Reclusive fashion designer Martin Margiela is staging a Paris exhibition of his artworks this year, The Guardian reports. “This exhibition celebrates the idea that Martin Margiela has always been an artist, whose work has played out since, within and outside the art world,” says a statement by exhibitors Lafayette Anticipations. “[He] has always made us look at things with fresh eyes. Going against the grain he cultivated an obsession for discreet people, abandoned objects and forgotten places and events, bestowing on them a new dignity.” (more…)

The SF Chronicle notes that Gagosian Gallery seems to have abandoned its outpost in San Francisco, noting that gallery signage has been removed and phones disconnected.  The company has done little to publicize any such change in strategy at the museum. (more…)

A piece in the New Yorker this week documents the U.S. Army’s holdings of Nazi art and sculpture, rarely seen outside of its storage facility in Virginia’s Fort Belvoir. “It’s Hitler as a Teutonic knight,” says Sarah Forgey, the Army’s chief art curator of one work. “It’s showing there’s a connection between the Third Reich and Germany’s feudal past.” (more…)

A painting of Jesus Christ has been authenticated by a work by El Greco.  “It has been more than two years of exciting work, studies and analysis,” says art professor and researcher Ximo Company. (more…)

Alexis Rockman, The Rime (2020), via Sperone Westwater

Currently on at Sperone Westwater in New York, artist Alexis Rockman is presenting a selection of new watercolors that mark a continued investigation of the medium in relation to the impending climate disaster and resulting crises in human migration and social/political responses.  Marking his fourth solo show with the gallery since 1992, the show takes a lyrical and metaphorical tone in addressing these concepts, marking natural signifiers and moments of mythological crisis as deeply resonant notes in the current state of humanity.  (more…)

Bendor Grosvenor has a piece in Art Newspaper this week, praising the efficiency and appeal of online auctions by the major auction houses. “For the first time, we can begin to imagine a purely online auction world, with no need for printed catalogues, in-person auction views, or expensive premises in central London,” he writes. (more…)

Gunther Uecker, Lichtbogen (2020), at Levy Gorvy

Marking a new wrinkle in the artist’s already boundless body of work, artist Gunther Uecker has brought forth a new selection of pieces on view currently at Lévy Gorvy recently inaugurated Paris exhibition space.  The show features a range of new pieces, a dramatic development in the artist’s seven-decade practice, radiant paintings that vibrate with the energy of their creation, embodying fluidity and light. (more…)

A piece in the Art Newspaper looks at how the new Brexit deal will affect the art market.  “This is a dismal deal for the UK art market,” says Bendor Grosvenor.  “It is now more difficult and expensive for UK companies to trade in art in Europe than at any time since the 1970s. In fact, thanks to the Northern Ireland Protocol, it is also more difficult for UK companies to trade in art within the UK.” (more…)

Xinyi Cheng, Julien (2017), via Palais de Tokyo

Marking one of the more engaged and critically-considered reflections on the past year in and out of quarantine, Palais de Tokyo in Paris is currently presenting Antibodies, a show delving into new projections and perceptions of the body, touch, closeness and proximity in the era of the pandemic lockdown.  On view through the end of the weekend, Antibodies looks at the state of the world, and the human bodies that move and interact within it, questioning how social and political conception of the body itself have changed in the past year.

Forensic Architecture, Cloud Studies (Still), via Palais de Tokyo

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The UK’s Royal Collection Trust will lay off the curators tasked with managing the Queen’s art collection. “Following a restructure that was necessary due to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, 130 roles at Royal Collection Trust are to go by the year, including that of the Surveyor,” says a RCT spokeswoman. (more…)

A piece in Art Newspaper documents US Museums continuing to add to their collections during the pandemic thanks to restricted acquisition funds. “It is imperative to reiterate that these acquisition funds cannot be used for other purposes,” says Thomas Campbell, the director of FAMSF. “We are doing everything in our power to retain as much of our full staffing as possible during these trying times, so I want to avoid any confusion on that front.”  (more…)

A piece in the New York Times details non-profits continued attempts to cover funds lost due to Covid with donations. “It’s a long way to make up for the gap, and I think we should all be realistic about the fact that this is nowhere near a substitute,” said Henry Timms, the president of Lincoln Center. (more…)

Sue Williams, Betsy Ross Composite (2020), via 303 Gallery

Marking her eleventh solo exhibition at 303 Gallery, painter Sue Williams has brought a selection of dynamic new paintings to bear on the New York space, continuing her particular brand of incendiary, uncompromising social critique through her craft. In a body of work that expands across a range of varied technical approaches and materials, the show outlines Williams’s impressive capacity carry her themes and concepts across a broad framework.   (more…)

Critic Barbara Rose has passed away at the age of 84, an important voice in the early years of minimalism and conceptual art. “I don’t invent art movements,” she once said. “I just notice coincidences, and those coincidences began to make sense to me as a worldview, which the Germans call weltanschauung.” (more…)

The recently deceased Ulay gets a profile in the NYT this week, after the artist’s expansive career retrospective at the Stedelijk opened this year. “Till the last, we were working,” says his wife, Lena Pislak. “He was really enjoying the process.” (more…)

The Met has reopened its European Paintings wing, after renovating and replacing the wing’s skylights.  (more…)

Anne Imhof and Patti Smith will take part in a special New Year’s event in London’s Picadilly Circus. “The opportunity to take over Europe’s largest advertising display and open a portal to hope in the final moments of 2020 is humbling,” Imhof says. “Peace, freedom and respect for everyone in 2021.” (more…)

Lynda Benglis, Early Work 1967-1979 (Installation View), via Cheim & Read

Closing today at Cheim & Read and previously on view through December 3rd at Ortuzar Projects, Lynda Benglis’s early work gets a renewed perspective, exploring the artist’s dense material innovations and explorations of the body in relation to sculpture. Compiling a range of works that have proved crucial to the development of Lynda Benglis’s practice during her first decade in New York, the show spans three separate locations, offering an impressive and expansive look at the artist’s work. On at Cheim & Read’s uptown exhibition space, a series of lozenge-shaped wax paintings are juxtaposed with Benglis’s latex and polyurethane pours, while one floor up and the Ortuzar viewing room, one can view a selection of gilded wall sculptures inspired by the caryatids from the porch of the Erechtheion at the Acropolis in Athens. Sparkle and metallized knot sculptures, including the multi-part installation North, South, East, West, 1976 – last shown in New York at a 1981 Whitney Museum exhibition – are on view at Ortuzar Projects on White Street in Tribeca. (more…)

Dava Newman, MIT professor of aeronautics and astronautics and former deputy administrator of NASA under Obama, will take the helm at the MIT Media Lab, known for its fusions of art and architecture.  “In a field of outstanding candidates, Professor Newman stood out for her pioneering research, wide range of multidisciplinary engagements, and exemplary leadership. She is a designer, a thinker, a maker, an engineer, an educator, a mentor, a convener, a communicator, a futurist, a humanist and, importantly, an optimist,” says Dean Hashim Sarkis. (more…)

Josh Smith gives a direct interview with Art Newspaper this week, remarking on his views on art and culture. “Art should be sharp, timely and timeless,” he says. “It should provoke something within the viewer. If they do not like it, then that’s OK. At the very least it should make people think.” (more…)

Sotheby’s set a new price for the work of photographer Ansel Adams this week, after a work from the collection of Texas oil executive David Arrington netter $988,000.  (more…)

A piece in the NYT this week asks what will happen to collection of the recently passed Sheldon Solow, which the paper estimates could infuse $500 million into the market.  “He was definitely of a generation who started when the art world was much smaller,’’ says David Norman, chairman of the Americas at Phillips. “They made their own choices and spoke with the great dealers of their era, but relied on themselves.” (more…)

Art News has an excerpt from collector Leonard Lauder’s new book The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty, and his takes on his collection.  “I’ve always had the soul of a collector,” he says. “Ask any collector how it all began, and you’ll hear stories about childhood fascinations ranging from bottle caps to beetles to baseball cards. I was no different. I started early and have been building collections ever since.” (more…)

Mary Weatherford, No. 4000 (2017-2018), via Gagosian

Marking her first solo show with Gagosian Gallery in London, Mary Weatherford has brought forward a body of new works under the title Train Yards, a series of works that pursues Weatherford’s foundational interest in the poetics of place—especially sites of mass transportation, and locations where the conditions of urban life reveal themselves with a particular intensity. (more…)