The ongoing dispute between two members of the Cy Twombly Foundation appears to have reached a settlement, the New York Times reports.  Twombly Foundation President Nicola Del Roscio and Vice President Julie Sylvester had filed suit accusing fellow director Thomas Saliba and lawyer Ralph Lerner of valuing several Twombly works (held in their own trust) at a highly inflated $1 billion.  The settlement terms, while not all stated, involved Salbia and Lerner resigning their positions in the Foundation. (more…)

The investigation into a stolen Gustav Klimt painting nearly 17 years ago has been reopened, with authorities using sophisticated DNA testing technology to try and find a match with evidence found on the work’s frame.  Portrait of a Woman was stolen in 1997 from the Ricci-Oddi Gallery in Piacenza, with police unable to find any prior evidence able to track down a suspect.   (more…)

The Museum of Contemporary Art has announced that artists Catherine Opie, John Baldessari and Barbara Kruger are all returning to their positions on the museum’s Board of Trustees.  The artists had previously left their posts over friction with then-director Jeffrey Deitch’s vision for MOCA.  Painter Mark Grotjahn has also been elected to a fourth artist seat on the board, previously occupied by Ed Ruscha.  “I’m very excited about the prospects for MOCA with Philippe leading us and I want to be supportive,” John Baldessari said in a statement. (more…)

Doug Wheeler at David Zwirner, via Art Observed

The new installation by Doug Wheeler, currently on view at David Zwirner’s 20th Street gallery, cites itself as an exploration of the horizon, a delicately shifting light installation inside an enormous ellipsoidal room.  Painted a harsh white, the floor and ceiling reflect the subtly changing neons running just out of site underneath the floorboards of the work.  Comparable to the work of James Turrell, Wheeler’s pieces make much of the illusory capabilities of light acting on space.  His 2012 installation at Zwirner, a massively lit wall giving the impression of an infinite color scape in front of the viewer, bears resemblance to a number of Turrell’s infinite lightscapes, allowing the viewer to slowly gain an awareness of their own act of seeing, and the behavior of their eyes in space.    

Doug Wheeler, LC 71 NY DZ 13 DW (2013), Photo by Tim Nighswander, Imaging4Art © 2014 Doug Wheeler; courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London (more…)

Artist Richard Prince and photographer Patrick Cariou have reportedly settled their case over Prince’s alleged copyright infringement, The New York Times reports.  Prince, who had won a landmark “fair-use” ruling on a majority of the works in question (his Canal Zone series) last year, has settled the case in undisclosed terms, but court documents have indicated that he will not be forced to destroy the works in question. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the current art market, and analyzes the risks and rewards of investing money in contemporary art.  “The new moneyed rich are looking for alternatives to help hedge their bets against any loss in value of their money and the rising risks of concentrating too much of their wealth in stocks,” says Jerry Slusiewicz, president of Pacific Financial Planners. (more…)

Chilean architect Smiljan Radic has won the competition to design the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Hyde Park, set to open June 26th.  Radic’s design, resembling a series of large stones and pillars, will be semi-translucent, and will host a number of events and site-specific projects.  “Radic is a key protagonist of an amazing architectural explosion in Chile,” the Serpentine said in the statement. “While enigmatically archaic, in the tradition of romantic follies, Radic’s designs for the Pavilion also look excitingly futuristic, appearing like an alien space pod that has come to rest on a Neolithic site.” (more…)

Frank Thiel, Perito Moreno #161 (2012/13), via Sean Kelly Gallery

Nowhere is a Place, currently on view at Sean Kelly Gallery, showcases the latest work of German photographer Frank Thiel. For his fifth solo show with the gallery, Thiel presents a grand departure from his best known subject, the disintegrating architectural landscape of Berlin, instead focusing his lens on the glaciers of the Argentine Patagonia. Traveling to Los Glaciares National Park in 2011 and 2012, Thiel captures the colossal ice fields in vivid high definition, printed on a massive scale meant to match his subject’s monumentality.

Frank Thiel, Perito Moreno #91, (2012/13), via Sean Kelly Gallery (more…)

Richard Tuttle, a work from Looking for the Map, via Art Observed

On view at Pace New York from February 7th through March 15th is an exhibition comprised of drawings and studies artist Richard Tuttle has made to prepare for his large-scale commission at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, opening in October of this year.

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The New York Times delves into the work and life of Oscar Murillo, charting the artist’s meteoric rise over the past two years, and his current popularity on the market.  “I came to this by simply working,” Murillo says. “It’s the market, and that has nothing to do with me. I’m just trying to keep things normal. I’ve had to live below my means for so long that I’m keeping it that way.” (more…)

The ongoing struggle for control at Sotheby’s has taken a new turn, with the auction house rejecting the board nominations proposed by Daniel Loeb’s Third Point LLC, and in turn naming Jessica Bibliowicz and Kevin Conroy for board seats. “The composition of your Board is something Sotheby’s takes very seriously, as the experience and expertise of its directors have been and will continue to be important to enabling the Company’s success,” the company said in an open letter to shareholders. (more…)

Ed Ruscha will be featured as part of the High Line Art program’s ongoing commission series this summer, installing his 1977 piece that reads “Honey, I Twisted Through More Damn Traffic Today,” at 10th and West 22nd.  “It has an intimate quality and is a piece you can experience by just walking by it,” said Cecilia Alemani, director of High Line Art.  The piece will go on view May 6th, and is Ruscha’s first ever public art installation in New York.  (more…)

An Alexander Calder sculpture previous installed at Gramercy Park in New York has been installed in Maastricht for this year’s edition of TEFAF Maastricht.  The installation was organized by dealer Christophe van der Weghe, and is for sale for about $20 million. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at Gaugin’s travels to French Polynesia later in his life, and his search “for the childhood of mankind,” a series of travels covered in MoMA’s current show Gaugin: Metamorphoses, curated by Starr Figura, with assistance from Lotte Johnson. (more…)

The international art market had a near-record year last year, with just under $66 billion in sales worldwide, Bloomberg reports, an 8% increase from last year.  This includes an 11% increase in contemporary art, bolstered by monumental sales for works by Warhol, Koons and Bacon at the end of last year. (more…)

Photographer Collier Schorr is profiled in the New York Times this week, following the opening of her newest show at 303 earlier this month.  “I don’t know what to do until I meet them,” Schorr says of engaging with the models she shoots. “Who are you? I’m going to take that picture.” (more…)

Hannah Höch, Staatshäupter (Heads of State) (1930), all images courtesy Whitechapel Gallery

Over 100 works from major international collections by Dada artist Hannah Höch have been compiled for the first major exhibition of her work in Britain, on view at Whitechapel Gallery through March 23, 2014.  Best known for helping originate 20th century photomontage, Höch first gained attention during the Berlin Dada movement of the 1920s in Weimar Germany, cutting out images from fashion magazines and placing them together to create comical social commentaries. Athough many of her colleagues have been given more attention in traditional written art history, Höch was recognized – albeit reluctantly – by better known artists such as George Grosz, Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, and Kurt Schwitters.

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The Wall Street Journal spotlights Jane McSweeney as its “Donor of the Day” in a recent article, tracing her positions on the MoMA film board, the Board of Directors for MoMA Ps1, and her work with the Art Production Fund.  “I literally breathe deeper when I’m around art,” said Ms. McSweeney. “It makes me feel that there are great possibilities on the earth.” (more…)

The newest commission for the Sculpture Committee of the Fund for Park Avenue are now on view for the 2014 season, a series of swirling, ambitious sculptures by Alice Aycock.  “The notion is that there is this big wind that moves up and down the avenue, and that it makes the forms or blows the forms and leaves it in its wake,” said the artist. (more…)

The New York Times traces the prominent presence of transgender narratives in the Whitney Biennial this year, using the thread to examine a broader presence of trans people in the pop culture landscape.  The article comes on the heels of the Biennial’s opening, and the presentation of Relationships, a piece by artists and romantic partners Rhys Ernst and Zackary Drucker that traces their respective gender transitions. (more…)

A long rumored merger between MOCA North Miami and the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach is moving forward, the Miami Herald reports.  MOCANoMi officials are apparently in the final stages of talks over moving the museum collection to Miami Beach.  “At this time, we feel confident that a collaboration with the Bass could make a lot of sense,” says MOCANoMi curator and interim director Alex Gartenfeld. (more…)

The Prada Foundation has announced its planned exhibition for the 2015 Venice Biennale, focusing on sound art and the relationship between art objects and musical instruments.  The Art or Sound will take place at the Serenissima at the Ca’ Corner della Regina palazzo, from June 7 to November 3, 2014, and will include works by John Cage, Richard Artschwager and Laurie Anderson.   (more…)

Rock Climbing Wall at DISown, via Art Observed

Dis has always had one foot in the world of fashion.  Its close ties to Hood by Air and Telfar Clemens notwithstanding, the New York-based collective has a long history of covering contemporary fashion and arts with a similarly detached eye, always seeking to underline the commodity culture lurking behind the guise of both “high arts.”  Now, the group is taking its longtime skirting of the line between art and commerce to a new level, opening its “retail diffusion” shop DisOwn at Red Bull Studios this week during Armory Week.

DISown at Red Bull Studios (Installation View), via Dis (more…)

Glenn Ligon is interviewed in The Independent this week, as the artist prepares to open a new show at Thomas Dane Gallery in London, and recounts an experience meeting President Barack Obama, in which the president told the artist he owned several of Ligon’s works.  “I thought to myself, ‘the President of the United States knows what’s in his house,'” he says. “It’s not just decoration. He looks at it and knows when it’s not there. It was touching to realize that visual art is an integral part of his and his family’s life. It’s not just window dressing, not something you have to talk about because people expect you to. It was a really great way to meet him.” (more…)