Attention, Art Collectors: Here Is the Definitive Calendar of International Art Fairs for 2018

With the explosion of art fairs around the world, there’s only one way for the most enterprising collectors to navigate the year: strategize, strategize, strategize. To help, we’ve compiled a list of the most significant art fairs around the world, from New York to New Delhi.

Should Museums Be Allowed to Sell Donated Works of Art?

Pity the big-time art collector (really!). All that time and money building a collection of art that is apt to go away just before or just after the collector dies. Because, when planning their estates, the three typical options for them are: The art can be willed to heirs who, if they like their parent’s […]

The Artist Questioning Authorship

With ready-made materials and artifacts, Danh Vo’s art recasts the historical events and political ideas that have shaped his world. Danh Vo had just started to gain recognition as a rising young artist when he decided, in 2010, to make a full-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty. He had been offered a one-man show at the Fridericianum, a […]

A New Documentary Reveals the Living, Breathing Joseph Beuys

For the first documentary ever made about Beuys, director Andres Veiel dug into the archives, creating a film that is 95% footage of the artist. The first major documentary on Joseph Beuys, simply titled Beuys, is finally screening in New York for a short run at Film Forum. The artist is often referred to as Germany’s most important artist since World War […]

Andreas Gursky review – godlike visions from the great chronicler of our age

Hayward Gallery, London From raves to road trips, from the icecaps to the trading floor, from Amazon to the Rhine, these breathtaking panoramas take aim at globalism – and reinvent the very notion of photography. Over the last two decades, Andreas Gursky has become the most significant image-maker of our time. Not just for the […]

Conceptual Artist Jill Magid Wins the 2017 Calder Prize—and the Keys to Alexander Calder’s Home

Magid will receive $50,000 cash and a residency at Calder’s former home and studio in Connecticut. The Calder Foundation announced today that the New York-based artist Jill Magid has won the 2017 Calder Prize. The award comes with $50,000 cash and the promise to place one of the artist’s works in a major public collection. […]

The Director of the Beyeler Foundation Promises to Break Its ‘Glass Ceiling’—After Baselitz and Balthus Shows

Sam Keller says that Switzerland’s most-visited art museum will show more female artists as it expands on its 20th anniversary. In just over 20 years, the Fondation Beyeler has become Switzerland’s most-visited art gallery. And it is growing, in both ambition and size. The Beyeler’s director, Sam Keller, is overseeing the forthcoming $100 million Peter Zumthor-designed expansion, which […]

How to sell a billion worth of art

This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio.   BARRY RITHOLTZ, ANCHOR, BLOOMBERG:  This week on the podcast I have a special guest.  Her name is Brooke Lampley.  She was the former head of impressionist and modern art at Christie’s.  She is the incoming Chairperson of Fine Art Sotheby’s and this is a […]

First look at Rachel Whiteread’s suburban house sculpture in London’s new US Embassy

Sections of an all-American home have been mounted on the walls. A major new public art work by Rachel Whiteread modelled on a suburban US house will be unveiled next week at the new US Embassy in Nine Elms, south London. The wall sculpture, titled US Embassy (Flat pack house; 2013-1015), will greet embassy visitors as […]

“Casting it in Plaster Monumentalized a Space That is Ignored”: Rachel Whiteread on the Sculptural Elements of Emptiness

British minimalist sculptor Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) is known for her innovative use of negative space as sculptural object.  Most renowned for her plaster casts of architectural spaces and utilitarian found objects, Whiteread’s haunting, tomb-like works evoke themes of loss, memory, and invisibility.  Whiteread’s work is currently on view at Monnaie de Paris as part of the Women House Exhibition, which […]

Torbjorn Rodland’s Puzzling Photos Are Unsettling and Arousing

One of the most striking images in the new retrospective of Torbjorn Rodland’s photographs currently on display at C/O Berlingreets visitors as they enter the exhibition. It is a picture of a young woman, lit from the side by a powerful red light, with honey streaming down her cheeks onto her chin. Like many of Mr. […]

Here Are the 15 Biggest Art-World Controversies of 2017

From Dana Schutz’s notorious painting to divisive animal art at the Guggenheim, 2017 was chock full of debate, discussion, and protest. This year saw unprecedented tumult in the real world—and in the art world, too. There were fiery debates over cultural appropriation and the definition of censorship; a legal tussle over deaccessioning at the Berkshire […]

Art is not a luxury product like Hermes bags: Larry Gagosian (Video)

Gagosian Gallery owner Larry Gagosian on Friday explained why he doesn’t consider art to be a “luxury good” and how the art world has benefited from globalization. “It’s not a luxury good. It’s not a luxury product. I mean it may appear to people who buy Hermes bags, but it’s not a Hermes bag. Sometimes […]

Year in Review: Here Are the Most Talked About Artists of 2017

Year 2017 saw its fair share of controversies, culture wars, and political upheavals, and in some ways, it seems like the art world has run parallel to mainstream culture more than ever in recent decades. Artists have not only responded to the difficult issues that have come to light this year; some have raised controversy […]

The Weight of History: Richard Serra’s Sculpture and Drawings

Richard Serra told us that he came to a place in his work where he didn’t want people to be simply looking at a single object; he wanted them to experience the work by going through it. “Yes, the walk into, through and around,” he said, so on November 5, 2017, on the morning after […]

Passion, Not Profit, Is the Biggest Motivator for Collectors, a New Study Says

The surprising results from a new study by Swiss bank UBS suggest that profit is rarely a driving factor. With the 2017 edition of Art Basel in Miami Beach—also known as the art world’s Black Friday—in full swing, Swiss bank UBS has released an extensive survey of art collectors that explores what motivates them, how […]

The Hirshhorn and Beyeler Join Forces to Stage a Georg Baselitz Survey—Naked Man and All

The Swiss-US retrospective will include early painting that shocked 1960s Germany, plus “exuberant and explosive” late works. Georg Baselitz will get a US-Swiss retrospective next year co-organized by the Hirshhorn in Washington, DC, and Fondation Beyeler, near Basel. The show is set to kick off at the private museum in Switzerland on January 21—two days before […]

The Art Market Moves East: How Gagosian, David Zwirner, and 14 Other Western Art Businesses Are Trying to Expand to Asia

China has been described as “the largest growth market for the art business, anywhere.” See how auctioneers and dealers are tapping into it. In the past year alone, no fewer than six galleries have opened or announced plans to open an outpost or office somewhere in Asia. Amid announcement after announcement, it may feel like […]

From Duchamp to Demand: 10 Masterpieces That Show the Evolution of Conceptual Art

In a 1967 Artforum article titled “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” the artist Sol LeWitt gave a simple definition for what would soon become one of the crucial facets of contemporary art in the 20th century and beyond. “In conceptual art,” he writes, “the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work….The idea becomes the machine that makes the […]