New information released by the Tate this month has revealed that the museum accepted between £150,000 and £330,000 in annual sponsorship funds from British Petroleum over the course of 17 years, totaling over £3.8 million in funds.  The relatively minor amount of funding each year underscores claims by the activist group Platform, which accuses BP of using the donations to help “greenwash” its reputation.  “The BP sponsorship figures are even lower than we had estimated,” says Anna Galkina of Platform. For nearly a decade, Tate provided a veneer of respectability to one of the world’s most controversial companies for just £150,000 a year.” (more…)

Famed Modigliani scholar Marc Restellini is preparing to open a new location for his Paris-based private museum, Pinacothèque, in Singapore this summer.  The $24 million site will open with a show focusing on Cleopatra, and will include a free “heritage gallery.”  “In Paris, a lot of our income comes from ticketing,” Restellini says. “We have more than one million visitors a year. In Singapore, we have to develop other processes of income.”  (more…)

Abraham Cruzvillegas, the Mexican artist who fashions sculptures and situational works out of reclaimed materials, has accepted an offer from the Tate Modern to take part in its Turbine Hall commission.  “His work reflects Tate’s deep interest in showing truly ground-breaking international art,”  says director Chris Dercon. (more…)

For the first time, Italy has launched an international search for directors to some of its most important museums, among them the Uffizi in Florence, the Galleria Borghese in Rome and the Accademia in Venice.  The move is seen as an attempt for major Italian institutions to get closer in line to international counterparts like The Louvre.  “It’s a giant leap ahead,” Dario Franceschini, Italy’s culture minister.  “Italian museums should be more dynamic. They should have more bookshops, more restaurants. They should be attractive and have more multimedia.” (more…)

The Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris is focusing on expanding its collection of photography, the Art Newspaper reports, earmarking over â‚¬100,000 a year to increase the size of its holdings in the upcoming years.   (more…)

The New York Times reports on the criminal case in Spain between the city of Barcelona and the daughters of wealthy industrialist Julio Muñoz Ramonet, who stand accused of stealing over 352 paintings and drawings, as well as tapestries and other works from the collector’s home when he donated them to the city.  “We’re talking about a quantity and a quality of missing works of art that could probably fill a first-class museum,” says Marc Molins, a criminal lawyer representing the city. (more…)

Sara Raza has been appointed the new Guggenheim curator for the Middle East and North Africa, and will continue the museum’s UBS Map initiative, the museum announced this week.  “Her work will complement and extend the research that the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi curatorial team is undertaking,” says Guggenheim Director Richard Armstrong. (more…)

The Tate Britain has announced plans for a major retrospective focused on the work of Barbara Hepworth, which will feature a set of photograms from the artist’s archives, made by silhouetting the artist’s head against photo-reactive paper.  “It is a very beautiful thing in the flesh,” says Sophie Bowness, the artist’s granddaughter. (more…)

Henri Matisse, The Snail (1953), via Art Observed

There’s a moment at the end of Henri Matisse’s landmark exhibition of his late “cut-out” works, currently on view at MoMA in New York, when the viewer emerges into the last room to view Matisse’s final canvases, immense explosions of color and form that immediately arrest the viewer with their dynamic, minimal surfaces. (more…)

The Corning Glass Museum in Upstate New York has reportedly acquired a number of contemporary art works heavily relying on glass as part of its new $64 million wing construction.  Works from Roni Horn, Klaus Moje, Ayala Serfaty, Jeroen Verhoeven and Fred Wilson will be included in the new space, among others. (more…)

A recent article in Vanity Fair reports on the increased competition for visitors between The Met and MoMA, as the former museum begins a new emphasis on modernist and contemporary projects, and ambitious expansion projects at both institutions.  “The Met is upwardly mobile at the moment and it’s doing everything it can to be more modern and more varied in what it has to offer, without vulgarizing things,” says Picasso biographer John Richardson. “And MoMA, an institution that I revere, is in a period of going slightly down in everybody’s estimation.” (more…)

Peter Doig, 100 Years Ago (Carrera) (2005-2007), courtesy of Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne and Centre de création industrielle, Paris

Currently on view at Fondation Beyeler in Basel is a survey of important oil paintings by Peter Doig (1959), as well as a number of seminal works on paper and a monumental mural.

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David Altmejd, Flux (Installation View), via Art Observed

Canadian-born, New York-based artist David Altmejd brings his uniquely executed sculptures and installations to the Musée D’Art Moderne in Paris this winter, the artist’s first career retrospective in France, and one which sees him realizing one of his most ambitious new sculptures to date, alongside a selection of his work from the past twenty years. (more…)

The Met has announced its next artist for the museum’s ongoing site-specific rooftop installation series, commissioning French conceptualist Pierre Huyghe to create a new piece looking out on Central Park.  “Pierre loves the fact that the park is full of animals,” says associate curator Ian Alteveer. (more…)

The popular Egon Schiele exhibition at the Neue Galerie has been extended through April 20th, the museum announced today, continuing the record breaking exhibition for an additional four months. (more…)

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston is embarking on an ambitious $450 million expansion project that will seek to place it as one of the city’s cultural hubs.  “It’s all about shaping space,” says , architect Steven Holl. “The collection of buildings there is already outstanding. It’s very delicate, not a site that calls for over-exuberance.” (more…)

The North Carolina Museum of Art has received a major donation of modern and contemporary art from the collection of Jim and Mary Patton this week, including works by Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly and Robert Motherwell, among others.  “This transformative gift significantly expands the breadth and scope of the Museum’s permanent collection and will allow our visitors to have an even more engaging and exciting experience in our modern and contemporary galleries,” says NCMA Director Lawrence J. Wheeler. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal profiles the ongoing collaboration between Rem Koolhaas and Dasha Zhukova to create the new home for Zhukova’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow’s Gorky Park.  “The building is basically a found object,” Koolhaas says. “We are embracing it as it is.” (more…)

Marlene Dumas is interviewed in The Guardian this week, in the run-up to her Tate Modern Retrospective, opening early next month.  “When I start work on a painting, it’s total kitsch!” Dumas jokes during the interview. “When I painted myself pregnant, I couldn’t do the legs, and the blond hair made it look like a bad Klimt!” (more…)

Andy Warhol, Shadows (Installation View), Photo by Brian Forrest. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NewYork.

In the late 1970’s, Andy Warhol embarked on a new printing project, replicating a single photographic image of the artist’s studio bathed in shadow, a single “cap” of light hovering just to the left of center.  Reproducing the image over one hundred times in a series of color pairings, shades and contrasts, the work created a haunting, surreal environment, currently on view at MOCA in LA for a landmark exhibition of the piece on the West Coast. (more…)

The Paris Louvre has maintained its position at the top of the list of the world’s most visited museums, boasting an annual attendance of 9.3 million visitors for 2013.  Foreign visitors represented 70% of ticket sales, the museum said in a statement. (more…)

Jean Dubuffet, Snack for Two, (1945) via Museum of Modern Art

Currently on view at New York’s Museum of Modern Art is a retrospective focused on the work of French artist and sculptor Jean Dubuffet. Bringing together the museum’s unmatched collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and illustrated books from Dubuffet’s prolific output, the exhibition focuses predominantly on the key years of his career: from the 1940’s to mid-1960’s.

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Marcel Duchamp, 3-Mending Standard (1913-1914 / 1964), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed

Few artists have left such a mark on the history and direction of 2oth and 21st Century art in the same manner as Marcel Duchamp, the French artist who was at the forefront of revolutions both on and off the canvas in the first half of the century.  Taking this impact as a starting point, the Centre Pompidou is currently presenting Marcel Duchamp: La Peinture, Même, an exhibition exploring the artist’s early roots in painting and drawing, and how these stylistic leanings contributed to his later work in the development of the readymade, installation based work, and other conceptual pursuits. (more…)

Google is rolling out a new tech platform designed to make museum exhibitions around the world easily available to users, using a combination of technologies including Street View and YouTube.  “Users can use the app to experience virtual tours at home, or they can use it to enhance at the museum,” says Product Manager Robert Tansley. (more…)