The Wall Street Journal summarizes the deathbed agreement of Cornelius Gurlitt to relinquish his collection of Nazi-looted art works, including the exchange of national pressures, personal politics and legal wrangling that ultimate led Gurlitt to sign the works over to Bern’s Kunstmuseum without notifying the museum directly until after Gurlitt’s death last week.  “It all went a bit crazy,” says museum director Mathias Frehner. (more…)

The New York Times looks at artist Spencer Finch’s special commission for the 9/11 Museum in New York, which opens this week to family of the disaster’s victims.  The memorial seeks to recreate the crystal clear blue the marked the sky on the date of the attacks on the United States.  “It was a risk, certainly, to do,” said Paula Grant Berry, lost her husband in the attack and serves on the Sept. 11 Memorial Foundation’s Board. “Even when we tested it, we never really knew what it was going to look like.” But she added: “I got to see it early and I became a real advocate. I think it’s extraordinary, and it’s so needed, and it brings in the light of day on so many levels and in so many dimensions.” (more…)

As it prepares to move downtown, the Whitney has announced that it will donate its freestanding studio space uptown to Queens’s Socrates Sculpture Park.  “The Whitney Museum has generously presented us with an opportunity to explore the possibility of our first indoor space, which may be used to expand the park’s longstanding free arts education program,” says Socrates Sculpture Park director John Hatfield. “Other possible adaptable uses may include a gallery, visitor area or administrative space.” (more…)

In lieu of paying an inheritance tax, the estate of Lucian Freud has donated a selection of 40 works by Frank Auerbach has been donated to the United Kingdom, covering an approximate £16,250,000 tax bill.  The works will be divided into 11 groups and distributed by Arts Council England to various public collections. (more…)

The New York Times reports on the recently finished renovation of the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which shifted its focus and exhibition strategy to more carefully and chronologically explore the artist’s life.  “It really is a new Warhol; it’s much more about him,” says director Eric Shiner. (more…)

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange) (1955) which sold for $50,000,000 at Phillips, via Art Observed

The Phillips Contemporary Evening Sale has concluded, wrapping up what has been a whirlwind week of contemporary art sales with a briskly-paced, 49-lot sale that achieved moderately strong results, while twelve works were either withdrawn or went unsold. (more…)

Hiroshi Sugimoto has been awarded the inaugural Isamu Noguchi prize for his work as an artist.  The photographer and architect was awarded the prize in an award ceremony at the Noguchi Museum in New York by Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations Motohide Yoshikawa. (more…)

The New York Times takes a look inside the bi-annual Brant Foundation Art Study Center opening last week, held in honor of the space’s new Dan Colen show, and noting its place as a haven away from the bustle of Frieze week.  “Frieze week is a nightmare,” says Nate Lowman. “To have the same limp handshake 400 times? I don’t go to anything except this.” (more…)

Jeff Koons, Popeye (2009-2011), via Sotheby’s

The Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Sale wrapped this evening, with a number of impressive sales that did little to match the fireworks of Christie’s record-setting outing last night, but still managed to bring forth a number of impressive and noteworthy sales, as well as several new world records for artists at auction.  The auction capped a final sales tally of  $364,379,000 over 81 lots, with 12 of those works remaining unsold. (more…)

Paris’s Picasso Museum has fired director Anne Baldassari, citing a “gravely deteriorating work environment” during the museum’s continually delayed renovation, as well as “profound suffering in the workplace and a toxic atmosphere.”  The museum’s  reopening has already been pushed back twice, and had seen numerous employees leaving the organization during Baldassari’s tenure.  “There was nothing in the report from the inspector general that surprised us,” said one ministry official. “This had been going on for several years. The truth is that we could not open a museum with all these employees leaving.” (more…)

Railway operator Amtrak has announced a public art commission with artist Katharina Grosse, designed to combat urban blight along the company’s rail lines.  The Psychylustro project has seen a group workers painting buildings in Northern Philadelphia with an enormous spray gun, shooting streams of house paint on a series of buildings.“It’s a very different understanding of where a painting sits,” Grosse says. “You just get a glimpse of something rather large, it’s just touching the warehouse there on that little edge. The painting itself is far bigger, it’s maybe in the sky but there is no surface where it can land.” (more…)

New York collector Christopher Tsai has announced his intent to found the first Ai Weiwei Museum in his home city, the Art Newspaper reports.  The collector has been inspired by the artist’s output, as well as the proliferation of museums dedicated to the work of a single artist. (more…)

A coalition of Detroit Automakers (GM, Ford, Chrysler) has announced plans to donate about $10 million each over the next decades in order to aid the city’s bankruptcy exit while protecting its art collection at Detroit Institute of Arts.  The museum will also be soliciting donations from other corporations.  “For this to work, the Legislature has to be in and part of it,” says an unnamed CEO considering a donation. “Business groups are encouraging the Legislature to make it happen.” (more…)

Sterling Ruby is interviewed in the New York Times this week, following the opening of the artist’s new show at Hauser and Wirth.  “When you look at what I do,” he says, “it’s schizophrenic to the point where it should never have a market. With my work, you can’t be like, “Well, we can plug this into what’s happening in the market because it looks like the last series.” (more…)

The High Line will open its third and final section of park this fall, which will prominently feature sculptural work by Adrian Vilar Rojas, designed to deteriorate and shift over time, in parallel with the industrial spaces surrounding the work.  “If you stop to think about it,” the artist says, “it’s the most contradictory thing: You’re in relaxed, dreamy space, and then all around you is like a battle zone. People are taking pictures of construction sites.” (more…)

Andy Warhol sells at Christie’s, via Art Observed

The results are in on an auction that exceeded any and all expectations tonight at Christie’s, and a new world auction record has been set for auctions overall.  Despite early calls that the auction would be marked by excessive guarantors and limited betting, all expectations were broken.  Christie’s surged past the previous high it set late last year, arriving at a final sales record of $744 million for the 68 lot auction, with only four works going unsold, bringing down a number of world auction records with it on the way.  The sale was also defined by an impressively deep level of wealth over the highest priced works.  63 of the lots managed to sell for over $1 million, and 4 surged past the $50 million mark, eliciting astonishment by many on hand.

Barnett Newman, Black Fire I (1961) which sold for a record $84.165 million, via Christie’s

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Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman and daughter with makeup) from Kitchen Table Series(1990), all images courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim

Documenting the landmark work of video maker, photographer, spoken word poet and textile artist Carrie Mae Weems, The Guggenheim is currently presenting a body of work spanning over thirty years in the artist’s career, including a number of the artist’s most significant and iconic works.

Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography (Installation View) (more…)

Andy Warhol sells at Christie’s, via Art Observed

The contemporary art auctions this week were set off on a bounding start last night, as Christie’s opened its new auction event “If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday” to thunderous results, capping a 35 lot auction that sold all but one work, and achieved a final sales tally of $134 million, as well as a number of world auction records for the artists on sale.

Martin Kippenberger, Untitled (1988), via Christie’s (more…)

Artist Mark Grotjahn is profiled in the New York Times this week, reviewing some of his recent works, and his recently opened show of Butterfly paintings on view at Blum and Poe’s New York space, and a larger show of masks, sculptures and other works at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.  “I think the masks are fascinating objects and also important as painting surfaces that allow for tremendous freedom and experimentation,” says Nasher director Jeremy Strick. “You could see it as a way for Mark to give himself license to do things he wouldn’t ordinarily do, to paint in different ways.” (more…)

The Financial Times takes an inside look at the recently opened second location of the Long Museum in Shanghai, operated by Director Wang Wei and her husband Liu Yiqian.  “Our idea initially was to have only one museum,” Wang says, “but the government came to us, encouraged us to open another and gave us a discount on the land, on condition that we make a cultural project. I probably would have been happy with one.” (more…)

The Art Newspaper takes a look at Bill de Blasio’s record in the past with the arts, and speculates where on his list of priorities the arts will fall during his time as Mayor, noting his record of support for smaller public institutions.  “Under Bloomberg, well-established institutions tended to be favored,” consultant Adrian Ellis says. Now, “those smaller organizations further from Manhattan may see an increase in their funding and their priority.” (more…)

Artist Marina Abramovic is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing her upcoming retrospective at The Serpentine, where the artist will freely wander the space of the gallery, and will allow visitors to come in and watch her.  “It’s the public and me and nothing else,” she says. “I took the objects away. But the encounter, I’ve never done anything as radical as this. This is as immaterial as you can go.” (more…)

A lost Van Gogh has been discovered by tax collectors in Spain, hidden away in a bank deposit box.  The work, Cypress, Sky and Country, is dated 1889, and has three seals of authenticity.  It was last on view at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum over 50 years ago, and an investigation is underway as to how the work may have found its way into deposit box. (more…)

An article in The Guardian notes the growing popularity for online auctions as a means of discovering young artists, and offering an entryway for new collectors to first experience the art market.  “The idea is to make great art available to a far broader audience,” says Joshua Blackburn, founder of online gallery Artful. (more…)