Ms. Abramovic's exhibition, if you'll recall, involved her sitting in a chair in MoMA's atrium and staring silently at visitors who took a seat across from her. The film was a backstage glimpse at Ms. Abramovic and the organization of the show. It was also Mr. Akers's first film. Mazel!

Abramovic. (Patrick McMullan)

Olafur Eliasson's "Little Sun" will come to Tate Modern. [WSJ]

Marina Abramovic, though she asserts she is not a feminist, will give a talk just for women at Antony Hegarty's Meltdown festival. [The Guardian]

In case you missed it: Federal authorities ask American museums to check their inventory, following the arrest of an Upper East Side antiquities dealer. [NYT]

The Boston State House can't hold onto its cultural artifacts. [Boston Phoenix]

Jianchuan's Museum Cluster, a private museum in China, shows its owner's obsession with the Cultural Revolution. [WSJ]

Black cloth dolls are growing in collector popularity. [ArtDaily]

A group exhibition in the shadow of London's Olympic Park. [The Art Newspaper]

Peter Brant II, 2011. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan)

The ever-enterprising Architectural Digest has just published a post called "The Inquisitive Guest," for which it asked a variety of art types, like MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach and artists Maurizio Cattelan, Marina Abramovic and George Condo, about their favorite places for viewing art outdoors. Their answers are astounding. Which artist loves the Tuileries in Paris? Who considers Pompeii a sculpture garden? And who could do without art in nature altogether? Read on.

Here are some of our favorite responses from the bunch:

Klaus Biesenbach's surprising answer, "My favorite sculpture garden is definitely MoMA."

Performance goddess Marina Abramovic gave a spiritually pitch-perfect response, “I don’t think nature needs art.... The art is like oxygen. But I don’t really like sculpture gardens.”

But our favorite came from the young and snappy Peter Brant II, who knows where it's at: “I have friends in Beverly Hills who have something like 250 Rodins in their garden.”

"Like many other recent documentaries about artists, it is more celebratory than analytical, a kind of slick, extended promotional video for its subject," he writes, though as that kind of movie it has strong access. Moreover, he writes, it further legitimizes and spreads wide the goals of performance art, which is never a bad thing.

Even the eponymous retrospective is presented well, though, as the review concludes, "The film’s message can be summed up in a familiar phrase: You had to be there."

Still from 'Art in the 21st Century' (Courtesy PBS)

Tonight, Art in the 21st Century, the Peabody Award-winning television series which profiles 13 artists in four hour-long episodes, premieres on PBS at 9:00 p.m. EST. This season, the show—grouped into the episodes "Change," "Balance," "History" and "Boundaries"—will feature performance artist Marina Abramovic, art collective Assume Vivid Astro Focus, known for its carnivalesque installations (like the one it created for a 2008 exhibition at Deitch Projects), abstract artist Lynda Benglis, whose brightly-colored sculptures in poured latex and foam were exhibited at the New Museum last year, outspoken artist and human rights activist Ai Weiwei and Sarah Sze who will represent the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

As part of the Access '12 initiative, a worldwide campaign to give wide access to contemporary art and artists through a proliferation of public screenings and events, you can catch a screening at various venues across the country. In New York, there will be screenings at NYU on April 18, the Studio Museum in Harlem on April 22 and 29 and Brooklyn Artists Gym on May 11. If you can't make it out to one of those, you can also host your own screening.

As the show will be affected by the NEA's recent announcement that it will cut funding on several documentary series, including this one, which has received support from it in the past, the fate of the program is unknown.

Ms. Abramović. Falcon's name not known. Courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery.

Speaking with the Huffington Post about her performance institute being built in Hudson, N.Y., Marina Abramović said, "[The institute is meant] really to educate the public and the audience more about performance, to leave as my concept what I'm going to call the Abramović method. In theater there is [the] Stanislavski method, but now in performance, it's going to be the Abramović method."

Big words. Well, now, in a press release from her gallery Sean Kelly, Ms. Abramović will cement this point in an upcoming show at the Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Milan. It is called "The Abramović Method."

The show will focus on three works from the last decade, when Ms. Abramović's celebrity began to reach beyond the confines of the art world: The House With the Ocean View (2002), Seven Easy Pieces (2005) and The Artist is Present (2010).

In a statement, the artist does not compare herself to Stanislavski, but rather Duchamp:

I have arrived at the conclusion that... the performance has no meaning without the public because, as Duchamp said, it is the public that completes the work of art. In the case of performance, I would say that public and performer are not only complementary but almost inseparable.

Ms. Abramovic at the Guggenheim in 2005. (Photo by Richard Termine for The New York Times)

This past Sunday, Rufus Wainwright debuted his opera “Prima Donna" at BAM to mixed reviews. The party was undoubtedly good, though, and as The Times' Thursday Styles reports, Marina Abramovic was among the many boldfaced names to attend the premiere.

From the piece:

Loudon Wainwright III, the father of the man of the hour, said: “Fear of failing, fear of aging, fear of love, fear of everything. This opera basically has it all.”

Perhaps. But it didn’t have a fear of news photographers. Ms. Abramovic, the performance artist, surprised two of them by asking to see the images they had taken of her. “I’ve never worn blue before so I have to see how I look,” she told them.

Always "on," that one.

Photo courtesy Rozalia Jovanovic

“I’m speechless,” said Ryan Estep, a visitor at the opening of "The Illusion of Democracy," Charles Atlas's show at Luhring Augustine Friday night. Mr. Estep was standing in front of Plato’s Alley, a 2008 video work by Mr. Atlas, comprised of a black and white projection of a grid of rapidly flashing numbers. The video was cast across several walls of a nook in the gallery the size of a small bedroom. An artist and art handler who works at a Chelsea gallery and lives in Bushwick, Mr. Estep was one of the first visitors to the show. He seemed mesmerized. “Things are coming toward me and receding. I’m blown away.”

This was a night of several firsts. It was Charles Atlas’s first solo show in New York, though he is an artist who has been working since the 1970s, when he began collaborating with Merce Cunningham. This was also the first opening of Luhring Augustine’s Bushwick location—the first outpost in the neighborhood of any Chelsea gallery. As the night wore on, and Mr. Atlas’s projections became swarmed by the silhouettes of the masses—both beanie-hat-donning Bushwick artists and slickly dressed Chelsea brethren—it felt like a historic event.

“We’re thrilled to have this exhibition,” said Lauren Wittels, a director at Luhring Augustine who is incredibly tall and was wearing skinny dark jeans. “So many people have followed Charlie for so long. To be his first major gallery show in New York is just an honor.”

When asked if she thought the opening of Luhring Augustine in Bushwick would mean more traffic to the neighborhood, she said, “Can’t say. We’ll see. I mean, I think tonight will be crazy.”

Mr. Atlas was quietly moving around the gallery in black jeans, white sneakers and a bright orange hooded sweater. His white hair was cut in a sharp line in the back, and he had an orange triangular marking on either side of his face.

“I haven’t had a gallery in New York in probably twelve years,” Mr. Atlas told Gallerist. “The gallery I had before,” he said, smiling and pointing to a corner of the gallery, “could probably fit in that space over there.” That’s all we got out of Mr. Atlas before a friend came up and kissed him on the cheek.

“Biesenbach’s here,” someone whispered.

“I’m just texting Marina [Abramovic] and Antony [Hegarty],” said MoMA PS1 Klaus Biesenbach, in a gray suit, looking up from his silver BlackBerry when Gallerist approached him. “They’re in the car, on their way over.”

“I love Charlie,” said Mr. Biesenbach, when he was done texting. “I think he’s both an amazing collaborator—look at what he did with Antony, or Marina, or Leigh Bowery. But then he’s also a great solo artist. And you normally don’t have this, have a person who can have a solo career and really kind of be themselves, and then be the best, best, best collaborator ever. I think what he did with Marina or Leigh Bowery is art history."

Why so long for a solo New York show? “Everybody who’s ahead of their time, it takes a long time,” said Mr. Biesenbach, smiling. “But that’s the definition of being ahead of your time.”

Later, Mr. Biesenbach walked arm-in-arm with Ms. Abramovic, who was clad in a black dress. Antony, a lugubrious giant, was seen talking quietly with Mr. Atlas in front of Mr. Atlas’s "Painting by Numbers," a 2011 video that shows an explosion of numbers in a psychedelic swirling pattern.

“You guys,” someone said. “The video only uses the numbers 1 through 6. There’s no 7,8 or 9.” We inspected it and found they were right. Later over email, we asked Mr. Atlas why he used only those numbers. He replied, “In this first work I wanted to make a piece about "number-ness", something  that I thought would exist even if human beings didn't exist.  In the end I was forced to use numerals, but I didn't want the subject to be about numerals, so I limited the field to 1 through 6.”

Some flashes went off. "OMG. Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz are here," someone said, of the art critics.

Some people seemed confused by Mr. Atlas’s work. Known for his multi-channel video installations, live electronic performances, and documentary film, this abstract work seemed different. “I’m confused," said Mr. Estep, "as to where this new work fits in Atlas’s canon.” Another young artist claimed the work felt a little “old-fashioned.” “When I came in and I saw all the numbers,” she said, “I thought it would be connected to some live-feed, or the Internet. But it’s just an animation. Maybe I just have a very new-media approach.”

“At the time I started making the first of these pieces (Plato's Alley, 2008)," said Mr. Atlas over email, "my goal was to make a piece that didn't  look like any other work that I had done before.  I tried to imagine I was an unknown artist with a different sensibility—realizing of course that on some level it would probably be surprising but still be recognizable as my work by the people who have known my work through the years.”

Others weighed their observations against their expectations of the highly anticipated show and what it might mean for the Bushwick arts scene. “I actually thought it would be smaller,” said Peter Hopkins about the space, which Luhring Augustine purchased in 2010, to the consternation of local artists, and will use partly for storage. Mr. Hopkins runs The Bogart Salon, a gallery at 56 Bogart in Bushwick and recently held a salon on the topic of what changes a Chelsea gallery would bring to Bushwick. “I thought they were going to use less for the work, I thought it was going to be more storage. It’s really more about the work. But I didn’t think it was going to be this big. I’m very impressed.”

Mr. Hopkins looked around. “I think it’s better,” he said, of the mixed Bushwick-Chelsea crowd with a blend of triumph and despondency. “There are so many more types here that are rougher around the edges. There are still non-Chelsea types. But I don’t recognize every face. Which is good.”

Ms. Abramovic and Mr. Redford, at the party. (Photo courtesy of Getty Images)

Performance artist grand dame Marina Abramovic got it into her head to throw a "silent" party in Sundance and wouldn't you know it but the thing turned out to be quite the shindig. New York's Jada Yuan reports!

Everyone wore white lab coats and noise-canceling headphones. After an hour, the headphones came off.

Lab coats, Abramovic says, “are interesting to me because they create the situation of equality. Everyone is democratic and the same, then also become experimenters — this kind of mischieving [sic] element, which is beautiful. And I really like to change the kind of chemistry of the parties. It’s always the same.” The silent element was important because, she said, the MoMA exhibit ["The Artist is Present"] “was all about gaze. And I wanted to transport this kind of experience to the party situation. People have to look at each other in the eyes. They have to communicate in different ways.”

Robert Redford was there! Go read it!