Arts Council England has published details of 46 objects and collections worth £58.6m that will go to UK museums and galleries in lieu of tax, among them works by Damien Hirst and a portrait by Rubens. “It is also heartening to see that, in line with last year, around 86% of the total tax settled has been for items allocated outside London,” says ACE Chair Nicholas Serrota. (more…)

The Oakland Museum of California is launching an $85 million capital campaign for renovations to its building. “We are as close to a town square as Oakland has,” says Lori Fogarty, the director and chief executive of the Oakland Museum of California. “We started with the framework that the museum was going to contribute to Oakland becoming a more equitable and empathetic city.”  (more…)

Art News asked visitors at Pace Gallery’s opening last week about the “craziest experience” they’d had at an art opening. “I had a friend in Vienna who lost a bet and he had to take his pants off and order a drink at the bar,” says artist Christian Rosa. (more…)

Maurizio Cattelan’s 18-karat golden toilet has been stolen from its installation at Blenheim Palace. “We are shocked and saddened by this news and are working with the Police to restore the artwork to the exhibition as soon as possible,” says Edward Spencer-Churchill, the founder of the Blenheim Art Foundation. (more…)

The Manchester Art Gallery is taking an active role in improving gender imbalances in its collection, The Guardian reports, acquiring a series of works by women in an attempt to even out representation among its holdings. “They will, without doubt, extend the discourse around representation and identity through their integration into the permanent collection,” says Caroline Douglas, the director of Contemporary Art Society, who donated works to the collection. (more…)

Kenneth Goldsmith’s Venice project displaying Hilary Clinton’s privately stored emails received an unexpected visitor this past week, the former Secretary of State and First Lady herself, who read some of the emails back.. “It’s amazing—it completed the circle, in a way,” Goldsmith says. (more…)

Norah Stone, the Bay Area philanthropist and art collector who has long ranked on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list, has died at the age of 81. “The Stones really wanted to know what was happening in the world now. They loved the unusual art that paved new territory, and asked provocative and compelling questions,” says longtime advisor Thea Westreich. (more…)

John Giorno, Do the Undone (Installation View), via Sperone Westwater

Opened this month at Sperone Westwater, celebrated poet and artist John Giorno has unleashed a selection of new sculptural works, canvases and other pieces centered around his ongoing explorations of language, energy and space. Having lived and worked on The Bowery for over 50 years, the show marks something of a return home for the artist, emphasizing his presence on the famed street while also emphatically marking his a renewed vivaciousness in his work. (more…)

Felix LA will return in 2020 with an expanded exhibitor list of 60 gallerists.  “We are thrilled to expand Felix’s community and welcome an incredible slate of new and returning exhibitors for the second edition,” founders Dean Valentine, Al Morán, and Mills Morán said in a statement. “The growth and diversification of our roster attests to the burgeoning Los Angeles art scene and the desperate need for the new type of art fair experience that Felix offered collectors and exhibitors alike.” (more…)

Four departments at the Tate Modern have brought on new talent under the title Curator, International Art, signaling an expanded focus for the institution’s programming.  “Their significant experience and expertise will play an important part in expanding our knowledge of modern and contemporary art from Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, furthering our ambition to present a truly international story of art through our program and collection,” says Frances Morris, Tate Modern’s director. (more…)

Artist Nicholas Galanin has a piece in Art News this week as he discusses his decisions to pull work from this year’s Whitney Biennial.  “My decision to remove my work from the Whitney came when my hope for meaningful conversation was met with inaction—on the part of many but, most fatefully, by the museum, which for weeks and then months failed to issue any meaningful response to protests mounting within its walls,” he says. “For me, that inaction translated to complicity with militarized denial of the right of Indigenous people to freely move through land that we belong to.” (more…)

Larry Gagosian gets an interview in GQ this week, talking about his rise through the ranks of the art world, and his views on running a business in the arts. “All businesses are competitive,” he says. “If you’re not in a competitive business, you’re probably in a shitty business.” (more…)

March Avery, Sofa Companions (1967), via Blum & Poe

Currently on view at Blum & Poe through the end of this week, the New York based artist March Avery marks her first solo exhibition with the gallery, and uses the platform to develop a masterful exhibition around still moments and subtle gestures, a fitting first intro to the artist’s body of work, which now spans over five decades. (more…)

Gagosian has taken over representation of the estate of artist Simon Hantaï, Art News reports. “If the works are of good quality, it’s always a good opportunity,” says Jean-Olivier Després, a director of Gagosian Paris. “There’s no strategy of focusing on living artists or estates. We’re focusing on good things.” (more…)

NYC Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Tom Finklepearl has a piece in the Art Newspaper this week emphasizes that the importance of diversity and inclusion in New York cultural institutions, and emphasizes the improvements to workplace culture that steps to emphasize these values can have at arts organizations. “Today, we are developing new plans that we hope will open our institutions’ doors wider than ever,” he writes. “It matters who leads and who makes decisions at these organizations: diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels will make our cultural community more dynamic, open and intellectually complex. (more…)

Nick van Woert, Untitled (detail) (2019), via Art Observed

Opening a show of new works at GRIMM New York under the title Body Parts, artist Nick van Woert returns to the city with a studied and at times strange investigation of embodiment, persona and material, arranging assemblages of human limbs, cast off materials and furniture to create a striking investigation of humanity and its functions in social space. (more…)

The Whitney has awarded its $100,000 Whitney Biennial Bucksbaum Award to Tiona Nekkia McClodden. “McClodden’s work is bold and original and her contribution to the Whitney Biennial is extraordinarily rich with cultural, historical, and spiritual resonances,” says museum director Adam Weinberg. (more…)

A piece in Bloomberg this week looks at the market for Vija Celmins, and how the artist’s growing market stature might explode after her show opens this fall at the Met Breuer. “Her collector base grew from the initial people who were interested to other people who saw her museum shows and wanted a work in their collection,” says dealer Renee McKee. “It was always as difficult to get her to release her work as it was to get her to raise her prices. That’s Vija.” (more…)

Art News reports on a clash between art handling company The British Shop and Chicago’s Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, after the company lost a work by artist Clotilde Jimenez.  “Where we are now is in a moment of a fight,” Ibrahim says. “I’m not going to let this go and pass by. It’s not something I or the artist should accept.” (more…)

The Met has settled long-running negotiations with its HVAC workers, agreeing to a 63% pay hike for all licensed professionals after reports of overwork and underpay. “For about a year the Met Engineering Dept. had only 15 engineers, down from 35,” says Council Rep Dan McCabe. “They frequently worked double shifts and at times triple shifts, six or seven days a week. Because the museum paid significantly lower wages, no one applied for the HVAC postings or they’d only stay a year and leave for better pay elsewhere.”

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Mary Abbott, an abstractionist whose works filled the canvas with color and energy,  has passed away at age 98. The artist’s work was known for its fervent energy and her evolving approach to her compositions. “They change as you paint them,” she said of her works. “They are alive and they vibrate.” (more…)

Critic William Feaver has published a portion of his biography of Lucian Freud in The Guardian this week, a book that reflects on the artist’s work and the pair’s long friendship. “With him on the line, how blurred at any hour of day or night were the distinctions between personal and impersonal, between the private and the renowned,” he writes. (more…)

Sotheby’s and Ugo Rondinone are working together this fall to sell a selection of works to benefit bladder cancer research.  (more…)

For the fifth edition of Made in L.A., the Hammer Museum will partner with the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California to share the exhibition between the various venues. “We’re really looking at the legacy of our founders, Henry and Arabella Huntington,” says Christina Nielsen, the Huntington Museum’s director. (more…)