Wangechi Mutu gets a profile in the NYT this month, as the artist prepares to place her new sculpture commissions for the Met on view, and reflects on her life growing up in Kenya after the end of British colonial rule. “The one thing that’s always missing — I think it’s part of the trauma — is the personal element,” she says. “My parents don’t often talk about their experiences in terms of how it made them feel.” (more…)

Christie’s will sell the collection of renowned architect I.M. Pei over a series of sales in the coming months.  “The Pei name is one that resonates around the world, integrated into the landscape of the dozens of cities that feature a Pei-designed art museum, concert hall, university, hospital, office tower or civic building,” says Marc Porter, Chairman for Christie’s Americas. (more…)

P.P.O.W will move to Tribeca in the fall of 2020. “There are things we could get [in Tribeca] that we just couldn’t get in Chelsea anymore,” says Wendy Olsoff, the gallery’s cofounder. “We’re able to gain a beautiful space in a neighborhood we felt comfortable in…. Chelsea just got to be too corporate for us and our identity. It just didn’t match anymore.” (more…)

Artist Tavares Strachan will give part of the proceeds from his upcoming shows to fund disaster relief in the Bahamas. “These things are more organic than we would like to admit,” he says. “I think the issues will be different in a week as people get evacuated and then it’s rebuilding effort. At this time, people on the ground need to be sheltered and fed.” (more…)

Dis, January 9, 2008 (2019), via Project Native Informant

The New York collective Dis has long reveled in a mixture of the politically-incisive and the socially-mischievous, putting further a body of work that dwells on revolution and change, modes of sociality in the digital age, and the mass-media phenomena that populate the world around us. After a year in which the group moved back into online publishing, embracing a “pivot to video,” trumpeted by social media giant Facebook (which, ironically, was later revealed to be based on a false premise), the collective has opened a show in London at Project Native Informant, compiling a range of recent works that explore the idea of the 2008 economic crisis as a missed opportunity for economic revolution. (more…)

London’s Victoria & Albert Museum  headTristram Hunt said he sees no problem with receiving support from  fossil fuel firms such as BP.  “I think that the pre-history of fossil fuel companies in muddying the science about climate change, in lobbying, in their political acts, have been pretty criminal and they will be judged on that,” he says. “But, I also think they will be part of the solution to dealing with climate change and they are engaged with it. It’s their technological reach, it is their facilities that will also be part of the solution and I think they’re getting there.” (more…)

The UK Government will increase its culture budget by 4.1% in real terms to £1.6bn, after inflation is taken into account, Art Newspaper reports.  This announcement follows several years with no increase in budget. (more…)

Sotheby’s shareholders voted in approval of the acquisition of the auction house by Patrick Drahi, with 91 percent of voting shares counting in favor. “This is an historic moment for Sotheby’s and we are very pleased to have the validation of the company’s shareholders,” says CEO Tad Smith. (more…)

The LA Times reports on the recent discovery of a series of works stolen from homes on the West Side of the city during the 1990’s, and the LAPD’s efforts to catalog the works. “We are in the process of identifying the specific art, artists and how much it might be worth,” says Capt. Lillian Carranza. (more…)

The New Yorker has a piece on Georgia O’Keefe’s sister, Ida, and the artists’ impacts on each other. “She was the queen. . . . and we all loved her,” another sister, Catherine, said of Georgia. (more…)

Berta Fischer (Installation View), via James Fuentes

Marking his second exhibition with the Berlin-based painter, James Fuentes’s current exhibition of works by Berta Fischer brings a summery energy to downtown, a selection of brightly-colored, technically impressive arrangements that underscore the artist’s abilities in the sculptural medium. (more…)

Filmmaker and painter Rosalind Nashashibi will become the first artist in residence at the National Gallery in London . “Over the course of the year [beginning this month], she will work in the National Gallery’s on-site artist’s studio, benefitting from the close proximity to the gallery’s collection, research and teams,” a statement says. (more…)

Marina Abramovic will re-create her famed performance Imponderabilia at London’s Royal Academy of Arts next year, Art Newspaper reports. The work requires visitors to a show to squeeze between the naked bodies of performers to see the rest of the work on view. “If there were no artists, there would be no museums, so we are living doors,” the original project statement said. (more…)

Artist Betye Saar gets a profile in the NYT this week, as she prepares to open a pair of major museum shows this fall, and reflects on her career. “I consider myself a recycler,” she says “I’ve been that way since I was a kid, going through trash to see what people left behind. Good stuff.” (more…)

A piece in the NYT looks at storage conditions at Humboldt Forum in Berlin, and asks if long argued claims about African artifacts being safer in European collections really holds water. “They complain that they do not have enough money to do research on these objects to take proper care of them,” said Tahir Della, a postcolonial activist based in Berlin, “but they had enough money to build a castle in the middle of Berlin.” (more…)

Michael Rakowitz is the winner of the 2020 Nasher Prize for Sculpture for his incisive critiques of current social and political landscapes. “Michael’s work deals with migrant populations and homeless populations, and some of it deals with works of art and books that have been destroyed, in Germany, Afghanistan and Iraq, where his family is from,” says Nasher director Jeremy Strick. “As a result, he harbors an intense interest “in people who have suffered through wars or genocide or political violence.” (more…)

Hong Kong artists speak with Art News this week, as protests continue to roil the city. “In the last couple of years, we have witnessed a systemic erosion of the values that make this city unique,” says artist Samson Young. (more…)

Pace Gallery will represent artist Nina Katchadourian, as it prepares to open its new flagship in Chelsea.  “I’m incredibly happy,” Katchadourian says. “I’ve never worked with a gallery that operates on this scale, and there are going to be great things about their reach.” (more…)

Mariner Kemper, CEO and chairman of UMB Financial Corp (UMB Bank) and a trustee of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri is facing pressure to resign over connections to President Trump’s controversial immigration policies.  UMB Bank represents the bondholders for the publicly owned and privately operated Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls, Rhode Island, which houses detained immigrants. (more…)

Alex Prager’s new work is profiled in the New Yorker, as the artist turns her camera lens on the landscapes and people of Los Angeles.  The works explore new perspectives and frames for the artist, expanding on her intriguing body of crowd-based photography. (more…)

John Currin gets a profile in GQ this week, with the artist holding court on a range of topics from his taste in cars to his style of painting.  “I sometimes think I’m trying to paint like I am Sean Connery,” he says, “but the closest I’ll ever get is Clint Eastwood.” (more…)

Amy Sadao is stepping as director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Art News reports.  “I fulfilled and surpassed all of my goals, so this is the perfect time to think about my next step,” she says. “This is the right time for me to be able to write, research, and conduct interviews with people I admire, and it’s the right time for the ICA. I’m excited to see where ICA goes from here.” (more…)

Elizabeth Murray, DuckWabbit (1992), via Pace Gallery

The work of American painter Elizabeth Murray gets its first UK exhibition this summer in London, with Camden Arts Centre showcasing an impressive selection of the artist’s work from across her multifaceted career. Documenting Murray’s continued engagement with the languages of abstraction and conceptualism, the artist’s work delves into various iterations of painterly expression, from studies in violent action to nuanced investigations of the canvas as a form and medium in and of itself. (more…)

The altarpiece of Saint Catherine by Jacopo Tintoretto, formerly owned by David Bowie, has been returned to Venice, after Belgian collector Marnix Neerman purchased the work and loaned it to the Palazzo Ducale. (more…)