“The German federal association of galleries and dealers (Bundesverband Deutscher Galerien und Kunsthändler—BDGV) has, for the moment, won a major battle to keep VAT rates down on the purchase of original works of art.” [The Art Newspaper]

NYU suspends art history prof Ross Finocchio after he is accused of filming women undressing at Beacon’s Closet. [Read More

Marion Maneker warns that last night’s Leo auction “had all the hallmarks of a market driven by anything but fundamentals.” [Art Market Monitor]

Here’s a party report from the Brant Foundation’s Sunday event. [WSJ] Read More

“Valuable as Art, but Priceless as a Tool to Launder Money” [NYT]

Michael Kimmelman says MoMA shouldn’t tear down the American Folk Art Museum building. [NYT]

Here’s a list of all the ladies that James Franco brought to Frieze and MoMA PS1. [Page Six] Read More

“A real-estate developer who collects contemporary art is building a new fine-art storage facility in Queens to rival spaces such as Christie’s Brooklyn storage facility, where art was damaged by flooding during superstorm Sandy.” [WSJ]

MoMA considers not tearing down the Folk Art building. [NYT] Read More

Here is a profile of artist Ellen Gallagher. [The Guardian]

A house painter is accused of stealing a Picasso etching from a Long Island home. [WSJ]

Here’s an interview with Betty Woodman, who just opened a show at Salon 94. [WSJ] Read More

“A Night When Chic Met Tough”: Eric Wilson at the Costume Institute Institute gala. There were Jell-O shots for dessert. [NYT]

“He painted houses for a living, but prosecutors say Joselito Vega had a discerning eye for the more rarefied practitioners of his craft — Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet and Frank Stella [and stole works by them from the family of Rudolph B. and Hannelore B. Schulhof].” [NYT] Read More

Carl Swanson visits with Jeff Koons and “his brood.” The artist’s shows at Gagosian and David Zwirner open this week. [NYMag]

On Reynold Levy, the president of Lincoln Center, “a glutton for ‘the ask.’” [NYT]

Here’s a piece about Benedikt Taschen, publisher of Taschen books. [WSJ] Read More

Jonathan Jones declares the past 25 years the best 25 years in British art, and cites Damien Hirst as “a national shame.” [The Guardian]

Art Review is interviewing a different artist showing in a national pavilion in Venice every day until the May 29 vernissage. Today: Jesper Just. [Art Review]

“The artist is a fiction, and Mike Kelley famously prioritized that fiction, allowing his production’s motifs to follow suit.” Josef Strau reviews the Mike Kelly retrospective at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam. [Artforum] Read More

Mark Rothkos go on view in the town of his birth, Daugavpils, Latvia. (It was part of Russia when he was born there in 1903.) [Bloomberg]

“A 15th-century illustrated volume of the Mishneh Torah that was to be the star of a Sotheby’s auction on Monday was withdrawn from the sale and bought jointly by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” [NYT] Read More

Sotheby’s sale of wine and kitchen equipment from the Catalan restaurant El Bulli, which played a part in Documenta 12, netted $2.7 million. Proceeds go to a nonprofit foundation that El Bulli proprietor Ferran Adria is opening. [Bloomberg]

On gender disparity in art collecting. [Sunday Review/NYT]

Randy Kennedy catches up with Carol Bove on the High Line. [NYT] Read More