Recently elected prime minister Shinzo Abe declares that he wished to create a “Beautiful Japan.” 

In a visionary move, Gene Sherman, founder and owner of Sherman Galleries, has decided to forge a new path in philanthropy. 

Abu Dhabi’s massive cultural development on Saadiyat Island, a USD 27 billion development off the emirate’s coast that has already secured the latest franchise in the Guggenheim Foundation’s global empire, added another jewel to its crown with the announcement in early March that the French government had signed an accord with the UAE capital’s tourism authority approving the establishment of a Louvre affiliate there.

The DIFC Gulf Art Fair kicked off auspiciously on March 7 just as the ink of French president Jacques Chirac’s pen was drying in a formal agreement for the Louvre’s new Abu Dhabi outpost. 

Much of the art world’s attention has been focused on the once-in-a-decade convergence this summer of the Venice Biennale, the five-year periodic survey of contemporary art documenta and the 10-year periodic festival Sculpture Projekte Münster, all opening within days of each other in June. 

China’s opening to the West in the 1990s was fueled by the government’s desire for economic expansion and the establishment of a commodity-based culture. 

Organized by New York gallery impresarios Ethan Cohen and Juan Puntes, “We Are Your Future” brought together 33 Chinese and Latin American artists and artist groups as a satellite event of the Moscow Biennale. 

Oceania is a region of both great cultural diversity and similarity, fostered by the forces of migration, colonialism and globalization.  

Simryn Gill is the quintessential postcolonial artist, less so because of her transnational biography—Indian extraction, born in Singapore, raised in Malaysia and now based in Sydney—than because of her deep engagement with the history of colonial expansion in Southeast Asia. 

To get from downtown Beijing to Liu Wei’s studio in Songzhuang village, one must travel by car across 30 miles of urbanized land that belongs to Beijing Municipality. Here, traditional peasant villages have been transformed into artist villages.