– Gogo Goes to Brazil: Never one to leave a bubbling art market untapped, Larry Gagosian will stage a major sculpture exhibition in a warehouse in Rio de Janeiro as part of the ArtRio fair. The exhibition follows his 2011 Paris show "Brazil: Reinvention of the Modern." The gallery will also have a separate booth at ArtRio, which runs September 12 to 16. Both venues will showcase a broad group of gallery artists, from Yayoi Kusama to Robert Rauschenberg. Could the mega-dealer be gunning to add a 13th gallery to his empire? [NYT, Press Release]
– Ai Weiwei's Appeal Thrown Out: Chinese courts have rejected artist and activist Ai Weiwei's appeal of a $2-million tax fine that the company producing his work, Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd., was hit with following his 81-day detainment last year. "Today's verdict shows that this country, more than 60 years after its founding still has no basic legal process," Ai said, "still has no respect for the truth, still will never give taxpayers and citizens an ability to justify themselves." Meanwhile, China says he remains under investigation on suspicion of illegal exchange of foreign currency and pornography. [Guardian]
– Kate Middleton, Gold Medalist Museum-Goer: The Duchess of Cambridge was spotted yesterday visiting the National Portrait Gallery's new exhibition of Olympic Games portraiture, "Road to 2012: Aiming High." (She also made sure to peek in on the museum's other major summer show, "The Queen, Art and Image," on the occasion of Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee.) Middleton, an art history student who famously selected the NPG as a beneficiary of her patronage, sported a five-ringed necklace to the museum in apparent homage to the Olympic Games logo. [USA Today]
– British Museum Returns Cache of Artifacts to Afghanistan: Last week, 850 ancient artifacts were dispatched secretly on military planes to the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. The smuggled treasures were seized by British customs officials and police over the last two years and stored at the British Museum for safekeeping. During the Afghan Civil War, 80 percent of the National Museum's collection was plundered or destroyed. [Telegraph]
– Coin Collector's Lawsuit Isn't Pocket Change: Chicago-based coin collector Harlan Berk is suing dealer Steve Rubinger and his company Antiqua for allegedly selling him a phony ancient Greek decadrachm for $410,000. Berk is asking for more than $1 million in punitive damanges. The decadrachm was a Greek silver coin in circulation from 600 B.C. to 200 A.D. [Courthouse News]
– Wax On, Wax On: In early 2013, Washington, D.C.'s Phillips Collection will put a beeswax room installation by Wolfgang Laib on permanent display in a converted storage room, despite the small private museum's ever-present space constraints. "It is painful, the paucity of real estate for our collection,” says director Dorothy Kosinski. "The last thing I want to do is pin down our small space with something permanent and site-specific." For Laib, however, she will. [WaPo]
– Tinterow Brings Velázquez and Goya to Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston director Gary Tinterow is taking advantage of the contacts he made as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 28 years. He recently persuaded the Prado in Madrid to send "Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces From the Prado," a major exhibition of 100 paintings from its permanent collection, to his museum. Houston will be the only American stop on the show's two-venue tour. [NYT]
– Smithsonian Plays Six Degrees: A new exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution's Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery titled "Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon" traces the history of American art as a web of connections with the titular New York artist and illustrator at its center. Within six degrees of Bacon, who lived 1895-1987, the exhibition finds Ashcan painter John Sloan, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, and assemblage artist Janice Lowry, all connected via a web of letters and archival materials. [WaPo]
– Doug Aitken Wins Nam June Paik Prize: The master of high-gloss video projection has been awarded the 2012 Nam June Paik Art Center Prize "for the considerable contribution his experimental use of diverse media and forms of installation have made to the field of art." Previous awardees include Bruno Latour, Ceal Floyer, and Robert Adrian X. [e-flux]
VIDEO OF THE DAY
Ai Weiwei speaks about his loss against the Chinese government in his much-publicized tax fight, from the Guardian
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