Lisson Gallery announced this morning that it will be building a new, 8,500 square-foot gallery space underneath the Highline on 24th Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City, bringing the London-based gallery to Manhattan for the first time.  The space will be led by Alex Logsdail. (more…)

The Swiss Art Awards have kicked off the proceedings around Art Basel this week, as eight artists, one architectural collective, and one curator have received the prize’s $27,765 award.  Winners include: BITNIK (Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoji Smolji), Vancessa Billy, Kim Seob Boninsegni, Claudia Comte, Emilie Ding, Andreas Hochuli, Emanuel Rossetti, Jules Spinatsch, CKÖ (Daniel Lütolf and Sarah Widmer), and Emilie Bujès. (more…)

The Frick Collection has announced an ambitious expansion plan that will add a new six-story wing to the Upper East Side space.  The new wing will include a a new rooftop garden, and 60,000 square feet of new exhibition space, totaling 50 percent more room for short-term exhibitions and 24 percent more for a permanent art collection. (more…)

The Eli Broad Museum, is suing German architectural fabricator Seele over the still-unfinished steel facade of the museum, which has allegedly delayed the opening of the museum until 2015.  The $19.8 million lawsuit “speaks for itself,” says Broad Foundation spokesperson Karen Denne. “We are fairly confident that the museum will open in 2015, and we will announce an opening date later this year.” (more…)

The Met has announced that it will undergo an immense renovation of its Modern Art wing, creating special showcase galleries and room for its expanding collection, especially following the windfall gift of Cubist and Modernist works from the collection of Leonard A. Lauder.  “Leonard’s collection is such a huge missing link between our very strong collections of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and our moderately strong holdings of early-20th-century,” says director Thomas P. Campbell, “that if we reconfigure the galleries, we have the potential to tell the chronological story.” (more…)

Paris’s Picasso Museum has fired director Anne Baldassari, citing a “gravely deteriorating work environment” during the museum’s continually delayed renovation, as well as “profound suffering in the workplace and a toxic atmosphere.”  The museum’s  reopening has already been pushed back twice, and had seen numerous employees leaving the organization during Baldassari’s tenure.  “There was nothing in the report from the inspector general that surprised us,” said one ministry official. “This had been going on for several years. The truth is that we could not open a museum with all these employees leaving.” (more…)

Martin Creed, Work No. 1092, Mothers (2011), Courtesy Hayward Gallery.

A sheet of A4 paper crumbled into a tight ball, an image of several pots of variously colored and shaped cactuses and a large rotating steel beam bearing the word “MOTHERS”  – these are just some of the eclectic works currently on show at London’s Hayward Gallery for What’s the point of it?, a survey of British artist Martin Creed’s equally playful and thought-provoking works.

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Jorge Pardo at Petzel Gallery, via Art Observed

Through April 4^th, the work of artist Jorge Pardo will be on view at the Petzel Gallery, stretching the space into a bizarrely disorienting collection of objects and installations.  This is the Los Angeles-based artist’s eighth exhibition at this gallery, and continues Pardo’s investigation of architectural and non-specific spaces that interrogate the limits of the gallery-space, as well as the way the viewer is conditioned into looking at art.

Jorge Pardo, Spare Bedroom (2014), All images courtesy Friedrich Petzel Gallery (more…)

Chuck Close, Untitled Torso Diptych (2001), all images courtesy Pace Gallery

Taking an inside look at the meticulous creative process of artist Chuck Close, Pace Gallery in New York presents an exhibition featuring Polaroids, daguerreotypes and an acrylic painting exploring the artist’s continually shifting approach to the human figure.  The exhibition focuses on “the body,” a subject long-investigated by the artist.  Born in 1940 in Monroe, Washington, Chuck Close is best known for his many renditions of the human face. Mostly large in scale and based on photographs, his works are in the permanent collections of major museums and galleries around the globe, and have been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions in more than 20 countries.

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The LA Times takes a look at the Menil Drawing Institute, set to open in 2017.  The new museum, designed by Johnston Marklee & Associates, will sit at the southern edge of the Menil Campus, and boasts a number of striking features, including a thin, plate-steel roof and a special public space shaped by illusory curves in the shape of the building.   (more…)

Delays have caused the Broad Museum (currently under-construction in Los Angeles) to push back its scheduled opening date from late this year to early 2015, the New York Times reports.  A honeycomb-style “veil” wrapping around the museum has caused some complications in construction, but also enables the museum to continue working on its downtown campus.  “We expect to announce the opening date later this year,” said Broad Foundation Spokesperson Karen Denne. (more…)

A Picasso tapestry currently hanging at the Four Seasons Restaurant on Park Avenue is facing a dangerous removal from its current installation.  The work is being removed following a contractor’s estimate that the wall behind it is at risk of collapse, but the fragile nature of the work could make it difficult to remove.  “No matter how cautious they are, the work is so brittle and fragile that it could, as one of them put it, ‘crack like a potato chip,’ ” said Peg Breen, President of the New York Landmarks Conservancy. (more…)

The construction of an enormous tower next door to the Art Students League has raised fierce debate among members and supporters of the institution.  The soon to be built Extell Building will stand as one of the tallest buildings in the world, with several cantilevered segments hanging over the school, for which developers will pay the organization $31 million.  While many at the Art Students League are eager to accept the money, others worry about rushing into a deal that may ultimately endanger the school’s future.  “The League is too beautiful and too venerable to be messed with like this,” says member Beth Karts. “Some things in this world, like the League, are worth a lot more than money.” (more…)

Cyprien Gaillard, Today Diggers, Tomorrow Dickens (Installation View), via Art Observed

Coming off his impeccable retrospective at MoMA PS1 earlier this year, Cyprien Gaillard returns to New York with two series of works that continue his fascination with the complexly layered experience of history, and the forces that keep this process constantly in flux.  Moving towards a more active exploration of these phenomena, Gaillard’s show feels as if the artist is taking a more active role in his creative inquiries.

Cyprien Gaillard, Today Diggers, Tomorrow Dickens (Installation View), via Gladstone Gallery (more…)

Louise Lawler, Detail, Chicago (placed and pulled) (2011-2013), via Casey Kaplan

The arrangement of works for Liam Gillick and Louise Lawler’s current show at Casey Kaplan in New York is an interesting one: long strings of Gillick’s text hang from the ceilings of the space, while long, blurred images from Lawler’s archival image collection are stretched across the walls.  It seems an almost deliberate attempt to escape the stationary logic of the art object, constantly forcing the viewer to move between rooms and works, always reappraising position and meaning as they go.

Louise Lawler and Liam Gillick (Installation View), via Casey Kaplan (more…)

Rosemarie Trockel, Copy Me (2013), via Gladstone Gallery

On view at Gladstone Gallery in New York is an exhibition of new work by German artist Rosemarie Trockel, featuring a series of wool paintings and wall sculptures, as well as ceramics, drawings, videos and collages, alluding to the short but dense history of twentieth century abstraction and conceptualism.

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Forbes Magazine profiles Guilty, the gargantuan yacht of Dakis Joannou which was commissioned as a collaboration between Jeff Koons and yacht designer Ivana Porfiri.  Inspired by the World War I technique of Razzle-Dazzle camouflage painting, the boat is hand-painted, and features a portrait of Iggy Pop on the roof.  “The process was extremely complex,” Joannou says. “Ivana sent the design to Jeff, and he did some 3-D designing in his studio. I did not interfere at all.” (more…)

Henri Labrouste, Bibliothèque Sainte‐Geneviève, Paris, (1838‐1850) View of the reading room, Photograph Michel Nguyen © Bibliothèque Sainte‐Geneviève Michel Nguyen, courtesy of MoMA

Moving beyond mere architectural details, The Museum of Modern Art’s current exhibition, Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light,is not simply a survey of the French architect’s (1801-1875) work and influence, but also something of a meditation and retrospective on the library’s role in society.  As information continues its march from papers to servers, and books are routinely traded in digital form, Labrouste’s vision of the library as a central mechanism for the dissemination of knowledge offers an intriguing meditation on the significance, symbolism and vitality of the library today.  The show is also apropos here in New York as the city’s Central Public Library, in response to these changes, prepares for a potentially devastating renovation.

Henri Labrouste, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, (1838-1850) Southwest corner elevation and section (Late 1850), Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

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Prior to his death in February, American artist Richard Artschwager designed four elevators for the Whitney Museum’s new museum space in Chelsea, currently under construction.  The four designs, titled Six in Four, are designed around the reoccurring motifs of doors, windows, tables, baskets, mirrors and rugs that appear in Artschwager’s work.  “The idea was to have something that immediately gives you a sense of place, an identity, so that this isn’t just another generic museum,” Whitney Director Adam D. Weinberg said. (more…)

Next month, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will announce an ambitious, $650 Million plan for a new museum space.  As the plans stand, the new construction would call for the destruction of core parts of LACMA’s campus, including the original 1956 building by William Pereira.  The proposal is the latest in a series of proposed major construction on the museum over the years, but the first under director Michael Govan, who has already led the museum through a number of smaller expansion projects. (more…)

The new airport currently under construction in Doha, Qatar is commissioning major art pieces by some of the world’s most prominent artists, says an undisclosed source.  While contractors, staff and dealers are bound by a non-disclosure agreement, a Qatar Museums Authority official confirmed 14 new commission projects from highly recognized international artists recently on a local blog. (more…)

Virginia Overton, Untitled (Juniperus virginiana) (2013), via Mitchell-Innes & Nash

Mitchell-Innes & Nash is currently hosting an exhibition of new works by Virginia Overton, the Tennessee-born, Brooklyn-based artist whose sculptural installations play at conceptions of personal identity, spatial interaction and artistic process. (more…)

Despite public protest, work crews have begun dismantling several sections of the Berlin Wall decorated with large-scale murals, known as the East Side Gallery, making way for a new luxury apartment development.  The wall was removed early in the morning, clearing about 20 feet of art-covered cement from the longest section of the wall still standing..  “If you take these parts of the Wall away, you take away the soul of the city,” said resident Ivan McClostney. “This way, you make it like every other city. It’s so sad.” (more…)

With the two year shut-down of SFMOMA for its major expansion project beginning this June, the institution is gearing up to announce a range of exhibitions and events across the Bay Area.  The museum released a small press announcement on its Facebook recently, welcoming external input, and hinting at events to come.  The construction will span 2013 to 2016, and will cost the museum $555 million. (more…)