ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

Japanese Billionaire Art Collector Will Invite Artists With Him to the Moon on Elon Musk's Rocket

New York Times / September 18th, 2018

In a press conference on Monday, the identity of the first lunar tourist was unveiled as Japanese fashion billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. Known in the U.S. as the art collector who bought Jean-Michel Basquiat's record-breaking $110.5 million painting in 2017, Maezawa is planning to make his space ...

Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation Art Auction Raises $11 Million for Environmental Causes

Sonoma Magazine / September 16th, 2018

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio's annual art benefit auction was held Sept. 15 in Sonoma County, Calif. with a roster of A-list celebrities attending. The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF) in partnership with Jackson Family Wines, sold 17 lots of experiences, collectibles and artworks by artists ...

Master of Color and Composition, Abstract Artist Sean Scully Spotlighted in Major Exhibitions

ArtfixDaily / September 11th, 2018

‘I have spent my life making the melancholic into something irresistible. Because the world has changed around me and become more regretful, my paintings have become more true.’- Sean Scully Irish-born artist Sean Scully (b. 1945) is in the limelight this year with 15 international exhibitions, ...

Glenstone Museum Foundation Sued by Contractor for $24 Million

New York Times / September 9th, 2018

The Glenstone Foundation in Potomac, Maryland, a museum that houses a top-tier post-war and contemporary art collection, has been sued for $24 million in damages by its contractor just weeks before its expansion debuts. HITT Contracting filed the lawsuit over the building project, alleging that ...

SpaceX to Blast Artist Trevor Paglen's Shiny Sculpture Into Orbit

ArtfixDaily / August 23rd, 2018

Starry, starry night gets more bling... A fourteen-foot diameter Mylar balloon hanging in the Nevada Museum of Art is but a tiny model for a project by artist Trevor Paglen that is scheduled to be blasted into space this fall. In partnership with the Nevada Museum of Art and in ...

AI-Generated Artwork Heads to Christie's in a First-Ever Sale

Christie's / August 21st, 2018

A portrait created by artifical intelligence will the hit auction block this fall. An artist collective's algorithm has made an abstracted 18th/19th century-looking man, Portrait of Edmond Belamy, which will test the waters for AI art in the Prints & Multiples sale at ...

Museum Visitor Falls Into Anish Kapoor's 8-Foot 'Descent Into Limbo'

Gizmodo / August 20th, 2018

A museum visitor descended 8 feet into Anish Kapoor's Descent Into Limbo installation in Portugal last week. The injured Italian museum-goer possibly did not see the warning signs around the installation, which was not roped off at the exhibit in Serralves Museum in Porto. Painted ...

Ai Weiwei's New Work 'Life Cycle' Debuts in L.A. This Fall

ArtfixDaily / August 19th, 2018

Marciano Art Foundation will present a solo exhibition of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, on view from September 28, 2018 — March 3, 2019, at the Los Angeles non-profit. This exhibition is Ai’s first major institutional exhibition in Los Angeles and will feature the new and unseen work Life ...

Crowds Swarm New Art-Filled $2.26 Billion Transit Center in San Francisco

Hyperallergic / August 12th, 2018

Some twenty years in the making, a new $2.26 billion transit center in San Francisco is expected to eventually host over 100,000 people per day. Salesforce Transit Center opened Aug. 11 with huge crowds for a public preview. The massive facility boasts a five-acre rooftop park and is ...

Gerry Lenfest, Philadelphia Philanthropist and Arts Patron, Remembered

ArtfixDaily / August 6th, 2018

H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest, 88, passed away on Aug. 5, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer. A leading philanthropist and driver of civic causes and the arts for the city of Philadelphia and the surrounding region, Lenfest gave away over $1.3 billion in just two decades. After building a fortune in ...

Artists in Protest Art Exhibition Protest the Museum Hosting It

New York Times / August 5th, 2018

Artists represented in an exhibition of protest art in London voiced concerns to the museum over its hosting of an event for a defense contractor. Then, in an ironic twist, some artists of the protest art came to withdraw their artwork from the Design Museum in London, in protest. Artist ...

Authorities in China Demolish Ai Weiwei's Studio

NPR / August 5th, 2018

Authorities in China razed the art studio of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei over the weekend. A longtime critic of the Chinese government, Ai was quick to repsond to the destruction of his space on Instagram. "Farewell," Ai wrote. "They started to demolish my studio 'Zuoyuo' in Beijing ...

MOCA LA Taps MoMA PS1 Director to Lead

New York Times / August 1st, 2018

After years of tumult and high turnover, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is heading into a new chapter with a new director. Once again recruiting from New York, the oft-embattled MOCA has chosen Klaus Biesenbach, who currently leads MoMA PS1 in Queens and is curator-at-large at MoMA, ...

Art Dealer Says He Discovered Six De Koonings in New Jersey Storage Unit

The Guardian / July 23rd, 2018

A storage locker filled with artworks that an auction house passed up is said to include lost abstract expressionist paintings that could be worth millions of dollars. From the Guardian: A New York art dealer who bought the contents of a New Jersey storage locker for $15,000 says he ...

Pop-Up wndr museum to Feature Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Room

ArtfixDaily / July 17th, 2018

Tickets have gone on sale for one of Yayoi Kusama's famed Infinity Rooms in a new location at the wndr museum—an art and science pop-up in Chicago's West Loop, opening in August. Pronounced "wonder" museum, the pop-up space has no end date yet, but tickets are sure to go fast for the ...

ARTFIXdaily Closed From June 25 to July 6

ArtfixDaily / June 24th, 2018

ARTFIXdaily will be closed from June 25 to July 6. Subscriber e-newsletter service will resume on July 9. ArtGuild members may continue to post press releases to the ArtWire section during the closure. The image above is for Artscapes, a new series of playful installations designed ...

Gallery Owner Arrested for Placing 11-Foot Drug Spoon Sculpture Outside Purdue Pharma

Hartford Courant / June 24th, 2018

From the Hartford Courant: A Stamford, Connecticut, art gallery owner was arrested and charged with a criminal misdemeanor and a felony Friday morning after dropping an 800-pound steel sculpture of a bent, burnt heroin spoon in front of Purdue Pharma, a top manufacturer of opioids, and then ...

Pasadena Museum of California Art Will Close This Fall

ArtfixDaily / June 20th, 2018

Without mention of any reason, the 16-year-old Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) announced this week that the Southern California institution will close its doors. On June 13, at a PMCA Board meeting, Chairman Jim Crawford recommended that the museum close after the current exhibitions ...

Gardner Museum Links Past and Present in Exhibition Featuring Prized Antiquity

WBUR / June 17th, 2018

Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum now explores the storied history and singular beauty of the Farnese Sarcophagus—as a centerpeice of a new exhibition—featuring its recent conservation, in-depth scholarship and a 3D artistic repsonse to the ancient artifact. With its glorious ...

Ralph Coburn, Abstract Artist, Remembered

Miami Herald / June 10th, 2018

Abstract artist Ralph Coburn died June 5 in Miami, age 94. “Not enough people know about Coburn’s work, which is spare, beautiful, witty, and uncannily satisfying,” Sebastian Smee, the then art critic for Boston Globe, wrote in 2010. “Coburn himself, I’ve been told, is modest to a fault, which ...