Celebs
Benedict Cumberbatch reads Sol LeWitt. [Sara Dobie Bauer]
Swiss Beatz talks about his art collection, and pours some Grey Goose drinks for a reporter, who notes that the rapper is a creative director for Bacardi (which owns the vodka label). [The New York Times]
Auctioneer Alexander Gilkes and his fashion maven wife, Misha Nonoo, have split. [Page Six]
Museums
Bronx Museum director Holly Block gives an interview to discuss the recent acrimonious departure of the former chairwoman of the board, and other board members. [The New York Times]
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has acquired the archive of the dancer and “hip-hop polymath” Michael Holman. It is the library’s first hip-hop collection. [The New York Times]
Following a separate retrospective exhibition in 2018 that will hit Basel and New York, Bruce Nauman will stage a retrospective at Tate Modern in London in 2019. [The Art Newspaper]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is facing a lawsuit over a Picasso in its collection; heirs of a previous owner allege that he was forced to sell the work while fleeing Nazi Germany. [The New York Times]
Crime
Italian police have recovered two van Gogh paintings that were pilfered from an Amsterdam museum in 2002. They were hidden in a farmhouse close to an organized crime syndicate’s compound near Naples. [Courthouse News]
Deaths
Painter Shirley Jaffe has died at 92. [New York Times]
Artists
Video artist and 2016 MacArthur fellow Mary Reid Kelley on “recovering history’s lost narratives.” [PBS Newshour]
Richard Serra and Michael Craig-Martin in conversation. [The Guardian]
Bonus
Documentation of Sydney Shen and Aleksander Hardashnakov’s “Shriek Wildly and Throw Yourself Into Whatever Bottomless Gulf May Yawn” at Roberta Pelan in Toronto. [Sex Magazine]