The Museum of Modern Art has announced an expansive retrospective for artist Sigmar Polke, set to open on April 19th, 2014.  Pulling from the artist’s broad explorations in painting, film and performance, the exhibition will feature some of Polke’s largest paintings and digitally rendered works, requiring their exhibition on the second floor of the museum, which is generally reserved for special exhibitions.  “Some of the paintings are so big, they can only fit on the second floor,” says MoMA Associate Director Kathy Halbreich. “This is one of the largest shows MoMA has ever done.” (more…)

CODA, Party Wall (Installation View), via MoMA PS1

The Young Architects Program, presented jointly by MoMA and MoMA PS1, challenges young professionals and recent graduates alike in its annual competition to design an installation for MoMA PS1’s courtyard. Each year, the winning design is fabricated and opened to the public during the summer months. The jury takes environmental sustainability heavily into account when choosing the design, which is an especially relevant criterion considering that EXPO 1, the ecology and politics-focused three-venue event, is currently on view at PS1. This year’s winning entry, Party Wall by the Ithaca-based firm CODA, features a semi-permeable skin made from skateboard manufacturing by-products mounted upon a frame of steel beams.

CODA, Party Wall Rendering, via MoMA PS1 (more…)

Detroit’s bankruptcy filing this week has once again placed the future of the Detroit Institute of Arts collection in question, with creditors sizing up the museum’s collection of works by Caravaggio, van Gogh and more.  Despite arguments for the preservation of the collection, emergency manager Kevyn D. Orr’s spokesman, Bill Nowling claims:  “We cannot negotiate in good faith with our creditors by taking assets off the table. And all of our creditors have asked about the worth of the D.I.A. And we’ve told them that they’re welcome to find out.” (more…)

A number of works from the collection of the late Jan Krugier will go on sale this fall at Christie’s in Manhattan.  The sale, estimated to bring in about $160 million, includes a 1911 landscape by Kandinsky, estimated to bring somewhere between $20 million and $25 million.  “This painting represents a world he loved, one that falls between the figurative into the abstract,” said Conor Jordan, deputy chairman of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Department. (more…)

Diana Widmaier-Picasso, granddaughter of Pablo Picasso by his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, is currently undertaking an ambitious project: a catalogue raisonné of her grandfather’s sculptures.  Widmaier-Picasso’s ambitious project looks to consolidate the artist’s output in the form, thereby increasing his work’s value in the marketplace.  “Picasso is the greatest sculptor of the 20th century,” Carmen Gimenez of the Guggenheim Museum said. “He practically reinvented modern sculpture. But as soon as you begin working with his sculptures, you realize you need to learn more.” (more…)

Thomas Hirschhorn, Gramsci Monument (2013), via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

“Everyone is an intellectual.”  These words by Italian anarchist/Marxist Antonio Gramsci adorn the walls of Gramsci Monument, the fourth and final entry into Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn’s monumental installation series to his favorite thinkers and writers, currently open in the Forest Houses housing project in the South Bronx.  Opening the platform to cultural dialogues, political research and community art efforts, Gramsci Monument continues Hirschhorn’s efforts at destabilizing the spatial encounters of a work of art, broadening its scope to a space where all participants are welcome to create their own meaning. (more…)

Dinner view, all photos by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand for Art Observed unless otherwise noted

The Parrish Art Museum held their annual Midsummer Party this past Saturday, an essential event in the Hamptons social calendar, welcoming benefactors and guests to the museum’s newly completed home.

Guests inside the museum (more…)

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dustheads (1982), via Christie’s

This week, Sotheby’s and Christie’s released their sales reports for the first half of 2013, with both sides announcing record sales figures. Christie’s has achieved a global sales total of £2.4 billion, including buyers’ premiums, a 9% increase on last year’s figure. The total includes the private sales of £465.2 million, an increasingly popular segment of the sales market, which saw a 13% growth from last year. The report also marks the third year in a row that the auction house has set new records for the period in both company and art market history.

Pablo Picasso, Étreinte (1971), via Sotheby’s

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Belgian-born Carsten Höller has announced a major site-specific installation for his first major exhibition in Spain, at the soon-to-open, €62 million Botín Centre in Northern Spain.  Designed by Renzo Piano, the new museum will house the visual arts program of the Bótin Foundation, and Höller’s installation will seek to mirror its mission as “a laboratory to investigate how art influences emotion and creativity”. (more…)

Artist Thomas Hirschhorn, in New York for the opening of his Gramsci Monument at Forest Houses in the Bronx, appeared last week at Artists Space in Manhattan, for a discussion with art historians Hal Foster and Lisa Lee on his practice, writing and the necessity of documentation. “The act of writing is a good way of taking it seriously, to be clear with the work, and also to be clear with intention.  The act of writing is most important for the artistic will.”  He says. (more…)

Dealer Gavin Brown is the subject of a recent profile in W Magazine,  documenting his pioneering work in the New York art scene, and his ongoing war against the status quo for gallery spaces in an increasingly uncertain time for mid-level galleries.  “It always petrifies me, these moments of shift. And if you focus on this small world of artists and galleries and museums, I think we’re kind of spinning our wheels wondering what’s next because we know something is coming.  All the old models seem to be running out of gas. It’s a fascinating time,” Brown says. “Everything is up in the air.” (more…)

Fearing for her son, the suspect in the theft of seven paintings by Picasso, Monet and more from a Dutch Museum, a Romanian woman has come forth saying that she has burned the paintings in her stove.  Olga Dogaru, the mother of suspect Rodu Dogaru, had buried the works when her son was arrested, and finally destroyed them in February.  Investigators are analyzing the contents of her stove to check for evidence of the works, which were worth tens of millions of dollars. (more…)

Floor Cone (1962), in front of Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, (1963) Image courtesy of Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio.

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929, Stockholm) is widely regarded as one of the founding pioneers of Pop Art, a superstar in the history of art, and a visionary who opened new doors on the world of conceptual practice, sculpture and performance.  Embracing this foundational role, the artist’s current retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art maps the early beginnings of Oldenburg’s career, alongside the formative years of Pop Art.  (more…)

The M+ museum in Hong Kong’s developing West Kowloon district has announced that it will appoint Doryun Chong as its head curator.  Mr. Chong is currently serving as the associate curator of painting at MoMA, where he organized shows of work by Ernesto Neto, Bruce Nauman, and Henrik Olesen.  He will also oversee the completion of the M+ project, working under Dr. Lars Nittve. (more…)

Opening in October, the Tate Modern will present a landmark exhibition of works by German-Swiss painter Paul Klee.  Exhibiting over 100 of the artist’s works, the show will aim to “redress the idea that he was a quirky artist, allowing his cat to paint, but rather show that he was extremely rigorous, with a clear sense of how his work was progressing … and it will give a sense of the extraordinary variety of his production.”  Says Tate curator Matthew Gale. (more…)

Taiyo Kimura, Performance Study With Plastic Bag (1997), via MoMAPS1

In the hustle and bustle of the art fairs and auctions of the two weeks prior, the opening of MoMA’s EXPO 1: New York went almost unnoticed, despite its three-venue makeup that includes modules at the museum’s midtown location, the PS1 annex in Queens, and at the newly built VW dome in the Far Rockaway, all which explore new conceptions of ecology and politics in the post-millenial landscape.

Steve McQueen, Static (2009), via MoMAPS1 (more…)

MoMA’s PS1 campus in Long Island City, Queens, has received $3 million in funding from the city of New York, needed to purchase an adjacent building for expansion.  The new space, located at 22-01 Jackson Ave., will potentially be utilized for museum office space, freeing the main building up for more exhibition spaces.  “You want dynamic institutions like MoMA PS 1 to continue to change, to progress and to grow, and they can’t do that without the physical expansion,” Said City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer. “I think it’s great for the neighborhood, it’s great for Long Island City.” (more…)

The New York Times has published a spotlight on artist Robert Therrien, done in conjunction with his ongoing retrospective at the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY.  The artist has moved somewhat below the currents of the contemporary market, despite a broad body of work in sculpture and photography that has won him a considerable following and representation by Gagosian Gallery. He’s a very unusual person, and he’s a sweetie, too,” said Lynn Zelevansky of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. “It’s just so harmonious and so beautiful. It’s about experience, and this amazing capacity for invention.”

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With Dia’s announcement last month that it would deaccession some of its works in order to fund new acquisitions, a number of former leaders and collaborators have spoken against the move.  The sale of works, which will occur this fall, includes a number of works by Cy Twombly and Barnett Newman.  In a June 28th letter to the institution, former Menil Collection Director Paul Winkler writes: “The primary purpose of Dia has been to collect and present bodies of work by a select group of artists in permanent installations and to realize site-specific commissions, also in permanent situations. It is uninformed and disrespectful of your history to equate permanence with mausoleum.” (more…)

Preparing for the release of her anticipated album ARTPOP, pop star Lady Gaga has announced a series of collaborations with contemporary artists, including Jeff Koons, Marina Abramovic, Inez & Vinoodh and Robert Wilson.  Gaga has stated that her new project will “bring the music industry into a new age; an age where art drives pop, and the artist once again is in control of the ‘icon.'” (more…)

Urs Fischer (Installation View), photo by Stefan Altenburger, © Urs Fischer, Courtesy of the artist and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Occupying both the Grand Avenue and the Geffen Contemporary spaces at MOCA, Swiss-born, New York based artist Urs Fischer presents his first U.S. retrospective, culling from his diverse and unique body of work to fill both spaces with an overwhelming display of sculptural pieces and grandiose immersive environments.

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A number of wall drawings and other works by Sol LeWitt are set to open this fall, including an installation of Wall Drawing #599: Circles 18 at the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side, and an exhibition of the artist’s wall drawings at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea.  “It is an opportunity to make art accessible for all ages, from strollers to wheelchairs, toddlers to people in their 90s.”  Says JCC executive director Rabbi Joy Levitt. (more…)

This coming fall, Sotheby’s will auction off a seminal work by pre-Raphaelite Dante Rosetti, a chalk drawing depicting Rosetti’s muse Janey Burden as the Greek Goddess Prosperine.  Described by the auction house as “one of the defining images of European art – instantly recognisable and representing the artist at the height of his originality,” the work will sell at auction this November in London, and is expected to command a sales price between £1.2 and £1.8 million. (more…)

President Barack Obama’s administration has announced the winners of the 2012 National Medal of Arts, including Ellsworth Kelly on the list of recipients.  Kelly, who turned 90 this year, is currently in the spotlight for a trio of New York shows this spring and summer, spanning the range of his career, and will accept the award tonight in Washington, DC.  Other recipients include landscape architect Laurie Olin. (more…)