The Yorkshire Sculpture Park has earned Britain’s prestigious Art Fund Museum of the Year award, earning a £100,000 prize and a reputation as one of the country’s best art spaces.  “A perfect fusion of art and landscape, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park has gone from a modest beginning to one of the finest outdoor museums one might ever imagine,” says Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund and panel chair for the award. (more…)

An Henri Matisse painting stolen 10 years ago from a Venezuelan museum has been returned to its home in Caracas.  Odalisque in Red Trousers was recovered in Miami Beach in 2012 after a couple tried to sell it to undercover FBI agents for $740,000. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal reports on the growing impact and popularity of the Hudson region in Upstate New York as an arts destination.  “It’s a little bit of Bushwick mixed with the Upper East Side,” said Joel Mesler, who opened Retrospective on Hudson with Zach Feuer this year. (more…)

Marina Abramović in the Promotional Video of the Performance

‘I can succeed or I can fail. Let’s see what happens’ says Marina Abramović in the promotional video for her five hundred and twelve hour long, grueling residency at the Serpentine Galleries in London. Starting from June 11th until August 25th, the grand dame of performance art will be present at the art institute, interacting with the public through the framework of “nothingness.” (more…)

Official opening of ‘Jeff Koons: A Retrospective’ at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Images via Kelly Lee for Art Observed

After months of hushed tones and starstruck reports on the scale, cost and ambition of Jeff Koons’s career retrospective at The Whitney, the doors have opened at the museum for its last exhibition before the long-held 75th and Madison building is abandoned for its new Meatpacking District headquarters.  As indicated, the show has indeed pulled out the stops for Koons, with a combination of new works and classic pieces.

Jeff Koons, Amore (1988)

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A lawsuit seeking to block the takeover of the Corcoran Gallery of Art has been filed in D.C., brought forth by a group of museum donors, students, and faculty, saying the takeover would go against the institution’s 1869 deed.  The suit also complains that the institution suffered from “self-dealing, conflicts of interest, hiring unqualified management and profligate spending on consultants whose advice was ultimately ignored.” (more…)

Vienna’s Generali Foundation is closing after 19 years in the Austrian capital.  The space has hosted shows by Isa Genzken, Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Martha Rosler over its lifespan, and boasts one of the nation’s most prominent art collections, which will be placed on loan to Salzburg’s Museum der Moderne Kunst.

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The Foundation Louis Vuitton is set to finally open its museum this coming October, showcasing the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton corporate art collection, Bernard Arnault has announced.  It will express the artistic, cultural and emotional values, as well as the art of living, promoted by Bernard Arnault and the LVMH Group, but it is truly a charitable foundation, devoted to the public as a whole,” says advisor Jean-Paul Claverie. (more…)

Nicholas Penny has announced his retirement from directing London’s National Gallery, leaving a remarkably successful legacy behind him.  Penny, who brought attendance up to record highs during his tenure (including a 6 million visitor count last year) is planning to step down next year after a replacement has been found.  “Following my retirement I have many plans, but chiefly look forward to spending more time with my family, friends and books,” he said. (more…)

SFMoMA is reportedly close to reaching its $610 Million Fundraising goal, Bloomberg reports this week.  The campaign, which is seeking funding for its new museum construction that will double the space for the space’s collection and will add several million to its endowment, has already reached 94% of its goal.  “In 1995, we were the pioneers when SOMA was pretty run-down, and the tech boom followed us,” says director Neal Benezra “Our expansion will solidify the neighborhood as a cultural hub.” (more…)

Ragnar Kjartansson, Me and My Mother (2010), via Art Observed

When The New Museum opened its doors for its spring season last month, curator Massimo Gioni noted subtle threads of comparison in the pieces on view.  Meant to be a concise yet meticulous look into a series of individual works or focuses from a disparate group of artists, the series of exhibitions currently on view play on a series of common threads, incorporating mixes of sound and music, documentary, performance and history from artists Camille Henrot, Hannah Sawtell, David Horvitz, Jeanine Oleson and Roberto Cuoghi, arranged in a way that perhaps makes best sense to address as a singular experience the artists’ works, shared themes, and interests.

Hannah Sawtell, ACCUMULATOR (2014), via Art Observed (more…)

Recently appointed Stedelijk Museum director Beatrix Ruf is interviewed in The Art Newspaper this week, discussing her vision for the museum, her previous work at Kunsthalle Zurich, and what she thinks arts institutions should be focusing on in the 21st Century.  “The big general question for us all is how museums should be made to function,” she says. “We are all looking into the meanings of heritage and the interplay between the caretaking of heritage and how to develop collecting further.” (more…)

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, L’Ètrange Cité (Strange City), via Art Observed

In 2010, Christian Boltanski spread piles of clothes reaching to fifty tons around the interior of Grand Palais. Three years before Boltanski, Anselm Kiefer brought in cement and metal along with dust and debris into this patriarchal symbol of French industrial awakening. Richard Serra, Daniel Buren and Anish Kapoor are among the other superstar artists who have marked their signatures in this historical building in response to France Ministry of Culture’s annual Monumenta project, which invites an artist to create a new body of work to be exhibited inside the impressive architecture of Grand Palais. On view through June 22nd is this year’s commission L’Ètrange Cité (Strange City) by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, arguably Russia’s most celebrated names in contemporary art.

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, L’Ètrange Cité (Strange City), via Art Observed (more…)

The New York Times has penned a new report on the ongoing disputes between MoCANoMI and the City of North Miami, with disagreements running all the way up to who is currently the director of the museum.  With both sides filing lawsuits over alleged injustices, and a potential move to Miami Beach being threatened by MoCANoMi, both sides are claiming control over the museum and its collection.  “It is as if a child is born and in turn says it is the mother of its mother,” says Babacar M’Bow, the man appointed as director by the city but disputed by the museum board. (more…)

Over £50 million worth of works by Cy Twombly have been donated to the Tate by the Cy Twombly foundation, ranking as one of the most valuable gifts the museum has ever received.  “It ranks alongside Rothko’s gift of the Seagram mural paintings in 1970 and together with Twombly’s cycle of paintings The Four Seasons 1993-5, acquired in 2002,” Tate Director Sir Nicholas Serota said of the acquisition. “His gives an enduring place in London to the work of one of the great painters of the second half of the 20th century.” (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…)

Tauba Auerbach, The New Ambidextrous Universe IV (2014), all images courtesy ICA London

On view currently at ICA London is the first solo exhibition in the UK by New York-based artist Tauba Auerbach. Entitled The New Ambidextrous Universe, the exhibition is composed of her recent works in sculpture and photography, focusing on themes of symmetry and reflection as scientific principles, hinting at the existence of a mirror universe.

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The Musée Picasso in Paris has announced Laurent Le Bon, currently a the head of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, as its newest director, following the dismissal of Anne Baldassari earlier this year.   (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 Hirshhorn has announced that Australian-born, veteran director of the Asia Society Museum, Melissa Chiu, will take the helm as the Museum’s new director, bringing a strong background in video and new media art to the post.  “I am very excited,” Chiu said. “It’s an amazing institution.” (more…)

In a desire to combine art and science, artist Diemut Strebe has created a copy of Vincent van Gogh’s ear by using living cells of the great-great-grandson of Van Gogh’s brother.  The newly created ear is currently on display at The Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, and is planned to be shown in New York next year.

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The Guggenheim officially opened its call for design entries for its Helsinki Museum outpost yesterday, judged by a staff of architects, museum employees and  and politicians, including jury chair Mark Wigley, the Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University; Ritva Viljanen, the Deputy Mayor, City of Helsinki; and Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Guggenheim Foundation.  “This competition promises to be extremely exciting,” says jury member Erkki Leppävuori, President and CEO of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. “The site, which is rich and varied as a cultural and environmental setting, poses potentially productive technical challenges to architects and structural engineers, who also must address the high expectations and lively opinions of our citizens.” (more…)

The Guardian reports on Gallery A, a little known and just recently refurbished exhibition space located inside London’s National Gallery, where a number of masterworks not normally shown in the main rooms are kept for public viewing.  The new exhibition spaces in Gallery A have been drastically reworked, allowing visitors a more relaxed, expansive viewing atmosphere. (more…)

MOCA has named scholar, art writer and curator Helen Molesworth as its new Chief Curator.  Molesworth, who will assume the position beginning September 1st, previously worked at ICA/Boston and before that served as the leader of the department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museum.  “I love the way she talks about art, thinks about art, writes about art,” he said. “She has an incredible connection with artists and audiences and patrons. She brings an incredible integrity and high level of scholarship and a passion for living artists. And she has a great sense of humor,” said director Philippe Vergne. (more…)