New Gallery Representation:

• Almine Rech has taken on Claire Tabouret
• Bortolami announces representation of Lesly Vance
• Hauser + Wirth has taken on Amy Sherald whose profile has risen dramatically since the unveiling of her portrait of Michelle Obama. …

Magnus Renfrew Returns to Art Fairs with an Asia-centric Taipei Fair for 2019: It was announced this week that ArtBasel Hong Kong founder, Magnus Renfrew, will return to the art fair business with a fair in Taipei next year composed of  galleries vetted by “a globally recognized selection committee and the support of an advisory committee of leading regional collectors. “

• “A new international art fair, Taipei Dangdai will open in Taipei in January 2019. The inaugural edition of the fair will bring together 80 exhibitors from Asia as well as strong selection of leading galleries from outside the region that have shown a continued commitment to showcasing their programs on the continent. Overseen by Magnus Renfrew, Taipei Dangdai will be a world-class art event, providing exhibitors the opportunity to broaden their collector base and giving international exposure to a growing number of artists and galleries from across Asia. The inaugural edition of Taipei Dangdai will be held at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, and is presented by UBS.” …

Belgian Homes Raided in Search for Fake Art: The Guardian reports on police raids in Belgium following on the controversial show of Russian artworks held at the Museum of Fine Art in Ghent.

• “On Friday, Wiesbaden regional court in the western German state of Hesse sentenced two men to three years and 32 months in prison respectively for having knowingly sold forged pictures that had been presented as works by artists including El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich and Alexander Rodchenko.The pair were ordered to pay back about €1m (£875,000) they had made through the sale of the pictures. Ghent’s public prosecutor’s office and federal police in east Flanders carried out their searches on Monday after a formal civil complaint from a collective of four art dealers from London and New York, and a descendant of an artist whose work is said to have been counterfeited.” …

Sotheby’s Prize Open for Submissions: Applications are now being accepted for this year’s Sotheby’s Prize – an award of up to $250,000 to help museums and art institutions realise ambitions to explore  overlooked or under-represented areas of art history, and to break new ground. Open to institutions, curators and museum directors around the world, the prize last year garnered 92 applications from 15 different countries on five continents. As Allan Schwartzman, chair of the jury, noted, “I’d like to see many more applications coming from Asia, Africa, South America.”  Sir Nicholas Serota added: “We’ve all seen exhibitions that reexamined a great figure from the past four or five hundred years and did so in a way that made us think again. I hope this time some of the curators working in historical fields will think about putting forward their proposals.”  …

The FT Asks If Art Businesses Are at Risk from Europe’s New Data Laws: The short answer, no. The EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) require businesses to purge personal information on clients. Does that mean a gallery can’t keep notes on where you like to vacation?

• “Ian De Freitas, a partner at Farrer & Co, the law firm, advises art businesses on GDPR. He says the art world is “unusual” in how long people who work in it retain data. “They say that they often need to keep information for decades in relation to sales of artwork, for example for provenance purposes,” he says. A gallery can keep this, but should purge the data it does not need sooner, he advises.”