Helly Nahmad, recently convicted to a year in prison following his role in an illegal gambling ring, is being sued alongside his father for allegedly helping to hide a $20 Million Modigliani reportedly looted by Nazis.  The case, filed  by Frenchman Phillippe Maestracci in Manhattan Supreme Court this week, argues that the painting was hidden through a secretive company called International Art Center, and will attempt to force Nahmad to disclose the IAC’s leadership, and where it is located.  “This painting was bought at a Christie’s London auction in 1996 by IAC, and the location of the painting is a matter of public record,” says Nahmad lawyer Richard Golub. (more…)

The Eli Broad Museum, is suing German architectural fabricator Seele over the still-unfinished steel facade of the museum, which has allegedly delayed the opening of the museum until 2015.  The $19.8 million lawsuit “speaks for itself,” says Broad Foundation spokesperson Karen Denne. “We are fairly confident that the museum will open in 2015, and we will announce an opening date later this year.” (more…)

A Francis Bacon portrait of Lucian Freud, formerly owned by renowned children’s writer Roald Dahl is set to hit the auction block this month at Christie’s in London, estimated to sell for up to £12m at auction.  “Both were enigmatic outsiders who were hard to pin down and liked to work in small, claustrophobic spaces,” says Christie’s Francis Outred.  “Both also aroused controversy and fascination in their public and private lives.” (more…)

The British Council has confirmed reports from earlier this month that a YBA show planned for Moscow has been cancelled.  The show had suffered from lack of funding, following the withdrawal of potential sponsorship funds from Russian patrons Vladimir and Ekaterina Semenikhin of the Ekaterina Foundation over harsh Western criticism of Russian involvement in Ukraine.   (more…)

The Hirshhorn has announced that Australian-born, veteran director of the Asia Society Museum, Melissa Chiu, will take the helm as the Museum’s new director, bringing a strong background in video and new media art to the post.  “I am very excited,” Chiu said. “It’s an amazing institution.” (more…)

Keith Haring, Moses and the Burning Bush (1985), via Art Observed

On view at Gladstone Gallery is an exhibition of large-scale works by Keith Haring, including canvases and tarps painted in the artist’s immediately recognizable style, which has since become part of a widely reproduced visual language of the late 20th century. The display will remain on view through June 14, 2014.

(more…)

In a desire to combine art and science, artist Diemut Strebe has created a copy of Vincent van Gogh’s ear by using living cells of the great-great-grandson of Van Gogh’s brother.  The newly created ear is currently on display at The Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, and is planned to be shown in New York next year.

(more…)

Ai Weiwei, Mask (2013) All Images Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery

One of the most influential and politically vocal artists of his generation, Ai Weiwei has found himself in the headlines frequently since his 2011 seizure by the Chinese government and subsequent imprisonment for more than eighty days without any official charges being declared. As a prominent objector of Chinese government’s oppressive demeanor, Weiwei has been an active figure in the country‘s struggle for freedom of speech and personal rights.  Following up on Ai’s presence internationally in the past year, Lisson is currently presenting Ai Weiwei’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, touching upon the artist’s most familiar themes, explored through a combination of new and old objects. (more…)

The Guggenheim officially opened its call for design entries for its Helsinki Museum outpost yesterday, judged by a staff of architects, museum employees and  and politicians, including jury chair Mark Wigley, the Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University; Ritva Viljanen, the Deputy Mayor, City of Helsinki; and Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Guggenheim Foundation.  “This competition promises to be extremely exciting,” says jury member Erkki Leppävuori, President and CEO of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. “The site, which is rich and varied as a cultural and environmental setting, poses potentially productive technical challenges to architects and structural engineers, who also must address the high expectations and lively opinions of our citizens.” (more…)

Francesco Vezzoli, All About Anni – Anni vs. Marlene (The Saga Begins) (2006), via MoCA

Much like predecessors Rainer Fassbinder, George Kuchar and Tom Wesselmann, Franceso Vezzoli grew up around the golden ages cinema and television, and his work often toys at fusing their higher art forms with a violent appreciation for popular culture in very different ways.  It’s these interests that dominate his show Cinema Vezzoli,currently on view at MOCA in Los Angeles, part of the three museum retrospective of Vezzoli’s work, titled The Trilogy. (more…)

As art theft market experts gather at a three day symposium at New York University from June 4-6 to discuss the 3rd largest crime enterprise in the world, Bloomberg Television notes the current $6 billion value of the art theft market, in relation to the $200 billion global art market. Cases of art thefts costing hundreds of millions of dollars date back to 1990, with daring attempts dotting the history books. “I’ve heard stories of a helicopter coming and zooming down and taking statues out of a garden,” Steel reports.

(more…)

Pierre Soulages, Peinture 175 X 222 Cm, 23 Mai 2013, via Art Observed

Held in high regard in his home country of France, and throughout much of continental Europe, the work of Pierre Soulages has never really achieved the same stature in the United States, despite his formal ties to the particularly American strains abstract expressionism and minimalism that have populated his work over the past sixty years.  But it’s that same lack of recognition that Dominique Lévy and Emmanuel Perrotin are looking to change this spring, bringing a selection of the artist’s most recent work, and some of his most classic canvases to show at the pair’s uptown exhibition spaces.

Pierre Soulages, Peinture 202 X 159 Cm, 18 Octobre 1967, via Art Observed (more…)

Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Yellow Butterfly Orange Mark Grotjahn 2004) (2004), all images courtesy Blum and Poe

Celebrating the inaugural show at its first New York location, Blum & Poe’ is presenting a show of Mark Grotjahn’s Butterfly Paintings, curated by Douglas Fogle at its E 66th Street location.  The show focuses on select works from Grotjahn’s recognizable series, which range in date from 2001 to 2008, and tracing the evolution of the paintings over a period of 7 years.

(more…)

The Guardian reports on Gallery A, a little known and just recently refurbished exhibition space located inside London’s National Gallery, where a number of masterworks not normally shown in the main rooms are kept for public viewing.  The new exhibition spaces in Gallery A have been drastically reworked, allowing visitors a more relaxed, expansive viewing atmosphere. (more…)

David Shrigley is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing his early years as an artist, his approach to his recent Sketch Restaurant commission, and his response to not winning the Turner Prize last year.  “It’s like, the day after they announced the winner of the Turner prize,” he says. “I’d had a bad back and the day afterwards my back got better like that.” (more…)

The colorful, shifting glasswork of Andrew Erdos

The annual festivities surrounding Bushwick Open Studios seem to get bigger each year, and 2014 was no exception, as the yearly summer art open wrapped its eighth year of open artist studios, new gallery shows, and a freshly inaugurated art fair in the heart of one of Brooklyn’s hotbeds for creative talent.

Seren Morey at 56 Bogart (more…)

Mark Flood, Available Nasdaq Symbol (Installation View), via Art Observed

Few artists are prepared to plumb the depths and egoistic state of the art market, image culture and corporate personhood the way Mark Flood has for the past decades.  Time and again, the artist’s occasionally crass, bold-faced techniques and assemblages of mass-media signifiers toys with the spectacle of consumption, mocking both advertisements and political symbolism as bound up in a state of image-consumption.  It’s this dichotomy, writ large against the backdrop of the art market that defines his current show of work at Zach Feuer in New York. (more…)

Ed Ruscha is featured in the Wall Street Journal’s recurring “My Favorite Things” feature, showcasing some of his most treasured artworks and possessions, among them a map of land owned by Gordon Matta-Clark in New York City, the head of a toy baseball player he was given by KAWS, and even a piece of cast-off plumbing pipe.  “I like the feel of corroded copper,” Ruscha says. (more…)

Investor Daniel Loeb has officially been acknowledged as one of Sotheby’s newest board members, alongside two of his own candidates, expanding the auction house’s board to 15 members.  The appointment was part of a May 5th agreement between Sotheby’s and Loeb, and brings in jewelry designer Olivier Reza and Harry J. Wilson to help lead the company.   (more…)

The Andy Warhol Museum has recruited a group of five musicians, including Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, Eleanor Friedberger, Television’s Tom Verlaine, Suicide’s Martin Rev and Dean Wareham of Galaxie 500, to score a selection of never-before seen Warhol films.  The performances will launch on Oct. 24 at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, before opening in New York at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House from Nov. 6-8. (more…)

San Francisco real estate mogul Luke Brugnara has been charged with mail fraud following the aborted purchase of $11 million in works by Willem de Kooning, Edgar Degas, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso.  Brugnara reportedly purchased the works from a New York dealer with the intent of opening a museum, but never paid for the artworks, claiming he had received them as a gift.  When the dealer accompanied the works to California for delivery, she was astonished to find that the address he had given was not inhabited.  “Brugnara instructed the delivery personnel to leave the crates in his garage. The art dealer had never before seen anyone request art of such value to be placed in a garage,” writes FBI special agent Jeremy Desor. (more…)

MOCA has named scholar, art writer and curator Helen Molesworth as its new Chief Curator.  Molesworth, who will assume the position beginning September 1st, previously worked at ICA/Boston and before that served as the leader of the department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museum.  “I love the way she talks about art, thinks about art, writes about art,” he said. “She has an incredible connection with artists and audiences and patrons. She brings an incredible integrity and high level of scholarship and a passion for living artists. And she has a great sense of humor,” said director Philippe Vergne. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal takes an early look inside the New York home of Lousie Bourgeois, set to reopen next year as an art research center, exhibition space, and sculpture garden.  Filled with drawings and notes on the walls, yellowing paper and notes, the space is an indication of Bourgeois close affinity for working from home.  “It’s decrepit splendor,” says her longtime assistant Jerry Gorovoy.  (more…)

As Jeff Koons prepares to open his major retrospective at the Whitney next month, the artist will also be installing Split-Rocker, his cartoonish, monumental flower sculpture at Rockefeller Center on June 25th, two days before the show opens.  “We couldn’t do any topiary at the Whitney, because there wasn’t any space,” Koons told the New York Times. (more…)