The Telegraph looks at the growing competition among the world’s wealthiest for high-priced art trophies as status symbols, and notes the growing trend towards the establishment of non-profit foundations and museums as an even more appealing demonstration of wealth.  “Making your collection available to the public, understanding the journey you have been on, your taste,” says Celine Fressart, head of special projects at 1858 Ltd.  “That, really, is the ultimate in bragging rights.” (more…)

This year’s Armenian pavilion at the Venice Biennale will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the massacre of more than one million Armenians by Ottoman Turks during the First World War.  The exhibition, titled Armenity and held on San Lazzaro degli Armeni island (home to the Armenian Catholic Monastery), will feature works by artist Sarkis, and is curated by Adelina Cüberyan von Fürstenberg, who has often worked with the artist.  “It is very important for me to keep the production going, for culture but also to keep the dialogue open,” Sarkis  says.  “We are the link between two pavilions. We are the breath. Whoever thinks otherwise is free to think so, of course.” (more…)

David Wojnarowicz, Cal (Factory Face), 1984

The group show is an undeniable part of the New York art world’s summer repertoire, dabbling in different styles and scenes while blending together the works of artists ranging from the young to the historical, emerging to the iconic. Among the early entries into the spring group show calendar is Debris currently on view at James Fuentes Gallery in the Lower East Side. This show is packed with familiar, utilitarian, and recognizable objects, many of which can be easily found in the vibrantly fluid New York urban landscape. (more…)

The Art Institute of Chicago has received a major donation of contemporary works this week, totaling 42 works valued at over $400 million, including iconic pieces from Andy Warhol, including an Elizabeth Taylor portrait and Mona Lisa Four Times, as well as several “Film Stills” from Cindy Sherman.  “It’s a powerful statement to have a collection of this international stature staying here in Chicago,” says Robert Levy, chairman of the Art Institute’s board. “It’s unbelievably exciting for the Art Institute, for the City of Chicago, for the entire art community of Chicago. It’s all good.” (more…)

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is no longer represented by Gagosian Gallery, Artforum reports, a move which ends a partnership first started in 2008.  The organization will now look to Pace Gallery (which represented Rauschenberg later in his career), Thaddaeus Ropac, and São Paulo’s Luisa Strina for worldwide representation.   (more…)

Alfred Taubman, via Detroit Free Press

Alfred Taubman, the shopping mall developer and business mastermind who turned Sotheby’s from a private auction house to the publicly traded art market power it is today, has passed away at the age of 91.

Taubman earned his fortune during the years following World War II, re-engineering the American retail experience through his design and development of the modern shopping mall, and used his earnings to purchase Sotheby Parke Bernet for $130 million in 1983.  Within five years, Taubman had retooled its customer experience and sales strategies before taking the company public in 1988.   (more…)

Former Walt Disney President Michael Ovitz has filed a $2.5 Million bad faith breach of contract lawsuit against insurance company American International Group (AIG) and Chartis Property Casualty Co. for allegedly failing to reimburse Ovitz for a lost Richard Prince work.  “While Defendants ultimately acknowledged coverage and full insurance benefits for another loss under almost identical circumstances, Defendants steadfastly, unreasonably, and without probable cause, refused to provide coverage for the loss at issue herein,” and thus represented bad faith, the suit says. (more…)

The New York Times reports on the move of Christie’s Impressionist and Evening Auction for Modern Art to the second week of May, a move that crowds the market with 5 major sales in the same week.  “Fatigue may have set in by then, but it is very hard to predict,” says gallerist and former Sotheby’s exec David Nash. (more…)

A new report released by fine art insurance company Hiscox finds that an increasing number of collectors, at least 75% of those surveyed, are viewing online art sales as an investment opportunity.  “I wonder whether this change in attitude is genuine,” says Robert Read, the head of fine art at Hiscox, “or whether it is a dot.com moment where people feel they are missing out if they don’t.”

A thorough forensic study dating Francisco Goya’s private series “Witches and Old Women” has resulted in an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in London, showing the works in chronological order for the first time.  “His work is all about capturing that human spark,” says Goya scholar Juliet Wilson-Bareau.  “From his youth onwards, he observed everything that life had to offer. He was utterly fascinated by the human animal form from the word go.” (more…)

This year’s edition of Art Basel in Switzerland will feature a specially commissioned collaborative sculpture and performative work by Rirkrit Tiravanija, architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller, and chef Antto Melasniemi, titled DO WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY.   “Creating a place of hospitality, visitors can engage through the activities on offer, such as the drinking of herbal tea plucked fresh from the on-site garden, the preparation and eating of food,” the organization said in a statement. “The food will be rooted in Thai tradition and will be available with no fixed schedule, menu or price list: compensation is self-determined, by self-serving, serving others, donations or even participating in the cooking or washing up.” (more…)

The 2015 Artindex France report, annually released by Art Newspaper sister publication Journal des Arts has been released this week, with Berlin-based, French-Albanian artist Anri Sala topping the list, followed by François Morellet and Christian Boltanski, respectively.  The survey bases its findings on the number of solo exhibitions worldwide, compounded by each venue’s level of recognition and prominence. (more…)

Adam Szymczyk, the director for Documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens has stated his interest in exhibited the full collection of works from the Cornelius Gurlitt trove at the exhibition in 2017.  “I am not interested in an exclusive or first spectacular presentation but I would like to show the entire Gurlitt estate in the political and aesthetic context of Documenta 14,” he says.  “Our exhibition provides a unique and timely public platform for such a presentation.”  (more…)

Collector Bob Rennie is interviewed in Bloomberg this week, offering his reflections and tips on starting a dedicated art collection, including his takes on art as investment.  “We can’t pretend that art is not an asset,” he notes. “It has to be managed.” (more…)

The soon-to-open new home of the Whitney Museum was the site of a protest last night, which sought to illuminate the museum’s location above a massive fossil fuel pipeline and vault operated by Spectra Energy.  “Today we are asking: How can a museum that literally covers up the dirty fossil fuel industry be a beacon for the future of art and culture?” an open letter from the protesters read. (more…)

An article in the Wall Street Journal this week notes the details and contractual clauses that accompany sales at the higher end of the art market, often in an attempt to prevent speculation.  “I don’t want to see my clients gambling at auction,” says gallerist Renato Danese. “What if the work doesn’t sell, or sells below the low estimate? That will hurt the artist in terms of current and future sales, and it will hurt my clients.”  (more…)

The New York Times profiles Joanne Heyler, the leader of Los Angeles’s Broad Foundation, and her role in establishing Eli Broad’s vision for his soon to open museum.  “She’s thinking about how to nest this institution in the community, how to engage the broader culture, how to broaden its audience and what the experience is going to be like for someone going to this museum,” says Lisa Dennison, former Guggenheim director and a chairwoman of Sotheby’s. “The book shop, lighting, conservation, storage, the plan for the opening show — it’s all Joanne.” (more…)

Downtown non-profit Art in General has decided not to renew its lease for the Soho/Tribeca space it has occupied for the last 34 years.  “We’ve occupied the space for quite some time,” board president Robert Ferguson says. “Our lease is now coming to an end in December of this year, and we’ve decided to embark on the process of finding a new space.” (more…)

A Cy Twombly blackboard painting may have sold for $60 million in a private sale, Marion Maneker of the Art Market Monitor reports, taking the news from active Twombly collectors.  If confirmed, the price would come close to the record-setting sale of a similar work last year by Nicola Del Roscio, Twombly’s former assistant and head of his foundation. (more…)

With renewed diplomatic activities between Cuba and the United States this year, the Independent forecasts massive interest in this year’s Havana Biennial.  “Most of us are expecting that for the Biennial there will be an explosion of American collectors coming to buy,” says artist Mario González. “It should be a stampede.” (more…)

Taryn Simon, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), all images courtesy Jeu de Paume

On view at Jeu de Paume in Paris is a body of conceptual artwork by artist Taryn Simon, combining photography, text, and graphic design to address issues related to the production and circulation of knowledge, as well as the politics of representation.  The works on view, all produced after 2000, include The Innocents, a piece documenting cases of wrongful convictions in the United States, and underlining photography’s role and function as a both a credible witness and an oppositional agent that blurs truth and fiction.

(more…)

Alex Da Corte, Die Hexe (Installation View), via Art Observed

For the past month and a half, the 77th Street location of Luxembourg and Dayan’s townhouse location has served as a bizarre cross between retro kitsch and haunted house, part of artist Alex Da Corte’s solo exhibition at the space. (more…)

Nathaniel Axel, Snakes and Ladders (2015), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Anton Kern Gallery in Chelsea is a scattershot, yet ultimately compelling series of paintings, sculptures and hybridized formats curated by New York-based critic Bob Nickas, united under the formidable Baudelaire epithet, The Painter of Modern Life.   (more…)

Hito Steyerl at Artist’s Space (Installation View), via Art Observed

Currently on view at both the Artist’s Space galleries and its bookstore at 55 Walker Street, Hito Steyerl is presenting a retrospective of recent work documenting the artist’s plotted political and economic topographies, video and sculptural works that make much of their gradual unveiling of socio-economic situations and environments. (more…)