibited at the Queens Museum, and has now reached the 27th installment of the project, this one inspired by Inhotim, a botanical garden and art park located in the Brazilian region of Minas Gerais. (more…)

Over the past year, Catherine Grenier, the former deputy director of the Musée national d’art moderne at the Centre Pompidou, has been streamlining the Giacometti Foundation, working to repair years of scandal and controversy over the artist’s legacy.  “I’m not interested in archaeology, in digging up the past,” she says. “I’m only interested in progress, in moving forward in a positive way.”  (more…)

The LA Times reviews the departure of both Christie’s and Sotheby’s CEO’s this year, and investigating the motivations behind each’s departure.  “I think it makes dramatic copy to characterize boardroom confrontations,” says William Ruprecht, the soon to depart Sotheby’s head.  “The fact is, the board and I have had extremely civilized conversations. Dan has been respectful to me and only respectful. It has been an orderly and thoughtful process.” (more…)

Frieze New York has announced the details for the 2015 edition of the fair, with over 190 galleries from around the world set to return to Randall’s Island from from May 14 to 17, 2015.   (more…)

The Museum of Modern Art has announced plans for an exhibition focusing on the African-American migration north during the early 20th Century, including a reunited Migration Series, Jacob Lawrence’s 60-panel drawing featuring scenes of the Great Migration.  “Lawrence was rectifying what it meant to be a young man in a segregated North with being part of a people that have just moved from slavery to freedom,” says radio host Terrance McKnight.  (more…)

Nine works valued at $10 million, and stolen less than a decade ago have been recovered in Los Angeles, the LA Times reports.  The works, stolen from an Encino home in 2008, included Marc Chagall’s Les Paysans, and Diego Rivera’s Mexican Peasant.  Federal authorities arrested Raul Espinoza in connection with the theft.  (more…)

Bay Lights, the LED installation by Leo Villareal on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge is set to become a permanent installation, after nonprofit Illuminate the Arts announced that it had raised the $4 million needed to pay for new equipment and maintenance.  The work will be removed next year to treat bridge cables, but will likely be reinstalled by the time Super Bowl 50 takes place in the city in 2016. (more…)

Sigmar Polke, Untitled (circa 2000), All images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Fergus McCaffrey is currently presenting Sigmar Polke: Photocopierarbeiten, the gallery’s third exhibition focusing on the late artist following 2006’s Sigmar Polke/Andy Warhol: Drawings and 2011’s Sigmar Polke. This year has been an  exceptional one in terms of the presentation of Polke’s legacy in New York, considering his recent exhibition Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010, a major retrospective at the MoMa that later traveled to the UK and Germany, as well as a coinciding exhibition at Michael Werner Gallery focusing on the German pioneer’s early works on paper. (more…)

Ahmed Alsoudani, Untitled (2014), all images are by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

In his first exhibition at Gladstone Gallery, Iraqi artist Ahmed Alsoudani is delivering an eminently profound set of paintings, managing to remain current and relevant while at the same time tying strong references to pioneers of 20th century painting, a body of work that suggests a limitless array of interpretations. (more…)

A rare, vertical Cézanne landscape from the Cortauld collection is set to hit the auction block early next year at Christie’s in London, carrying a sale estimate of up to $12 million. “It’s quite rare to see Cézanne at auction and incredibly rare to have these major motif,” says Jay Vincze, head of Impressionist and Modern art at Christie’s London. (more…)