– India's First-Ever Biennale Launches With M.I.A Assist: Tonight, India will kick off its first-ever contemporary art biennale, which is set to take over the southern city of Kochi for the next three months. In a region where artists often complain the art scene is too market-focused, the biennale is intended to "launch a discourse on art," said co-curator Riyas Komu. The festival will debut with a performance by British musician and sometime artist M.I.A. [WSJ]
– Censored Kara Walker Work Uncovered in Newark: A mural by Kara Walker on loan from New York-based collector Scott London to the Newark Public Library was censored last November following complaints from library employees. The institution had a change of heart yesterday, however, and removed the cloth that had been covering the work. "I didn't realize I'd be opening up a can of worms when I installed [it]," said library director Wilma Grey, who plans to hold a discussion about Walker's art at an upcoming staff meeting. "I would love to have Kara Walker come," she added. [AiA]
– Inside David Lynch's Historic French Studio: David Lynch is hard at work on a new series of etchings that he's producing at a very historic site: a two-floor Parisian workshop built in 1880 that was once used by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, and Miro. "Everybody that comes to this place, they feel it ... I can feel the past. I can feel the whole art of life going on here," he said. "In people's dream of Paris, this place would fit in that dream perfectly." [Reuters]
– LACMA Sells Warhol, Kelly, and More: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is quietly selling 15 works from its collection at L.A. Modern Auctions on December 16 to benefit future acquisitions. Among the works headed to the block are an Isamu Noguchi chess table (est. $150,000-$250,000), an editioned screenprint of Mick Jagger by Andy Warhol ($10,000-$20,000), and a benefit lithograph by Ellsworth Kelly from 1983 ($3,000-$4,000). [The Art Law Blog]
– Love Affair Between Brands and Art at an End?: While the 2000s were filled with collaborations between top-shelf contemporary artists like Takashi Murakami and luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, those days may be over as the middle market for such goods shrinks and artists think carefully about their own brand. "Artists who consider marketing themselves should think twice," says Yale School of Art dean Robert Storr. "Warhol had an instinctive grasp of just how to play the game and played it with genius. Lesser talents may, in the short term, laugh all the way to be the bank. But in the long term they may wake from their pipe dreams of fame and fortune as ‘period’ laughingstocks while their work floods the flea market." [TAN]
– Elgin Marble Sells at Sotheby's: A marble portrait bust of Germanicus that Thomas Bruce, the 7th Lord Elgin acquired from Rome in 1799, was sold at Sotheby's in New York last week for $8.2 million, far above its $3-$5 million estimate (and only a fraction of the cost of a Gerhard Richter abstract). Unlike the marble sculptures removed from Athens's Parthenon by Lord Elgin and then sold to the British Museum in 1816, the Germanicus bust has never been the subject of an ownership feud and had remained in the Elgin clan since its original acquisition. [Telegraph]
– Peter, the Wolf, and Will Cotton: For its latest production of Prokofiev's "Peter & the Wolf," a tradition going back six years, the Guggenheim Museum tapped artist Will Cotton to design the set and characters of the beloved children's musical story. The show is narrated by Isaac Mizrahi and conductor George Manahan leads the 13-piece Julliard Ensemble. The painter known for his candy- and nudes-filled cloudscape paintings toned down his aesthetic for the tykes: The entire narrative is set in a gingerbread house-cum-chalet, and all the characters are sepia-toned flat cut-outs that suggest children's pop-up books. [WSJ]
– Met Gets Benton Masterwork: "America Today," a 10-panel mural by Thomas Hart Benton that is considered among the most prominent examples of American scene painting, has a new owner. After languishing in storage for almost a year, the work has been gifted to the Metropolitan Museum from insurance company AXA Equitable. It will hang in the Met's temporary satellite space at the Whitney's landmark Breuer building in 2015 — but it won't be seen until then, since the museum is so squeezed for space. [NYT]
– V&A Appoints Critic as New Curator: London's Victoria and Albert Museum has appointed Kieran Long, the Evening Standard's architecture critic, as its new senior curator of contemporary architecture, design, and digital, a post he'll take up in the new year. "Our challenge will be to understand what contemporary objects and projects the V&A should be collecting and how we give the museum strengths in particular fields of contemporary practice," Long said. [TAN]
ALSO ON ARTINFO:
The Late M.F. Husain, Already an Icon of Indian Art, Becomes a Market Darling
MoMA PS1 and Volkswagen Plan a Geodesic Sandy Relief Dome in the Rockaways
Can Contemporary Art Rescue "Lost"? Curator Marc-Olivier Wahler Gives It a Try
Two More Galleries Join Lower East Side’s Art-Filled Orchard Street Corridor
Top Ten Highlights From the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial
Art+Auction's Power 2012, Part 6: Power Patrons
For more breaking art news throughout the day,
check ARTINFO's In the Air blog.