"With China stepping up military pressure on the self-ruled island, the institution ... which boasts one of the world's finest collections of Chinese imperial relics ... last week conducted its first ever 'wartime response exercise' centered on evacuating its artifacts." - CNN
Culture minister Rima Abdul-Malak: "We're all quite confident that 2024 will be the year of completing a large part of this reconstruction site and the reopening of the cathedral to worshippers and the public, although there'll be more work to do after 2024, of course." - Artnet
The tide seems to be turning in the city’s favor, in part, due to a general migration across the region to Singapore because of the country’s relaxed Covid restrictions. - ARTnews
Dezeen asked 10 American architects, including American Institute of Architects (AIA) president-elect Kimberly Dowdell and veteran New York architect Robert AM Stern, to name the US building project that is most important to them and the history of America's architecture. - Dezeen
The Denver Art Museum’s Ponti-designed fortress is by no means a perfect building — or even a great building. It has variously been described as “Tower of London Modern” and “San Quentin of the Rockies.” Ponti could only mitigate the bulky floor plan so much. But the museum is like no other. - Los Angeles Times
"The new Art Gallery of Nova Scotia planned for the Halifax waterfront is on hold. Premier Tim Houston said his government had decided the project should be 'paused indefinitely' due to rising costs. Construction was slated to begin later this year." - CBC
As Smithsonian officials celebrated the deaccessioning of works held by its African Art museum, they ignored another 21 Benin sculptures in the collection of the National Museum of Natural History. - Washington Post
Hulagu, who led the notorious sack of Baghdad in 1258, conquered Damascus and Persia, and founded the Ilkhanid Empire, built himself a fabled summer palace in what's now Çaldıran in eastern Turkey. While archaeologists stress that there's no solid confirmation, they think they may have located the site. - Live Science
"Incheon Airport is considering building a 300-square-meter exhibition space within the airport, after a recent study found that plans to establish a satellite museum of one of Europe's top-tier museums, such as the Centre Pompidou or the Louvre, were unfeasible." - The Korea Herald
The Los Angeles gallery scene is seeing an influx of established New York art galleries moving into town as of late — 11 so far are here or coming soon. - Los Angeles Times
For a year, Mr. Safdie was the public face of a building project over the rail corridor in the middle of Toronto’s downtown. This was a hotly controversial project, since it would construct private buildings in the same airspace where local politicians had promised an eight-hectare Rail Deck Park. - The Globe & Mail (Canada)
Jean-François Charnier and Noëmi Daucé are suspected of ignoring warnings about the questionable provenance of at least two allegedly stolen Egyptian antiquities worth millions, and urging the Louvre Abu Dhabi to acquire them. - Artnet
Hirst attached NFTs to 10,000 of those works and sold them for $2,000 each; a buyer could keep the NFT or get the real-life painting but not both. 5,820 buyers are hanging onto their NFTs, so Hirst is burning the canvases. The title of this endeavor: "The Currency." - The Guardian
"Last month, ... a British tourist was sentenced to 15 years in an Iraqi prison for taking a dozen pottery shards from an unguarded archaeology site. Now, the man's conviction has been overturned and he is set to be released from confinement." - Artnet
Following the lead of the British group Just Stop Oil, two young protesters from the organization Ultima Generazione (Final Generation) glued their hands to the glass covering protecting Botticelli's Primavera at the Uffizi in Florence as a third held a banner saying "Ultima Generazione No Gas No Carbone." - The Guardian
