December 12, 2014: Richard Prince’s Upper East Side Bookstore Closes, Man Who Punched $10 Million Monet Is Sentenced to Prison, and a Band of Thieves Steals 70 Paintings From a Major Museum

Opening

In New York … Tofer Chin, Koen Delaere, Paul Gillis, and Lucas Jardin opens at RH Contemporary; “Spain & 42 St.” opens at Foxy Production; “Joe Fyfe: make me one with everything” and “Samantha Bittman: Number Cruncher” open at Longhouse Projects; “Kenny Rivero: I Can Love You Better” opens at Shin Gallery.

In Los Angeles … “Olympus” opens at Moskowitz Gallery. 

In Paris … “Melik Ohanian: Stuttering” opens at Galerie Chantal Crousel. 

Closing

In New York … “Jasper Johns: Selected Works” closes at Dickinson Roundell, Inc.; “Black and White,” featuring Vince Contarino, David Rhodes, and Joan Witek, closes at Jason McCoy Gallery.

In London … Shinro Ohtake closes at Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art; “Kate Newby: Tiny-but-adventurous” closes at Rokeby Gallery.

Today’s Notable News

Richard Prince’s intentionally ephemeral bookstore Fulton Ryder, located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and recently seen in Miami as a pop-up at the Miami Beach Edition, is closing on Christmas Day. However, the shop released a statement on its site stating: “The end is only the beginning of something else…” so it’s safe to assume this is not goodbye forever to Fulton Ryder. (via ARTnews) 

A band of three thieves stole nearly 70 paintings from Puerta de Alcalá in Madrid, including works by Pablo Segarra Chias, Eustaquio Segrelles, and Juan González Alacreu—what the gallery’s director, Pedro Márquez, says are among their best works. (via The Guardian) 

Mirfayz Usmonov, director of the State Art Museum of Uzbekistan, has been sentenced to nine years in prison for selling works from the museum’s collection and replacing them with counterfeits over a period of 15 years. (via Hyperallergic) 

And in more art crime news, a man who, in 2012, punched a hole in a $10 million Monet painting in the National Gallery of Ireland, was finally sentenced to six years in jail. The man claims he accidentally fell into the painting because he was feeling faint. (via Metro UK)

Best of Instagram

Via @wmag: “Now live on wmag.com: W visits the studios of eight women painters—and finds not a single wallflower in the bunch. Photo of artist #LauraOwens by Stefan Ruiz.”

Good Reads

“Roberta Smith’s Top Art Shows of 2014: Gober, Koons and More” (via The New York Times)

“Newly Playful, By Design: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Reopens” (via The New York Times) 

“When the Art is Watching You: Museums are mining detailed information from visitors, raising questions about the use of Big Data in the arts” (via The Wall Street Journal)

Artist of the Day

Painters Edvard Munch and Helen Frankenthaler share today as a birthday, born in 1863 and 1928, respectively. Associated with both the Expressionist and Symbolist movements, Munch is most famous for his painting The Scream (1893), of which there are four versions—in 2004, one was famously stolen from a museum in Norway. Frankenthaler, a second-generation Abstract Expressionist, notably developed a signature technique of staining canvases with thin, many-layered washes of color. 

Want to catch up with the rest of this week’s news? Review past Daily Digests here.