Ai Weiwei’s name and works have been removed from a show of Chinese contemporary art in Shanghai, following government pressure over his inclusion.  “We were not really a party to this,” says Uli Sigg, the Swiss collector and organizer of the show. “In the end it was the Power Station and the cultural bureau. In the end we said we must accept. We don’t understand but we must accept that his works will not be in there.” (more…)

Urs Fischer at Lever House, via Art Observed

Running concurrently with his show of new works at two Gagosian exhibition spaces, Urs Fischer is exhibiting a selection of past works in the glass-encased lobby of the Lever House on Park Avenue.  Taking an intriguing approach towards the artist’s own glass-encased objects, the show makes for an intriguing perspective into Fischer’s interests in display, perspective and construction. (more…)

Artist Bridget Riley has revealed a special painting commission for the Imperial College Healthcare Charity Art Collection, painting the 10th floor hallways of the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital building in London with her signature parallel lines and bright colors.   “It reminds patients that theirs is a transitory state,” Riley says. “That they are there to recover and rejoin life – that life goes on, and life is outside, and they feel reassured.” (more…)

Angolan millionaire Rui Costa Reis has reportedly made a offer to purchase the nation of Portugal’s collection of works by Joan Miró, making a 44 million euro offer for the collection of 85 paintings.  The works were previously made for sale in February, but the offering was canceled after strong protests in Portugal. Barring a sale, the works will reportedly be on the auction block at Christie’s in London this June. (more…)

Over the past year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has sold off nearly $5.4 million in art, with another $3 million in paintings expected to sell this year, the New York Post reports, including a series of pieces donated by former Met president George Blumenthal.  “The museum is perpetually engaged in assessing its own collections, refining them, and making room for new acquisitions that merit display,” says spokesman Harold Holzer. “The Met owns more than 1.5 million works of art in all, and even in this vast building, storage space is finite.” (more…)

Cornelius Gurlitt, the Munich man at the center of the discovery of hundreds of artworks potentially looted from Jewish collectors during World War II, has announced that he will begin returning the works to their rightful owners.  The return will begein this week, as Seated Woman/Woman Sitting in Armchair, an iconic Matisse, is delivered to the descendants of French collector Paul Rosenberg.  “Mr. Gurlitt has given us free rein to return those pictures that belonged to Jews to their previous owners or their descendants,” says court-appointed lawyer Christoph Edel. (more…)

Long-time collector and founder of Exis Capital Management Adam Sender is selling off his monumental art collection over the next year and a half through Sotheby’s, the New York Times reports.  The collection of works, including pieces by Dan Flavin, Martin Kippenberger and Cindy Sherman, is valued at $70 to $80 million.  “I grew up Jewish, but more and more I find myself embracing a Buddhist philosophy,” Sender says. “I will still be lucky enough to live with a lot of art.”  (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…)

The much trumpeted auction of early works by Jean-Michel Basquiat has been put on hold by Christie’s, following a lawsuit by the artist’s surviving sisters over the authenticity of some of the works.  “Our goal is to allow time for all parties involved to reach an equivalent level of confidence in the validity of these items, so that the sale may resume at a later date,” the auction house said in a statement. (more…)

Los Angeles Collectors Jane and Marc Nathanson have announced that they will auction three works from their collection at Sotheby’s May 14th auction in New York, among them Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park #20, estimated between $9 million and $12 million. “We’re trying to fine-tune our collection as we’re getting older,” Mr. Nathanson said, continuing on to say that the works for sale  “don’t really fit in” with their interests in pop art. (more…)

Camille Henrot, Grosse Fatigue (2013), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Camille Henrot’s Grosse Fatigue seeks an experience akin to the slow trawls of internet message boards, Wikipedia pages, and Google searches that mark the contemporary search for information, a compartmentalized seeking after discrete bits of data.  Running from image to image, many culled from the archives of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Henrot’s project offers a condensed experience of information overload, cramming the story of the earth’s creation into 13 minutes.

Camille Henrot, Grosse Fatigue (2013), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed (more…)

A selection of masterpieces from the Frick Collection are set to tour outside of the United States for the first time ever, showing in The Hague’s Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery.  The works will include some of The Frick’s most notable pieces, including John Constable’s spectacular The White Horse, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres‘ portrait of the Comtesse d’Haussonville. (more…)

The Musée Marmottan-Monet, the private museum holding the largest collection ofClaude Monet paintings in the world, will look to relaunch itself this week alongside its more well-recognized Parisian contemporaries.  “Many of our paintings are well known but the museum is less well known,” says museum director Patrick de Carolis. “We have to change that. We are private and entirely funded by the money we earn for ourselves. We hope that the exhibition, which starts this week will encourage people to come to the Marmottan.” (more…)

In what may be the final piece of the puzzle to rescue the Detroit Institute of Arts collection from a potential auction by the city, the museum has made the commitment to raise $100 million in additional funds over the next 20 years.  The donation would secure city pension funds, and in turn, hold the city to an agreement to transfer the legal title of ownership to the museum, effectively preserving it from any future sale.  “Clearly this is going to be a challenge,” COO Annmarie Erickson said. “It’s an enormous amount of money, but we’ve proven over and over again that we are good at raising money. We’ll have to balance this effort with our need to raise endowment dollars and operational funding. But given that this will help move the bankruptcy along quickly, that it will help the pensioners (and) ensure that the DIA collection is safeguarded for the public, we have compelling arguments to take to donors.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal has published a feature article on artist George Condo’s collection of rare and custom stringed instruments, which the artist has ordered to his own specifications.  The artist, who studied music theory at the University of Massachusetts, is an avid musician and collector.  “I don’t want to simply collect instruments and not know how to play them,” Condo says. “It’s a great way to take my mind off the here and now—all the aspects of what goes on in the art world.” (more…)

A federal bankruptcy court judge has ruled that the Detroit Institute of Arts cannot be forced to undergo a full valuation of its collection, following pressure from city creditors for a second estimate.  The collection, valued between $452 million and $866 million, seems to have some space to maneuver moving forward, especially given judge Steven W. Rhodes’s statement that he took quite seriously the opinion of Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s when he said that the “art collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts is held by the City of Detroit in charitable trust for the people of Michigan, and no piece in the collection may thus be sold, conveyed, or transferred to satisfy city debts or obligations.”

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Hong Kong’s M+ Museum has received a major gift of 37 contemporary Chinese works from the collection of Guan Yi, one of the nation’s most significant collectors.  The donation includes a number of important works, most notably the entire checklist from the 2003 Venice Biennale Exhibition Canton Express.  “Guan Yi’s generous donation is a marker of the trust and respect that M+, Hong Kong’s future museum for visual culture, already holds within the international artistic community, and signals building global anticipation for the first museum of its kind in Asia – already housing one of the most important collections of Hong Kong and Chinese contemporary art worldwide,” says Michael Lynch, West Kowloon Cultural District Authority’s Chief Executive Officer.  (more…)

Sotheby’s London will host the second half of sales from the Krugier Collection this February, following a sale at Christie’s late last year where several of the top lots failed to sell.  The sale next month is noted to include a number of more personal works, and carries of total estimate of $39 million, somewhat more than a third of the $113.7m that Christie’s realized. (more…)

Colorado collector and philanthropist Frederic C. Hamilton has bequeathed a collection of French Impressionist works to the Denver Art Museum.  The works, which include pieces by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Gustave Caillebotte, have not been formally appraised, but could be worth up to $100 million.  “This is a game-changing gift,” said DAM director Christoph Heinrich. “We will have the biggest collection in the West of Impressionist art.” (more…)

Chinese-Indonesian collector Budi Tek is preparing to open his newly established Yuz Museum in Shanghai, showcasing a broad selection of contemporary Asian works from his collection.  “I don’t have any say, it is done by the curator, who will select from the whole of the collection,” Tek says. “We are very careful to collect and exhibit the best works considered historical to Chinese contemporary art.”  Tek says. (more…)

A Long Island art thief, who was captured in a sting operation filmed for reality show Brooklyn DA, says that the reality show has evidence that would clear his name.  After his arrest for stealing a number of works, including a Picasso etching, Vega’s car was searched, where he claims evidence exonerating him was located, but the footage of the search is being withheld by CBS.  “Up until his arrest, Vega didn’t believe that there was anything wrong or illegal with this arrangement,” his lawyer Timothy Parlatore said. (more…)

Collector Budi Tek’s Yuz Museum in Shanghai is looking to be the first museum of Contemporary Western Art in China, showcasing the flexibility and freedom that privately-owned museums hold as an advantage over government-run institutions.  The trend looks to continue, with 400 new private museums already opened in the country this year. (more…)

A coalition of the largest creditors in Detroit’s current bankruptcy has made the initial movements in court to push Detroit to sell works from the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.  The motion formally brings the dispute into court, which has been hinted at for several months.  “We recognize that this is a very sensitive issue,” says Derek Donnelly, managing director of Financial Guaranty Insurance Co.. “Whatever process we undertake here, we would hope would create a win-win situation — that ultimately there will be a viable DIA that will survive this process and possibly even thrive. But at the same time there needs to be a construct that addresses the fact that the DIA, or art, is not an essential asset and especially not one that is essential to the delivery of services in the city.” (more…)

A group of Detroit’s creditors are pushed for an independent valuation of the Detroit Institute of Arts collection, marking a tense escalation between the city and its debt collectors, with the embattled museum caught in the middle.  “This motion doesn’t compel a sale,” said Derek Donnelly of Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. “It just establishes a communal framework for addressing value maximization of the artwork.” (more…)