“Previous generations had a signature style, and it’s easier to label,” says Mark Lee, seated before a wall of printed renderings in his firm’s cluttered West L.A. studio. “Our generation wants to escape that.” – Los Angeles Times

On Sunday afternoon, a man walked into the Dennis Rae Fine Art Gallery, walked up to Dalí’s 1966 hand-colored etching Burning Giraffe, picked it right off the easel, and walked out the open door while the staffer on duty had his back turned. – NPR

“A French court on Monday sentenced five members of an all-female jihadist cell to between five and 30 years in prison over a failed bid to detonate a car bomb outside Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. … The five women, aged between 22 and 42, were arrested after a car packed with gas cylinders was found parked near the bustling esplanade in front of the cathedral … on November 4th, 2016.” – The Local (France)

Challenging, international contemporary art has always struggled to capture the attention of any but a very small share of the local population in Hawaii. (There are no galleries specializing in anything but decorative, genre, or antique paintings.) – Hyperallergic

Shortly before she died in 2007, philanthropist Linda Pace had a dream in which she saw a shining red counterpart to the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz which would hold her art collection and make it available to the public. A dozen years later, Ruby City has opened, with a building (yes, it’s red) designed by David Adjaye. – San Antonio Current

Peter Schjeldahl: “The renovation is a big deal for the global art world, and certainly for New York. It runs up against problems old and new. Generously enlarged quarters will only marginally relieve a chronic crush of visitors, the museum victimized by its own charisma. Enhanced representations of art by women, African-Americans, Africans, Latin-Americans, and Asians can feel tentative, pitched between self-evident justice and noblesse oblige. But such efforts are important and must continue. We will have a diverse cosmopolitan culture or none worth bothering about.” – The New Yorker

The Vanguard Artists Collective is “a tight-knit group of like-minded members of the creative class looking to push each other in their artistic practice while nurturing the next generation of great Detroit artists.” And their success hasn’t come overnight. – Detroit Free Press

And will it ever appear again? With less than two weeks to go before the Louvre’s Leonardo exhibition, “there are now serious doubts as to whether the star of the exhibition will be included, as the Paris museum had hoped.” – The Observer (UK)

In this case, “That’s a trash fire!” was not a metaphor: In 1969, Puerto Rican and other Latinx activists used garbage fires to get city services to finally take them seriously, and Hiram Maristany took photos of it all. – The New York Times

They were painters, too, not just muses for the men. Why doesn’t everyone know that? Er, for instance: The classic-looking Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund is not by one of the big boys of pre-Raphaelite art. It is the work of Evelyn De Morgan, a woman whose painting was often compared to that of Burne-Jones. Sir Edward, indeed, was scathing about the young artist in his private letters, a sure sign that he felt rattled by her talent.” – The Guardian (UK)

Brexit. Or maybe Macron? In any case, “London galleries are launching new spaces in Paris, and US dealerships, who would once have chosen London as their European base, are going to Paris instead.” – The Observer (UK)

The Studio Acting Conservancy was just starting demolition work at a former church that will be its new home in Washington, D.C.’s Columbia Heights when the crew boss called the theatre’s founder, Joy Zinoman, to tell her about a discovery, “an enormous frieze of the Last Supper that was hidden behind drywall for more than a decade.” And now there’s a bit of a problem: “Acting studios are supposed to be bare.” – Washingtonian

What defines the protests in the public’s memory might just be the art, including statues likening protesters to the Statue of Liberty and pop-art posters of Chinese officials and the city’s leader, Carrie Lam. “Street art and graphic design are defining features of the pro-democracy demonstrations that have roiled the semiautonomous Chinese territory since June. Artists often work quickly and anonymously, and present their oeuvres either in Reddit-like internet forums or public places with heavy foot traffic.” – The New York Times

Hilariously to anyone who’s ever worked in, or anywhere near, pastels, “There’s one theorist who said it was better for women to use because they wouldn’t soil their fair hands the way that they would with oil paint.” – NPR

Pinault currently operates two other museums in Venice—the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana, both of which were also designed by Ando. Pinault is known for putting on must-see shows by artists with marquee names, such as Damien Hirst, Albert Oehlen, and Sigmar Polke, and his museum in Paris is set to become one of the most closely watched in a city rich with contemporary art spaces. – ARTnews

Although the Saudi exhibition signals growing international interest in Desert X, three of 14 members on the organization’s board of directors resigned over the decision to work with a government responsible for human rights abuses and the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The three are artist Ed Ruscha, art historian and curator Yael Lipschutz and philanthropist and former fashion stylist Tristan Milanovich. – Los Angeles Times

“In court filings, John H. McFadden — scion of one of the founding families behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art — denied claims that he stole a bronze cast of one of … Brancusi’s most famous works from Stuart Pivar, a prolific Manhattan art buyer and onetime friend of Andy Warhol. Instead, McFadden maintained, Pivar agreed to sell the work, which the collector valued at $100 million, for a pittance because he needed quick cash and could not attract another buyer, due in part to his longtime friendship with Epstein.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Phil Kennicott: “MoMA is billing these changes to the display of the art as the most significant aspect of the expansion. Not only is the museum growing, it is changing its relationship to the art, no longer insisting on a single grand narrative, no longer teaching, but simply opening itself up to exploration and discovery.” – Washington Post

“For all its intelligence and skill and its obvious desire to make the place feel friendlier, the expansion seems to me not to have solved the problem of the Modern’s ambience. … You may feel like you’re entering an Apple store. Everything is crisp and coolly engineered.” – The New York Times

The Louvre attracts 10.2 million people a year with about 80 per cent believed to come just to see the Mona Lisa. In July, officials had to restrict access for three days because of the chaos caused by the queues. – The Telegraph (UK)

“[A] stream of stories, boasts and false leads has kept the police busy for years and has led to just two conclusions: the painting was stolen by the mafia, and it was then destroyed. … In 2017, however, the case was re-opened by the anti-mafia commission, … [and] the situation raises a number of questions that have never been answered by earlier investigations.” – The Art Newspaper

“By giving these paintings the endorsement of a professional exhibition, in the nation’s capital, with the imprimatur of a major arts center and by extension the federal government (which supports the center’s budget), the art has been put into a different context, where it does not belong.” – Washington Post

“Goldsmith Street in Norwich represents what has become a rare breed: streets of terraced homes built directly by the council, rented with secure tenancies at fixed social rents. And it’s an architectural marvel, too.” – The Guardian