James Turrell, Roden Crater (Sunset) (2009), via Kayne Griffin Corcoran

With concurrent shows opening at LACMA, the Guggenheim, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, James Turrell is certainly in the spotlight this summer. The Kayne Corcoran Griffin gallery is also joining in on the artist’s ubiquity, filling its new space on south La Brea with an exhibition focused on the Roden Crater project. Aptly named Sooner Than Later, Roden Crater, the show examines Turrell’s unfinished transformation of the crater into a sight-specific masterwork that has been in development since 1974. (more…)

Dinner view, all photos by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

The Parrish Art Museum held their annual Midsummer Party this past Saturday, an essential event in the Hamptons social calendar, welcoming benefactors and guests to the museum’s newly completed home.

Guests inside the museum (more…)

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dustheads (1982), via Christie’s

This week, Sotheby’s and Christie’s released their sales reports for the first half of 2013, with both sides announcing record sales figures. Christie’s has achieved a global sales total of £2.4 billion, including buyers’ premiums, a 9% increase on last year’s figure. The total includes the private sales of £465.2 million, an increasingly popular segment of the sales market, which saw a 13% growth from last year. The report also marks the third year in a row that the auction house has set new records for the period in both company and art market history.

Pablo Picasso, Étreinte (1971), via Sotheby’s

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The Washington Post has published an extensive look at the failure of the Hirshhorn “bubble” project, which saw the departure of several museum board members, and a readdress of the museum’s core mission.  Slated to cost between $12.5 million and $15.5 million, the bubble would have also operated at a loss of $2.8 million annually, which added to the increasingly poor morale around the project.  The museum is currently in recovery mode, with sponsors, donors and staff taking a moment to gather themselves.  “We’ve hit a rough patch, but they say they want it to succeed and move on,” Smithsonian Undersecretary Richard Kurin says. (more…)

Belgian-born Carsten Höller has announced a major site-specific installation for his first major exhibition in Spain, at the soon-to-open, €62 million Botín Centre in Northern Spain.  Designed by Renzo Piano, the new museum will house the visual arts program of the Bótin Foundation, and Höller’s installation will seek to mirror its mission as “a laboratory to investigate how art influences emotion and creativity”. (more…)

The Jibaozhai museum in the northern Chinese region of Hebei has been shut down after authorities determined that nearly all of the works in its collection were fake.  Counterfeiting has been a major issue for China in the past, and government agencies are working to crack down on these violations.  “Jibaozhai has no qualification to be a museum as its collections are fake and it hasn’t reported to my department for approval,” says an official from the Hebei cultural heritage bureau. (more…)

Artist Thomas Hirschhorn, in New York for the opening of his Gramsci Monument at Forest Houses in the Bronx, appeared last week at Artists Space in Manhattan, for a discussion with art historians Hal Foster and Lisa Lee on his practice, writing and the necessity of documentation. “The act of writing is a good way of taking it seriously, to be clear with the work, and also to be clear with intention.  The act of writing is most important for the artistic will.”  He says. (more…)

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is leading a push to bring the Marfa Dialogues, a series of discussions and art events combining the arts and sciences in the small Texas arts community, to New York City, with the help of Cooper Union, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Columbia University.  The first edition of Marfa Dialogues/NY will focus on climate change and the environment.  “When a number of different organizations align on a topic, it elevates the visibility,” says director of the Rauschenberg Foundation Christy MacLear. (more…)

Dealer Gavin Brown is the subject of a recent profile in W Magazine,  documenting his pioneering work in the New York art scene, and his ongoing war against the status quo for gallery spaces in an increasingly uncertain time for mid-level galleries.  “It always petrifies me, these moments of shift. And if you focus on this small world of artists and galleries and museums, I think we’re kind of spinning our wheels wondering what’s next because we know something is coming.  All the old models seem to be running out of gas. It’s a fascinating time,” Brown says. “Everything is up in the air.” (more…)

Fearing for her son, the suspect in the theft of seven paintings by Picasso, Monet and more from a Dutch Museum, a Romanian woman has come forth saying that she has burned the paintings in her stove.  Olga Dogaru, the mother of suspect Rodu Dogaru, had buried the works when her son was arrested, and finally destroyed them in February.  Investigators are analyzing the contents of her stove to check for evidence of the works, which were worth tens of millions of dollars. (more…)

Floor Cone (1962), in front of Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, (1963) Image courtesy of Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio.

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929, Stockholm) is widely regarded as one of the founding pioneers of Pop Art, a superstar in the history of art, and a visionary who opened new doors on the world of conceptual practice, sculpture and performance.  Embracing this foundational role, the artist’s current retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art maps the early beginnings of Oldenburg’s career, alongside the formative years of Pop Art.  (more…)

The M+ museum in Hong Kong’s developing West Kowloon district has announced that it will appoint Doryun Chong as its head curator.  Mr. Chong is currently serving as the associate curator of painting at MoMA, where he organized shows of work by Ernesto Neto, Bruce Nauman, and Henrik Olesen.  He will also oversee the completion of the M+ project, working under Dr. Lars Nittve. (more…)

London’s Mayfair district, traditionally known for its boutique shops and high-end British art galleries, is seeing a number of American dealers moving in, The New York Times reports.  Gagosian, Pace, David Zwirner and more have opened spaces in the area, seeking to provide an even greater global offering for potential artists and customers in a vibrant market.  “We’re all chasing the same artists,” says Marc Glimcher, president of Pace. “But the intensity of interest in art in London is long-lasting. You can get 10 reviews in 10 different newspapers. And besides the new collectors and galleries, there is a very vibrant museum community.” (more…)

The ongoing growth of the Asian art market has brought a new focus on local identities and markets within the region, The Guardian reports, leading to a new market segment increasingly interested in predominantly Asian artists and works.  “What’s happening in London or New York remains important of course, but so is what’s happening in Mumbai, Jogjakarta or Tokyo,” says Philip Tinari, director of the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing. (more…)

Opening in October, the Tate Modern will present a landmark exhibition of works by German-Swiss painter Paul Klee.  Exhibiting over 100 of the artist’s works, the show will aim to “redress the idea that he was a quirky artist, allowing his cat to paint, but rather show that he was extremely rigorous, with a clear sense of how his work was progressing … and it will give a sense of the extraordinary variety of his production.”  Says Tate curator Matthew Gale. (more…)

Taiyo Kimura, Performance Study With Plastic Bag (1997), via MoMAPS1

In the hustle and bustle of the art fairs and auctions of the two weeks prior, the opening of MoMA’s EXPO 1: New York went almost unnoticed, despite its three-venue makeup that includes modules at the museum’s midtown location, the PS1 annex in Queens, and at the newly built VW dome in the Far Rockaway, all which explore new conceptions of ecology and politics in the post-millenial landscape.

Steve McQueen, Static (2009), via MoMAPS1 (more…)

Tech millionaire, Zita Cobb, is working to rejuvenate a previously struggling Canadian fishing community where she was born. Fogo Island is now home to a Shorefast, a foundation that provides a micro finance fund for local entrepreneurs and a research center devoted to sustainable fishing, as well as numerous arts studios and Fogo Island Inn, which opened in May. The foundation and hotel aim to immerse themselves fully in the island’s history, with furniture inspired from local style and workmanship by the island’s craftsmen.

Read more at The Financial Times

MoMA’s PS1 campus in Long Island City, Queens, has received $3 million in funding from the city of New York, needed to purchase an adjacent building for expansion.  The new space, located at 22-01 Jackson Ave., will potentially be utilized for museum office space, freeing the main building up for more exhibition spaces.  “You want dynamic institutions like MoMA PS 1 to continue to change, to progress and to grow, and they can’t do that without the physical expansion,” Said City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer. “I think it’s great for the neighborhood, it’s great for Long Island City.” (more…)

The New York Times has published a spotlight on artist Robert Therrien, done in conjunction with his ongoing retrospective at the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY.  The artist has moved somewhat below the currents of the contemporary market, despite a broad body of work in sculpture and photography that has won him a considerable following and representation by Gagosian Gallery. He’s a very unusual person, and he’s a sweetie, too,” said Lynn Zelevansky of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. “It’s just so harmonious and so beautiful. It’s about experience, and this amazing capacity for invention.”

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With Dia’s announcement last month that it would deaccession some of its works in order to fund new acquisitions, a number of former leaders and collaborators have spoken against the move.  The sale of works, which will occur this fall, includes a number of works by Cy Twombly and Barnett Newman.  In a June 28th letter to the institution, former Menil Collection Director Paul Winkler writes: “The primary purpose of Dia has been to collect and present bodies of work by a select group of artists in permanent installations and to realize site-specific commissions, also in permanent situations. It is uninformed and disrespectful of your history to equate permanence with mausoleum.” (more…)

Preparing for the release of her anticipated album ARTPOP, pop star Lady Gaga has announced a series of collaborations with contemporary artists, including Jeff Koons, Marina Abramovic, Inez & Vinoodh and Robert Wilson.  Gaga has stated that her new project will “bring the music industry into a new age; an age where art drives pop, and the artist once again is in control of the ‘icon.'” (more…)

Constance Caplan, the chairman of the Hirshhorn Museum’s board of trustees, resigned on Monday. In a strongly worded letter to the Hirshhorn and Smithsonian Institution, Ms. Caplan cited a “lack of inclusiveness with which a number of trustees and staff associated with the Hirshhorn and the Smithsonian have behaved over the past year.” The divisions have now led to seven board members resigning within the last year, including the former chairman, J. Tomilson Hill.

Read more at The Washington Post

Urs Fischer (Installation View), photo by Stefan Altenburger, © Urs Fischer, Courtesy of the artist and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Occupying both the Grand Avenue and the Geffen Contemporary spaces at MOCA, Swiss-born, New York based artist Urs Fischer presents his first U.S. retrospective, culling from his diverse and unique body of work to fill both spaces with an overwhelming display of sculptural pieces and grandiose immersive environments.

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A number of wall drawings and other works by Sol LeWitt are set to open this fall, including an installation of Wall Drawing #599: Circles 18 at the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side, and an exhibition of the artist’s wall drawings at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea.  “It is an opportunity to make art accessible for all ages, from strollers to wheelchairs, toddlers to people in their 90s.”  Says JCC executive director Rabbi Joy Levitt. (more…)