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The Smithsonian and MTV are launching a reality television art competition

The winner of “The Exhibit” will receive $100,000 and a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum

Postponement of exhibition on Russian architecture school sparks accusations of ‘censorship and historical erasure’

New York’s Cooper Union postponed an exhibition on Vkhutemas, a school that operated in Moscow for ten years in the early 20th century before Stalin shut it down

Frieze Los Angeles bringing a skyscraper, a truck-based gallery and more to Santa Monica Airport

The fair’s special programmes include performances and large-scale installations around its venue, as well as contemporary art interventions at storied West Los Angeles locales

Alfred Leslie, rising star of Abstract Expressionism who embraced figuration, has died, aged 95

After rising to prominence in New York’s AbEx scene of the 1950s, Leslie devoted much of his career to honing a style of monumental figuration that was decades ahead of its time

Peter Doig awarded $2.5m in sanctions following legal saga over prison painting

The lawsuit centred on the authorship of a desert landscape painting signed “Pete Doige” and created by an inmate at a Canadian prison

Ronald Feldman, art dealer who ‘championed big ideas’, has died, aged 84

Feldman, an early supporter of artists like Joseph Beuys and Chris Burden, opened his gallery in 1971 and quickly established himself as a gallerist willing to take risks

Philip Pearlstein, whose nude portraits helped revive figurative painting, has died, aged 98

Pearlstein, a classmate of Andy Warhol’s who similarly worked against the grain of the dominant Abstract Expressionist style of the time, remained committed to representation from the late 1950s onward

MoMA trustee Leon Black accused of rape

A lawsuit claims that the billionaire sexually assaulted a woman in Jeffrey Epstein's New York mansion

Miami Beach hotels showcase local talent during Art Basel fair

A dozen hotels around the city will display works, predominantly from Florida artists, during the fair

Washington, DC’s National Gallery of Art acquires Leonardo da Vinci drawing that helped inspire centuries of caricature artists

The drawing, Grotesque Head of an Old Woman (1489-90), was last displayed at the museum in 2017 and is now available for study

Dagny Corcoran, an influential art book dealer in Los Angeles, has died, aged 77

Her bookstore Art Catalogues, which she founded in 1977 and is still in operation, has long been a gathering place for the Los Angeles art community

Lee Bontecou—artist known for haunting, ominous wall sculptures made from industrial materials—has died, aged 91

The artist, who rose to prominence in the New York art scene of the 1970s, remained committed to an unclassifiable and otherworldly aesthetic

Peter Schjeldahl, the revered art critic for the New Yorker, has died, aged 80

Following stints at Art News and the Village Voice, and as a poet, Schjeldahl joined the New Yorker in 1998, becoming one of the most influential art critics of his generation

Billy Al Bengston, painter who epitomised the visual lexicon of California culture, has died, aged 88

The artist was best-known for his abstract lacquered works and played a key role in the development of the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s

Bard College, in partnership with Indigenous art organisation Forge Project, will use $50m gift to overhaul Native American studies programme

The school’s American Studies programme will become the American and Indigenous Studies programme, and Forge Project’s executive director will become a fellow at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies

Former Dallas Contemporary director Peter Doroshenko to take the helm of New York’s Ukrainian Museum

Doroshenko, a Chicagoan of Ukrainian heritage, was the founding president of the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv and was the commissioner of the country’s Venice Biennale pavilion three times

Aperture, the storied non-profit photography publisher and exhibitor, buys permanent Manhattan home

The non-profit, long housed in a sprawling fourth-floor space in Chelsea, will decamp uptown to a location with ample street-level space

Manhattan private school to unveil James Turrell work

An ambitious campus redevelopment includes one of the artist’s Skyspace installations

Ballroom Marfa, the west Texas town’s contemporary art kunsthalle, names new executive director

Daisy Nam, who joined Ballroom in 2020 as curator, will take the reins of the organisation from Laura Copelin

The Armory Show to examine conflict and debate around public monuments

The 2022 edition of the New York fair will feature a section of large-scale installations organised by the Tate curator Tobias Ostrander

Pace Gallery to close space in Palo Alto, California

The outpost opened in 2016 as an attempt to reach the potential tech-funded collector base in Silicon Valley

Seminal Pop Art artist Claes Oldenburg has died, aged 93

“The one rule of my work is that it must not have any function,” Oldenburg said in an interview, “I begin by removing the function of the thing because it’s true function is to become an artwork.”

San Francisco Art Institute closes as fate of $50m Diego Rivera mural hangs in limbo

Following years of financial hardship, the university has announced it will become a nonprofit, but it is unclear how it will handle its famed Rivera mural

Longtime Guggenheim director Richard Armstrong stepping down

Armstrong, who led the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for nearly 15 years filled with triumphs and turbulence, will leave in spring 2023

Margaret Keane, widely popular painter of big-eyed figures, has died at age 94

For decades, Keane’s hugely lucrative painting practice was controlled by her husband, who took credit for her canvases

Sam Gilliam, a painter revered for draped canvases rich in colour, has died, aged 88

The abstract painter associated with the Washington Color School achieved global renown beginning in the 1970s for his unique uses of colour and canvas

FBI raids Florida museum, seizing 25 Basquiat paintings amid questions regarding their authenticity

The works had purportedly been sitting in a storage unit for 30 years before resurfacing in 2012 and eventually going on view at the Orlando Museum of Art

Preserving the ‘visual consistency’ of Walter de Maria’s New York Earth Room and The Broken Kilometer

The Dia Art Foundation will renovate the storied works, each on view in New York for more than 40 years, with the intention of keeping them open year-round