Frieze has taken gallery space in London’s Mayfair District. “We can confirm that Frieze is planning to take a lease on 9 and 9a Cork Street, subject to obtaining all relevant permissions, with a view to create a space for ambitious exhibition projects. Further updates and information will be available in the forthcoming months,” a spokesperson says. (more…)
In a new study, an AI algorithm capable of creating Chinese landscape paintings fooled human evaluators over 50% of the time. Princeton student Alice Xue’s work on whether a machine could pass a Visual Turing Test showed that machines are now able to create works able to fool evaluators over half the time. (more…)
Tracey Emin has an interview in the Art Newspaper this week, as she discusses her recently opened shows and challenging 2020. “I think when I was younger, I had more of a blind ambition,” she says. “Now I haven’t got that at all. I just need to do the things I want to do.” (more…)
Olafur Eliasson at Tanya Bonakdar, via Art Basel
As the year rolls into December, and businesses remain shuttered over Covid-19, the Art Basel fair franchise has launched another edition of its Online Viewing Rooms series, marking off the string of days normally occupied by Art Basel’s famed Miami Beach fair with a more restrained, but equally well-stocked outing that seems to have notched strong response in its early hours. Long marking the end of the art world’s fall season, and serving as a much-needed last bash of the year for art lovers and art workers worldwide, this year’s edition of Art Basel’s December fair comes without the endless string of afterparties, replaced with a range of online offerings. (more…)
Artist Christoph Büchel is being pressured by the Venice Biennale to return the sunken boat he exhibited at last year’s Venice Biennale in memory of the drowned migrants who died onboard. “Starting in November 2019, we have repeatedly asked Christoph Büchel and his gallery Hauser & Wirth, to respect the commitment the artist made to return [the boat] to its owner, the municipality of Augusta in Sicily, which loaned it to Büchel,” the Venice Biennale said in a statement. (more…)
The Tate has announced plans to cut around 12% of its workforce, amounting to around 120 full-time positions, in order to survive the economic impact of the pandemic. “We hope that this voluntary process will help us make these significant savings, but we cannot rule out having to move to compulsory redundancy in 2021 to meet the necessary level of reductions. If so, we will protect as many jobs as possible and ensure that no area of the workforce is unfairly hit harder than any other,” says director Maria Balshaw. (more…)
Evgen Copi Gorisek at Plan X, via Untitled
Each year, the first week of December is normally reserved for Miami Beach, a bastion of sun and sand that welcomed international hordes of art lovers to its Art Deco havens and bustling streets for the proceedings of Miami Art Week and, at its center, Art Basel Miami Beach. Yet with the new surge of Covid-19, and the challenges the disease has posed to the art world, this year sees the annual end of year fair and its hordes of parties practiced in proxy, with a similar bevy of sales events heading online. Not least of those is Untitled Art Fair. (more…)
A young boy thrown from a viewing platform at the Tate Modern can now walk, CNN reports. “Despite everything, he continues to make efforts and progress: he begins to walk with a tetrapod cane while we hold him by the back of the coat for balance,” the boy’s family says. (more…)
A piece in Art News this week charts former banker David Schrader’s impact on Sotheby’s private sales division. “He knows a lot about the art world and a lot about business,” says Pace CEO Marc Glimcher. “When someone like that enters the art world, it can be a disaster. But for him it was not. He is great to work with.” (more…)
A series of collaborative works by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns created for a window display at Bergdorf Goodman will head to auction at Christie’s, Art Market Monitor reports. (more…)
Sarah McBride, the newly elected state senator for Delaware, and the highest ranking openly transgender elected official in the country, has an interview in Art Newspaper this week, where she speaks on her experiences as a trustee at the Delaware Art Museum. “The arts were an integral part of my self-discovery, my journey toward authenticity,” she says. “It was in the performing arts that I was able to explore my identity, my gender, different experiences and emotions.” (more…)
Art News reviews rumors that Frieze is planning an art fair edition in Seoul, South Korea, as local vendors clamor to get an upper hand on any potential announcements. “We are always looking at potential new opportunities and have a great relationship with the Korean galleries, institutions, and collectors,” said a Frieze spokesperson. “Anything is possible, but there’s nothing to report at this stage.” (more…)
Art Basel Miami Beach is cancelled, but Miami Art Week is still rolling this week in the Florida city, leading many to question the city’s art scene and motivations, including a dinner party hosted by the recently-divorced Libbie Mugrabi. “Now I settled a divorce and I have a lot of money,” she says. “And I can do whatever I want with it. It’s my choice. And this is what I want to do.” (more…)
The German government has approved the highest-ever cultural budget for the country, Art Newspaper reports. “This resounding acknowledgement by parliament of the critical importance of culture and the media is a major signal in these difficult times,” says Culture Minister Monika Grütters. (more…)
The mystery around the monolith discovered in the Utah desert has gotten deeper, after the metal structure, which some attribute to artist John McCracken, disappeared from its location. “Almost as quickly as it appeared it has now disappeared,” a statement from the Department of Public Safety reads. (more…)
A piece in The Atlantic this week charts the ongoing internal debates over race and representation currently roiling art museums, and points to a long-overdue reckoning amongst arts institutions. “Historically, I would say [collecting decisions depend on] institutional curatorial expertise right there with artists’ intent, and way down the road, thinking about the visitor experience or relevance to the community,” says Lori Fogarty, the executive director of the Oakland Museum of California. “That is shifting … I think we are at a moment of complete reimagination for museums.” (more…)
Theaster Gates, Black Vessel (Installation View), via Art Observed
Marking his first solo exhibition in New York City, artist Theaster Gates has touched down at Gagosian Gallery, bringing with him a diverse and conceptually-rich selection of works that underscore his work as a prominent activist and cultural force in American art. Underscoring the artist’s complex and intuitive work with a range of materials, equally anchored in the histories of racial and social justice movements, and in the canon of art history, not to mention the artist’s own personal narrative, the show traces a range of ideas and concepts through the artist’s body, making for a powerful first show in the Big Apple.
Alex Da Corte, Helter Shelter Or: The Red Show! or… (Installation View), via Sadie Coles HQ
Marking a new wrinkle in an ever-evolving artistic oeuvre, artist Alex Da Corte touches down this month at Sadie Coles HQ for a show of works that continues his approach towards larger than life spaces and gestures, orchestrating a surreal series of physical pairings and semiotic exchanges within the framework of the gallery. Taking his expressive and intriguing body of works into a broader bend of language and understanding, the artist makes the most out of a relatively minimal setup. (more…)
A piece in the Art Newspaper details what a Biden administration could mean for the arts. “The big idea was to create a White House office on arts, culture and the creative industries,” says Megan Beyer, the co-chair of the campaign’s Arts Policy Committee and a former executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities under Obama. (more…)
A piece in the New York Times looks at the recently discovered steel monolith found in the Utah desert, and asks if the work might actually be a long-hidden piece by John McCracken. “The gallery is divided on this,” the artist’s gallerist, David Zwirner said in a statement. “I believe this is definitely by John.” (more…)
At least 32 fake invitations to participate in the prestigious Documenta art festival in Kassel have gone out to arts professionals around the globe, Art Newspaper reports. “Unfortunately we don’t know yet who sent them,” says a spokeswoman for Documenta. “We are in contact with experts, but the emails are very well encrypted. Some recipients have noticed that the invitations are not genuine, but others have not and of course it is a great disappointment to them when they find out. We feel very sorry about this.” (more…)
Hank Willis Thomas does an interview this week with Art News, and holds forth on how he sees his practice working in politics and activism. “If we are dealing with centuries old problems in century old ways, if we really want to transcend we’re going to take action,” he says. (more…)
The White House has acquired Isamu Noguchi’s Floor Frame (1962), the first work by an Asian-American in the White House’s holdings. “Noguchi’s inclusion in the White House Collection is a worthy testament to his incredible life’s work and is a milestone in our efforts to ensure that Americans from all cultural backgrounds are represented,” Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association. (more…)
Alex Prager has a new, large-scale installation on view at LACMA this month, re-creating the landscape and iconographies of the annual office Christmas party. “This is a very difficult time and there hasn’t been much humor in the world in the last nine months; it’s been a lot of hatred and a lot of polarization,” Prager says. “Humor is a way to shine light on something that’s not necessarily an easy thing to experience — we can’t have these parties right now, we can’t have any parties — and this allows us to laugh at ourselves.” (more…)