The Tate Modern in London has announced its plans for a show of the final works completed by Henri Matisse.  Slated for Spring of 2014, the show will feature 120 pieces by the artist, primarily using his large-scale, cut-out technique, including his famous Blue Nudes.  “They are more like installations or environments than paintings; and they seem very contemporary now. Part of the point of the show is to reconsider them in this light,” said Tate curator Nicholas Cullinan. “They were a way of collapsing line and colour; at the same time they were a kind of sculpture – carving into pure colour.” (more…)

Jake and Dinos Chapman, The Sum of all Evil, (2012-2013), Courtesy of the artists and White Cube via Pinchuk Art Centre

Jake and Dino Chapman are currently presenting Chicken, their first solo show in the Ukraine, at the Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev. The exhibition is centered around a new installation, titled The Sum of all Evil (2013), that confronts violence, death and the Holocaust through a series of comically perverse tableaus. Additional works from the Chapman brother’s oevre are also on display, providing an artistic context to the brothers subversive black humor and embrace of taboo subject matter.

Jake and Dinos Chapman, The Sum of all Evil, (2012-2013), Courtesy of the artists and White Cube via Pinchuk Art Centre

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Chuck Close, Prints: Process and Collaboration (Installation View), via White Cube

As part of a global tour featuring Chuck Close’s graphic works, curated by the Parrish Art Museum, USA, are currently on view at the White Cube Bermondsey South Galleries in London. Featuring a particular focus on Close’s prints, the exhibition brings a series of meticulously time-consuming works by the artist to light that stand strongly alongside his better-known, large-scale paintings.

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Rosy Keyser, Hungry Shepherd Honeypot (2013), Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery, New York

Rosy Keyser‘s new group of works, Medusa Pie Country, is currently on view at Peter Blum Gallery in New York.  Consisting almost exclusively of materials she found in the upstate New York hamlet of Medusa, where she occasionally works, Keyser’s works on view grapple with the idea that art is always being made, both inside the studio and out.

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Nine massive stone sculptures by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone have been installed in Rockefeller center this week, a collaboration between the artist at New York’s Public Art Fund.  Titled Human Nature, the primitivist sculptures each way 17 and 1/2  tons, and were installed by crane.  “My first thought was how big,” said Keith Douglas, managing director for Rockefeller Center. “He was saying ‘huge colossal sculptures,’ and I’m thinking, ‘In comparison to what?’ and multiplying times nine.”  (more…)

This spring, Christie’s auction calendar will feature a broad selection of works from the estate of the late Dr. Mona Ackerman, a psychologist and writer who counts works by Giacometti, Picasso, and Arp in her collection, as well as a number of fine antiques and pieces of furniture.  Her wide collection of pieces will be auctioned in the weeks leading up to Christie’s Modern Art Evening Sale on May 8th in New York.  Says Paul Provost, Christie’s Deputy Chairman: “Dr. Ackerman’s collection reveals her exquisite taste and wide interests. Her collection was striking and elegant, emanating the grace and passionate enthusiasm for life, for which Ackerman was well-known.”  (more…)

Little Dancer, a musical inspired by an Edgar Degas sculpture, will open this fall in Washington, DC.  Written by the Tony-award winning duo of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Ragtime), the show will follow a young, impoverished dancer in the Paris Opera Ballet as she struggles to practice her art.  Little Dancer is scheduled to open at the Kennedy Center in October. (more…)

Alberto Burri, Black Cellotex (1986-87), via ArtCritical

For much of his artistic career, Italian painter Alberto Burri worked broadly with Cellotex, a compressed particle board that was used primarily in construction projects after the conclusion of World War II.  Sharing the sensibilities of his Arte Povera compatriots, Burri embraced the material’s easy accessibility and ubiquitous presence in the reconstruction of the country.  Using Cellotex, Burri would create painting after painting that worked beyond the limits of the flat plane of the canvas, bringing the heavily layered paint of his works out into the room.

Alberto Burri, Black Cellotex (Installation View), via Luxembourg and Dayan

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Japanese clothing company Uniqlo has announced that it will sponsor MoMA’s popular free Friday night series.  What’s more, the first 1000 attendees at the company’s first sponsored evening on May 3rd will receive a free tote bag.  The sponsorship follows comments by Tadashi Yanai, the chairman of parent company Fast Retailing, that the Museum of Modern Art is his “favorite museum in the world.  (more…)

Storming back from its brush with financial insolvency earlier this year, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles has announced that it has raised over $50 Million in the past month, bringing its total endowment past $75 Million.  The new contributions come from a number of prominent names, including new board member Bruce Karatz, Jeffrey Soros, and Eli Broad.  “The level of support we have received is fantastic. There is a new energy and excitement about MOCA’s future and its leadership role in the art world,” says Eugenio Lopez, co-chair of  the endowment campaign. (more…)

Artist Anthony McCall’s ambitious Column project, planned for public installation in the UK city of Merseyside, has been abandoned after being projected to finish late and over budget.  The project has already received over a half a million pounds of public money.  “Of course it is very important to us that we manage the risks associated with our investment of taxpayers’ money. We have monitored the development of Column closely, but in a very small number of cases the price we pay for exciting ideas is that the risk doesn’t pay off.”  Said Arts Council executive Laura Dyer. (more…)

Artist Ed Ruscha is on this Times’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people this year, recognizing the artist’s highly influential conceptual practice and ongoing contributions to contemporary American art.  “Even if Ruscha never met a word he couldn’t unsettle, let’s hang on to the one we need sometimes to describe him: genius.” Writes Time art critic Richard Lacayo. (more…)

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has been invited by Creative Time Reports to publish his thoughts on the role of writing as criticism in the face of authoritarian censorship.  The artist, who was detained by the government last year, calls on internet users in China and abroad to use the system to oppose oppression by speaking out.  He writes: “Every day we put the state on trial—a moral trial, conducted with logic and reasoning. Nothing could be better than this. I am preparing a budding civil society to imagine change. First, you need people to recognize they need change. Then you need them to recognize how to make change. Finally, change will come.” (more…)

Beginning May 1st, The Smithsonian Institution will initiate rolling cuts to the hours of certain museum institutions, and will close other galleries to compensate for the sequestration budget cuts.  The cuts, which consisted of a 5% reduction of the total budget, has been handled by scaling back travel and training programs, but museum leaders warn that major sacrifices may be necessary if the reductions remain in place through 2014. (more…)

Over the past two years, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has sought to bring a controversial piece by artist John Baldessari to realization, which would require exhibiting a human cadaver in a gallery space, viewed through a small peep-hole.  The work has been attempted several times, but has faced staunch legal opposition and considerations over the will of deceased body being included in the final product.  Says Obrist: “It’s not excluded that one day it will happen. You need the consent of the person obviously before they die. At the same time you need the consent of the family as well as legal authorization.” (more…)

Mobile Homestead, one of the last works created by American artist Mike Kelley before his suicide last year, will open at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit on May 11th.  The piece, a loyal recreation of Kelley’s childhood home in suburban Detroit, will be used as a community space of sorts, open for the people of Kelley’s home city to hold shows, art events or meetings.  “He kept saying to me, ‘This is never going to happen — it’s a joke,’ because that’s the way he was,” said Marsha Miro, founder and director of the contemporary museum. “But he also said he thought it would be one of the most important things he ever did, partly because it would keep on being a living piece.” (more…)

Darren Almond, Fullmoon@Cape Reinga (2012), via Matthew Marks Gallery

Currently on view at Matthew Marks are a series of sixteen photographs, part of Darren Almond‘s fullmoon series, in which he allows the light of the full moon to illuminate landscapes from all seven continents.

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New York Police raided the gallery of New York art dealer Helly Nahmad, son of billionaire art dealer David Nahmad, at 975 Madison Avenue, in connection with a major government crackdown on illicit online gambling and money laundering.  The raid is connected an alleged gambling ring, which reportedly hosted high-stakes poker events for major celebrities and athletes, itself, reportedly, an offshoot of a broader money-laundering operation.  Prosecutors are expected to comment on the investigation today. (more…)

Art Basel’s “Unlimited Sector,” a fair section dedicated to large-scale art, will get an expansion this year.  An extension project by architects Herzog & De Meuron has added an additional 2,500 square meters of space to the Unlimited Section in Hall 1 of the exhibition space, opening the door for more works.  The Unlimited Sector this year will feature works by Theaster Gates, Ai Weiwei, Antony Gormley, and Adriana Varejao, among many others, raising the number of exhibiting artists up to 79 from last year’s 62. (more…)

Beginning May 1st, The Museum of Modern Art will remain open 7 days a week, following the recent announcement that The Metropolitan Museum of Art would also be opening its doors every day.  MoMA has usually closed on Tuesdays for cleaning and maintenance. (more…)

Artist Egon Schiele’s first diary, written when he was a boy of 16, living in Austria, is slated for publication this month, part of Dr. Christian Bauer’s new book Egon Schiele: The Beginning.  The notebooks feature poetry to his early loves, as well as drawings and sketches from the very beginning of his career.  On one page, Schiele writes: “You rosy, enchanting creature,/ Seeing you makes my heart ache./…In a short line – I love you.” (more…)

James Turrell, Roden Crater (Sunset) (2009), via PACE Gallery

In anticipation of his major, three-museum retrospective beginning next month in New York, Los Angeles and Houston, artist James Turrell is exhibiting a selection of mocels, photographs and designs from his ongoing Roden Crater Project at PACE Gallery’s 57th Street location.  Offering a complex portrait of the artist’s ambitious creative site, the show presents a look at Roden Crater as Turrell moves into the next stage of its construction.

James Turrell, Roden Crater and Autonomous Structures (Installation View), via PACE Gallery

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Creative Time is honoring artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel this year during its annual Spring Gala, and has just released a video of actor Al Pacino, recounting his personal experiences with Schnabel.  “He came to my house once and looked at a couple of my paintings.”  Pacino said.  “I thought: ‘he’s looking at a painting I did.  If he likes, it I know he’s a real phony.  He didn’t like it, and with Julian, he lets you know right away.” (more…)

GQ is currently featuring an interview with painter Kehinde Wiley, profiling the artist on a recent trip to Morocco for his ongoing portraiture series.  Charting the artist’s early life in South Central Los Angeles through his ascension in the art world, the piece offers a studied history of both Wiley’s life and output, including his famous portrait of Michael Jackson.  Initially, “I ignored him, because quite honestly I thought it was a prank,” Wiley says. “Surprisingly, he was really knowledgeable about art and art history.”  (more…)