Warren Kanders has stepped down as Vice Chair of the Whitney, following months of pressure to oust him from the position. “The targeted campaign of attacks against me and my company that has been waged these past several months has threatened to undermine the important work of the Whitney,” he wrote in his resignation letter to the board. “I joined this board to help the museum prosper. I do not wish to play a role, however inadvertent, in its demise.” (more…)

Yang Fudong, Dawn Breaking – A Museum Film Project, Day 30 (2018), via Marian Goodman

Considered one of China’s most important contemporary artists, the Shanghai-based Yang Fudong’s work has evolved through a diverse series of focal points and interests over the course of his career, moving through painting, video and other bodies of work that underscore his place as a central contributor to the landscape of Chinese contemporary art and a prominent voice in the national discourse. This month in London, the artist presents an exhibition of new work at Marian Goodman, the first with the gallery in London, and the international premiere of his epic project Dawn Breaking – A Museum Film Project. (more…)

A piece in National Geographic looks at the work of conservation scientist Eric Breitung at The Met. “My focus is the environment of the whole museum,” he says. “Conservation started by looking at how to treat objects that have been damaged…Now we’re thinking about how to set up displays and storage so that kind of damage doesn’t happen in the first place.” (more…)

David Hammons has designed a special limited edition release of jazz figurehead Ornette Coleman’s music. “It took me almost 10 years to understand abstract music,” he says.  (more…)

A number of artists have raised concerns about Boris Johnson’s record on the arts after assuming Tory leadership and the position of Prime Minister.  “When Boris Johnson campaigned to become mayor of London first time, one of his pledges involved cutting budgets for art projects like the Fourth Plinth; that was until he realised that culture for London was actually a good [thing],” says Michael Elmgreen of Elmgreen & Dragset. “Typically, he had strong opinions about subject matters he didn’t have any clue about, and then later he had to change his mind when he was finally confronted with the facts. However, that didn’t really make him interested in the arts.” (more…)

Marianne Boesky now represents the work of Gina Beavers, Art News reports.  “Gina’s works are incredible in their articulation of critical conversations in both contemporary art practice and in our wider society,” Boesky said in a statement. “She has an innate ability to play with and push the limits of our understanding of artistic hierarchies and disciplines, as well as to reflect to us our own cultural ideals—for better or worse.” (more…)

Eric Fischl, The Exchange (2018), via Sprüth Magers

For over four decades, Eric Fischl has produced uncompromising images of American society, presenting a challenging and often surreal perspective on the forms and functions of middle and upper class malaise as reflected in the body itself. Figures routinely share space on his canvases, yet their gazes rarely meet, lounging or posed in a manner that reflects a certain deconstruction of the body as persona. Even when they do, through composition, pose and gesture, they are trapped in the midst of strained exchanges, moments of exchange and interaction that seems to place the viewer in the midst of a meditation on the body and on the societies it constructs.  Marking his first solo exhibition in LA in 25 years, the artist’s current exhibition, Complications From an Already Unfulfilled Life, marks both a continuation of this thread and a new path forward, marking his first show in the Californian metropolis with Sprüth Magers. (more…)

Daniel Richter, Plications of Come (2019), via Regen Projects

Currently on view at Regen Projects in Los Angeles, painter Daniel Richter has brought forth a selection of new works, continuing recent explorations in methodology the artist first began experimenting with in 2015.  One of the most influential painters of his generation, Richter’s work continues the lineage of post-war German painting that includes artists such as Werner Büttner, Martin Kippenberger, and Albert Oehlen.  Mixing together disparate threads of figurative painting and abstraction, his pieces twist pop culture, media images and other bits of communicative detritus through a shared space, resulting in swirling compositions that implies an ever-open eye on the world around him. (more…)

The Louvre Museum will partner with french luxury cruise company Ponant to organize two culture cruises in 2020.   The first chartered trips will cover the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean.  (more…)

UK Parliament’s DCMS Committee will investigate how lotteries are “having an impact on the way people choose to spend their money”, and consider how the lottery might be restructured for “good causes.”  “Against a background of falling lottery receipts we want to consider the sustainability of the lottery,” DMCS chair Damian Collins says. (more…)

The NYT looks at the challenges faced by museums and employees in the recent struggles over unionization that have roiled institutions in the U.S.  “There’s a really endemic feeling in the art world, that’s definitely maintained by the people in charge of institutions, that we’re lucky to have these jobs,” says Dana Kopel, who helped organize for employees at the New Museum.  “But these are jobs, and we deserve to have rights as workers.” (more…)

Artist Lee Ufan gets a profile in the WSJ this week, exploring his life and practice.  “His studio is a very serene and uncluttered space where he’s probably only thinking about one painting at a time,” says Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu. “The moment at which he decides to paint or selects the rock, that’s the one brief moment of making, but it’s all the thinking that went into it before that trains and prepares him for the act.” (more…)

A piece in Art News looks at the continued push for an arts museum in Las Vegas, and the players involved.  “Vegas has been the entertainment capital of the world, and it has been daunting to introduce a bona fide cultural institution into this energized mix,” says David Walker, director of the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.  (more…)

Marisa Merz, via Gladstone

Marisa Merz, the Italian sculptor whose enigmatic and intricate sculptural arrangements was a foundational part of the impact of the Arte Povera movement in the country and around the globe, has passed away at the age of 93.  Merz, the only woman associated with the vanguard movement, blazed her own path through the landscape of post-war Italy, and founded a sculptural language that is enduringly important today.

The wife of Mario Merz, Marisa was born in Turin, Italy, in 1926, but little information on her early years persists.  Yet her time at home during the 1960’s marked her first experiments with simple materials, working with sheets of metal and thread to create nuanced clusters of material and subtle engagements with her family life.  Merz’s work maintained a sense of intimacy and love, tenderness and the human body, that marked her work as distinct from her contemporaries, and which has made her work enduringly resonant.

Marisa Merz, via Gladstone

She is survived by her daughter Beatrice, who heads the Fondazione Merz, and who told the NYT Style section in 2017: “I recently asked her how some of her works came about, what was the thought, inspiration, or approach behind them. She answered that she always and only did what she liked, and that every work originated from the pleasure of making it, from a spontaneous gesture or finding of a particular object or material.”

Read more:
Marisa Merz, Key Arte Povera Figure and Relentlessly Inventive Sculptor, Is Dead at 93 [Art News]
MARISA MERZ (1926–2019) [Artforum]

Two Sotheby’s shareholders have sued in NY to block the planned $2.7 billion purchase of the auction house by French collector and telecom magnate Patrick Drahi’s BidFair USA, claiming that Drahi has not disclosed enough information. “As the vast majority of all public company mergers over $100 million are the subject of shareholder litigation, the lawsuits filed were expected and routine,” Sotheby’s said in an emailed statement. “We do not expect the suits to have any impact on our targeted closing timing of the fourth quarter of this year.” (more…)

Judy Chicago will open a major retrospective next year at San Francisco’s de Young Museum.  “I’ve been working for a long time,” Chicago says. “I used to say I hope lived to long enough to come out from behind the shadow of The Dinner Party.” (more…)

More artists have withdrawn from the Whitney Biennial over Warren Kanders’s ownership in several defense companies, with collective Forensic Architecture withdrawing after finding ties between Kanders and bullets used by the Israeli Military in Gaza. (more…)

Collector Jean Pigozzi has donated 45 works to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with a focus on his substantial holdings of contemporary works from Africa. The gify includes work by Bodys Isek Kingelez, Jean Depara, and more.  “I hope that this donation will help open the eyes of millions of art lovers from all over the world to the amazing, and not yet well-enough known, art from the oldest—and now the youngest—continent on our planet,” Pigozzi said in a statement. (more…)

The government of South Korea has pledged to open 186 new museums as part of a massive building boom. The plan also features expanded resources for institutions around the country.

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Pioneering painter Ed Clark has joined Hauser & Wirth, and will open his first show with the gallery in New York this September.“The recent work is incredibly free and radical,” says partner Marc Payot. “With the show in New York we want to really activate the museums, the curators, the critical thinking, to work toward a strong institutional presence.” (more…)

Russian film director and current Venice Biennale Russian pavilion artist Alexander Sokurov (Faust, Russian Ark) will shut down his independent film foundation, Primer Inotnatsii after ongoing pressure by the Russian government.  The artist claims that “unfriendliness and aggressiveness” from the state’s culture ministry prevented him from continuing in his work with the foundation. (more…)

The nation of Benin is building a new space in the city of Abomey for 26 objects of art and cultural heritage looted by French troops in 1894 pledged by the Macron government back to the West African country. “They will allow us to build a new museum and make the royal palaces more economically sustainable,” Gabin Djimass, Abomey’s tourism chief, says of the artifacts. (more…)

Artist Cary Leibowitz and the creative director Simon Lince give the NYT a tour of the upstate home, and the collection they have built. “When I first met Simon, I was already in Harlem,” Leibowitz says. “But I had been a hoarder for years, and it was impossible for someone to just move in and feel comfortable. So that’s when we started looking up here.”  (more…)

A piece in the NYT this week charts the recent removal of the Sackler name from the galleries at the Louvre, and forecasts the likelihood that more museums will follow suit.  “We are not a partisan organization, we are not a political organization, so we don’t have a litmus test for whom we take gifts from based on policies or politics,” said Daniel H. Weiss of the Met’s removal of the family name, noting the extreme circumstances at play. “If there are people who want to support us, for the most part we are delighted.” (more…)