New York Gallery Mitchell-Innes and Nash has announced that it will represent late artist Jay DeFeo through the Jay DeFeo trust, seeking to bring a new perspective on the artist to the East Coast following her landmark exhibition at The Whitney Museum.  The gallery is planning its own retrospective of DeFeo’s work for next year.  “Her work intersects three areas of interest to us,” said gallery founder Lucy Mitchell-Innes. “Abstract Expressionism; European art from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s; and women artists.” (more…)

Jon Kessler, The Web (Installation View), via Swiss Institute

Overwhelming in its degree of sensory immersion, Jon Kessler’s hypnotic new installation, The Web is currently on view at Swiss Institute in New York.  Welcoming new perspectives into the participatory nature of the Internet, and the endless variations of image and sight that result from an information-centered society, the artist creates a powerfully immersive work that commands the viewer’s full attention. (more…)

Cooper Union, via Architecture Paper

After almost two years of debate and discussions, The Cooper Union announced yesterday that it will begin charging tuition on a “steeply sliding scale” for undergraduate students.  The tuition will range from $20,000 a year to nothing for those with “the greatest needs.”

A past protest at Cooper Union, via NBC

“The time has come to set our institution on a path that will enable it to survive and thrive well into the future,” said Cooper board chairman, Mark Epstein. “Under the new policy, the Cooper Union will continue to adhere to the vision of Peter Cooper, who founded the institution specifically to provide a quality education to those who might not otherwise be able to afford it.”

Students Circle the Cooper Union for a Symbolic Embrace, via New York Times

While the institution has strived to find an alternative to charging tuition, its sizable debts and interest on property and loans has caused major deficits in its endowment.  The vote for tuition is an attempt to defray those costs.

Class at Cooper Union, via New York Times

While the tuition still places the school’s cost of attendance well below that of other private art schools, such as the Rhode Island School of Design or Pratt Institute, some fear that the increased price will still encourage inequality among students.  “It’s a real tragedy,” said professor Peter Buckley. “It reflects the condition of higher education as a whole. Costs are out of control.”

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The New York Times
The Wall Street Journal

A number of prominent architects have called on the Museum of Modern Art to reconsider its decision to demolish its recent acquisition, the former home of the American Folk Art Museum.  In an open letter to the museum, Richard Meier, Thom Mayne, Steven Holl, Hugh Hardy and Robert A.M. Stern, among others, called for the Museum to reconsider razing the building, which it purchased in 2011.  “The Museum of Modern Art—the first museum with a permanent curatorial department of architecture and design—should provide more information about why it considers it necessary to tear down this significant work of contemporary architecture,” the letter says.  “The public has a substantial and legitimate interest in this decision, and the Museum of Modern Art has not yet offered a compelling justification for the cultural and environmental waste of destroying this much-admired, highly distinctive twelve-year-old building.” (more…)

The Financial Times has published a profile of painter George Condo, tracing the artist’s early work in New York, his early meetings with Andy Warhol, and his dedicated approach to his practice.  “I can’t stand a white canvas,” Condo says. “If someone wanted to drive me insane, they could put one in front of me and not give me any art materials to work on it. That would be the perfect torture.”   (more…)

The Sacrifice of Polyxena, a painting by 17th century artist Charles Le Brun recently rediscovered in a suite at The Ritz Hotel, has been purchased by The Metropolitan Museum of Art for the price of $1.9 Million.  The museum had searched for a Le Brun for over 50 years, and seized on the chance to own the painting when it went up for auction on April 15th at Christie’s.  “No really famous expert of 17th-century painting has ever stayed in the Coco Chanel suite, apparently,” specialist Olivier Lefeuvre said when asked how the painting had hund undiscovered for so long. (more…)

One by one, the indicted suspects in a case involving money laundering and illegal gambling, among them art dealer Helly Nahmad, plead not guilty in court on Friday.  Underlining the size and complexity of the case, over 30 were indicted as part of two separate but connected gambling and money laundering rings.  Mr. Nahmad is charged with helping to bankroll the operation.  “We do not believe that Mr. Nahmad has knowingly violated the law.” Said Nahmad’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman. “We anticipate that he will be fully exonerated.” (more…)

This May 14th, Barnett Newman’s Onement VI will go on sale at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction, projected to sell for $30 to $40 million.  While Sotheby’s has declined to name the seller, several dealers have identified the current owner as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who purchased the painting in 2000.  “Several conservators have seen it and said it is in good condition,” says Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Worldwide head. “It is unlined and on its original stretcher.”  (more…)

New York’s Park Avenue Armory has released its list of Artists-in-Residence for 2013, including singer-songwriter Somi, choreographer Faye Driscoll, the Trusty Sidekick Theater Company and artists Ralph Lemon, Okwui Okpokwasili and Alex Dolan.  The artists will present works during the Armory’s 2013 calendar year, including an immersive mystery theatre piece, and a curated night of Nigerian music created during Somi’s 15-month residency in Lagos. (more…)

Rosy Keyser, Hungry Shepherd Honeypot (2013), Courtesy Peter Blum Gallery, New York

Rosy Keyser‘s new group of works, Medusa Pie Country, is currently on view at Peter Blum Gallery in New York.  Consisting almost exclusively of materials she found in the upstate New York hamlet of Medusa, where she occasionally works, Keyser’s works on view grapple with the idea that art is always being made, both inside the studio and out.

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This spring, Christie’s auction calendar will feature a broad selection of works from the estate of the late Dr. Mona Ackerman, a psychologist and writer who counts works by Giacometti, Picasso, and Arp in her collection, as well as a number of fine antiques and pieces of furniture.  Her wide collection of pieces will be auctioned in the weeks leading up to Christie’s Modern Art Evening Sale on May 8th in New York.  Says Paul Provost, Christie’s Deputy Chairman: “Dr. Ackerman’s collection reveals her exquisite taste and wide interests. Her collection was striking and elegant, emanating the grace and passionate enthusiasm for life, for which Ackerman was well-known.”  (more…)

Japanese clothing company Uniqlo has announced that it will sponsor MoMA’s popular free Friday night series.  What’s more, the first 1000 attendees at the company’s first sponsored evening on May 3rd will receive a free tote bag.  The sponsorship follows comments by Tadashi Yanai, the chairman of parent company Fast Retailing, that the Museum of Modern Art is his “favorite museum in the world.  (more…)

Darren Almond, Fullmoon@Cape Reinga (2012), via Matthew Marks Gallery

Currently on view at Matthew Marks are a series of sixteen photographs, part of Darren Almond‘s fullmoon series, in which he allows the light of the full moon to illuminate landscapes from all seven continents.

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Beginning May 1st, The Museum of Modern Art will remain open 7 days a week, following the recent announcement that The Metropolitan Museum of Art would also be opening its doors every day.  MoMA has usually closed on Tuesdays for cleaning and maintenance. (more…)

Luigi Ghirri, Bastia (1976), via Matthew Marks Gallery

In 1978, photographer Luigi Ghirri first published his manifesto on avant-garde photography, Kodachrome.  Locating the image as both a problem and solution in the increasingly complex interrelations of image, identity and object created through a technologically advancing world, the book sought to use the camera as it was, a machine for generating reproductions, to, in his words “be able finally to distinguish the precise identity of man, things, life, from the image of man, things, and life.” Recognizing the artist’s immense contributions to both photography and conceptual thought, Matthew Marks Gallery is currently hosting a show of 25 of Ghirri’s photographs in New York City, taken from the artist’s landmark book.

Luigi Ghirri, Urbino (1975), via Matthew Marks Gallery

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The Frieze New York Art Fair has announced the artists exhibiting in this year’s edition of its annual Sculpture Park section.  The 2013 edition of the Sculpture Park will see works by Paul McCarthy, Martha Friedman, and Nick Van Woert, among others.  “Building upon the success of last year, our aim for this new edition is to increase the ambition of the Sculpture Park program both in scope and scale. Placed in an exceptional location, the program will continue expanding visitors’ experience by displaying large outdoor sculptures in dialogue with ephemeral pieces.”  Says curator Tom Eccles. (more…)

Beginning April 25th, the Art Production Fund will unveil a series of murals on the steel shutters of local businesses on The Bowery in New York.  Titled “After Hours 2: Murals on the Bowery,” the project has welcomed a number of artists, including Laura Owens, Adam Pendleton, Dana Schutz and many more to create works only seen when the businesses close for the night.  “They’re all site-specific, and they all relate to the neighborhood,” says APF co-founder Yvonne Force Villareal. (more…)

Artist Cyprien Gaillard is featured in the New York Times’ T Magazine, talking about his practice, inspiration, and development as an artist, as well as his viewpoints on the cultural processes that inform his work. “For me, decay is a starting point. I don’t just record it or picture it. What I’m interested in is creating a form of equilibrium within the decay.”  He says. (more…)

The former home of the American Folk Art Museum, constructed just 12 years ago, will be demolished to facilitate an expansion by the Museum of Modern Art.  MoMA had purchased the building several years ago as the Folk Art Museum tried to pay off debts from an expansion, and plans to erect a new building to complete its proposed five-building campus expansion.  “We have a lot of art that we own that we would like to show,” said real estate developer and museum chairman Jerry I. Speyer “When we built what exists today we didn’t get as much exhibition space as we really need.” (more…)

In the wake of the Pratt Institute fire that destroyed several floors of the school’s historic Main Building, along with the work and materials of 35 art students, dealer Larry Gagosian has stepped in to arrange a show of work by affected students.  Hosted at the Seagram’s Building, the selections for the show will be made by Brooklyn Museum curator Eugene Tsai, and will be on view from May 9th to the 14th.  “The students wanted a show in Manhattan, and this is like a dream come true,” said Pratt president Thomas F. Schutte. (more…)

Artforum is reporting that dealer and artist Daniel Reich recently passed away, taking his own life on Christmas Day of last year.  He was 39 years old.  Reich began showing art in 2001, and established his own gallery in Chelsea, which closed in 2011.  “Change is hard, but it’s also good,” he said at that time. “It resets you, it returns you to that initial energy, the fire that you had, way back then, when you knew that you wanted to do this.”   (more…)

Claes Oldenburg’s iconic Floor Burger (1962) is currently undergoing a restoration project at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in preparation for its upcoming exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Purchased by the AGO in 1967, the work, which is stuffed with empty ice cream cartoons, has shifted in appearance over the years, and now requires restoration work to help regain its original form and coloration.  “I was more concerned with the effect of the piece as I was making it rather than its future conservation,” says Oldenburg, “I started with the foam, but found it was weighing the sculpture down,” he says, “so we used the empty boxes to make it lighter.” (more…)

Painter Eric Fischl has published a memoir of the 1980’s New York art scene, chronicling the excesses and darker side of the high-profile art world of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Mary Boone.  Titled Bad Boy, My Life On and Off the Canvas, the tell-all book includes a story about an infamous 1983 party thrown by Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, with “lookout towers, armed guards, and a glamorous crowd . . . some naked,” with waiters offering “glasses of Champagne [and] a choice of cocaine or heroin.” (more…)

The most recent issue of Billboard Magazine features a cover story on French rock band Phoenix, showing the band standing in front of a work by Dan Flavin from the artist’s recent show with Donald Judd at David Zwirner in New York.  The picture was taken during the first exhibition at Zwirner’s new 19th Street location, as the band searched for inspiration for their upcoming tour.  “These pieces have a very short lifetime,” frontman Thomas Mars said, “which makes them even more precious.” (more…)