Charles Saatchi is gifting his London gallery to the nation along with more than 25 million pounds worth of art to secure the institution's future as a showcase for emerging artists. More than 200 works will be donated including Tracey Emin's signature My Bed (1998) and Jake and Dinos Chapman's Tragic Anatomies (1996). The gallery will continue to operate under the Saatchi masthead until he retires when it will be renamed the Museum of Contemporary Art, London. The running costs are to be met through sponsorship, catering, retailing and hall hire and the foundation set up to run the gallery will have the right to buy and sell art.

Hong Kong's ambition to become Asia's regional art hub was in the news again this week with the appointment of Lars Nittve as the Executive Director of Museum Plus (M+), a new museum concept planned at the future West Kowloon Cultural District and Exhibition Centre. M+ is being developed as a forward-looking cultural institution focusing on 20th to 21st century visual culture, with four initial broad groupings including design, popular culture, moving image and visual art. Nittve will be involved in the planning, design and curatorial development of M+, drawing on his years of experience directing institutions such as the London's Tate Modern, Stockholm's Moderna Museet and Malmo's Rooseum – Centre for Contemporary Art.

Built in the late 1870s as a 'gentleman's residence' for Auckland businessman James Williamson, Auckland's historic Pah Homestead will soon become the home of the James Wallace Art Trust's collection and be known as the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre. The new Centre opens in August 2010 with an exhibition drawn from the Trust's collection.

Art Parcours is the lastest entry to Art Basel's lineup of sections, one that Sarah Douglas says gave “a whiff of biennale spirit to the centre of art-world commerce” with nine installations deposited in various sites throughout the city. Curated by Jens Hoffmann, director of the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco, the project paired each urban locale with a “rhyming piece” by the artists involved. This link takes you to Sarah Douglas' ARTINFO article on Art Parcours.

These links take you to articles on Art Basel 2010: The Art Newspaper, New York Times and Bloomberg.

This link takes you to a Sydney Morning Herald article by John McDonald on the emergence of ART HK as a powerful new Asian art hub and what it means for Australia, and in particular for the Melbourne Art Fair and Australian collectors. 

Matt Henry's exhibition Contraflow runs in our downstairs space from 21 June to 17 July 2010. We'll post the preview date and link to the exhibition release later next week.

Liquidators of the world's most notorious failed bank have announced that another slice of the Lehman Brothers' art collection will go under the hammer in September at an auction expected to raise $10m. The proceeds will go to creditors who are still owed billions of dollars following the bank's collapse in September 2008.

With essays by exhibition curator Maud Page and independent curator/critic Wystan Curnow, this publication accompanies the exhibition Unnerved: The New Zealand Project, which runs at Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art and Australian Cinematheque to 4 July 2010. You can read Maud Page's introductory essay here.

Alicia Frankovich's exhibition Effigies opens tonight at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and runs to 19 September 2010. The exhibition is the result of eight intensive weeks of researching and building a series of discrete sculptural elements relating to the body.