The obstruction seems to be protruding from the gargantuan high-rises going up across the street from PS1, at 22-44 Jackson Avenue. These two residential buildings, which replaced the former legendary graffiti haven 5Pointz, are also called 5Pointz and will house 1,115 units total (including 223 affordable housing units) when they’re finished. – Gothamist

It alleges that Bona Yoo, a former director who is now working at Lévy Gorvy gallery as a sales director, “surreptitiously copied valuable trade secrets” from Lehmann Maupin’s computer systems before she left and “maliciously corrupted” or deleted important information from the gallery’s database. Yoo’s plan, according to the lawsuit, was designed to impede the gallery’s business while simultaneously allowing her to use the information for her own financial gain at another gallery. – Artnet

Boutique renovations, like most renovations, are often delayed. They frequently run over budget. But rarely are they delayed and over budget because a mysterious artwork more than three centuries old has resurfaced. – The New York Times

Art dealer John Brandler, who paid an unannounced sum in the hundreds of thousands of pounds to the garage’s owner, says that he met with officials from the city of Port Talbot (where the mural was painted) and the Welsh Assembly to discuss a site for the new gallery. — The Art Newspaper

The show, housed at another Rio museum, the Palace of the House of Money, features fossils found in Antarctica. Eight of the items on display, including a pterodactyl bone, were recovered from the museum’s ashes, the other 152 in the show were borrowed from other collections. — Yahoo! (AFP)

The name has become an adjective as well as a noun – Bauhaus style, Bauhaus look. And now it is coming up for the centenary of its founding, which shows both that what was called the “modern movement” is now part of history and that its influence is very much still around us. – The Guardian

Sometimes he wrote columns in which all of the proper names had been excised, which rendered them useless as gallery PR; others featured pseudonymous composite characters like “Gaston Porcile Vitrine,” an allegory of art-world fickleness who finds himself suddenly, humiliatingly shunned at downtown hangouts after a season or two in the limelight. – The Baffler

Though the art market is often described as capricious, it has a clear logic: the art that commands the most money at a given moment is that which best reflects its collectors’ view of themselves—pious or powerful, beautiful or deep. Jeff Koons—whose shiny objects, vendor-babble, and dead smile recur like a fugal motif throughout the film—has provided this service for decades, celebrating the crass while flattering his buyers that they are clever and superior for being in on the joke. – New York Review of Books

In “A Chronology of Photography” photojournalist Paul Lowe and his contributors detail the medium’s swift progression from the purview of the scientists who invented it (noted astronomer John Herschel coined the term “photograph” in 1839, combining the Greek words for “light” and “drawing”) to its adoption by entrepreneurs who established thousands of photographic studios to meet the growing demand among members of the middle class for images of themselves, something previously available only to the wealthy. – Washington Post

Cassie Grimaldi imagines some new contenders, such as the Center for Translation Of Vague Posts: “At this research center, linguists will work to interpret vague social-media posts, past and present, interrogating concepts such as “Who is this subtweet about?”; “What does this away message with unsubtle emo lyrics indicate about its author’s life?”; and “What does the Facebook status ‘don’t ask!!!’ actually suggest?” People will flock to the center to view its coveted Rosetta Stone: an emoji tableau.” – The New Yorker

“The Museum of Contemporary Art announced Wednesday that it will close its Pacific Design Center location next month after exhibiting architecture and design at the West Hollywood satellite for more than 20 years. MOCA will continue an architecture and design program, but at its Grand Avenue and Geffen Contemporary locations in downtown L.A.” — Los Angeles Times

Well, it’s one thing to do if you find a Banksy on your property one morning. The garage’s owner, Ian Lewis, has sold the piece, Seasons Greetings, to the Essex-based Banksy expert John Brandler but it will stay in Port Talbot, at least for the time being.” — The Guardian

“I’m especially proud of pumping up the volume on all things indigenous. We’re playing a leadership role in the world here in Canada [recognising indigenous work]. We talked about that since I first got here.” Mayer says it was an “emotional moment” when the museum opened its Canadian and Indigenous Galleries in June 2017, covering 5,000 years of creative output in the region, from First Nations art and objects to contemporary work. – The Art Newspaper

These historic gardens, originally built for Agra’s nobility, are two of the city’s few riverfront gardens that survive today. The project of bringing them back to their original glory has involved restoring their original plantings, reactivating their water features, and creating a visitor center. – Atlas Obscura

Milwaukee’s Marcus Center for the Performing Arts has a need to attract new audiences (and don’t we all). So there’s a plan to refresh the complex’s campus, including an idea to cut down a grove of trees and replace it with a lawn. But Mary Louise Schumacher wonders if destroying the trees – an important design element of the current campus – is really in the best interest of the community. – Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“After a Banksy mural appeared on his Port Talbot garage last month, Ian Lewis found himself facing a ‘very, very stressful’ battle to protect the artwork from thieves and vandals. Here, four people share their own, very different experiences of being ‘Banskied’.” — The Guardian

“One of Africa’s pre-colonial treasures, the Mapungubwe gold collection, discovered in the 1930s near what is now the South Africa-Zimbabwe border, will take pride of place in … the new 280m rand ($19.7m) Javett Art Centre.” — The Art Newspaper

The rise of Taipei, a realignment in New York, Saudi money… the art world has never been so internationally dispersed… – Artsy

Last month, an 18-year-old allegedly ran through the museum’s “Stampede: Animals in Art” exhibit, knocking over a display case and smashing centuries-old sculptures and objects from China and the Mayan Empire. Fortunately, the museum has announced that almost everything he broke can be repaired and the financial hit taken by the museum will be much lower than feared. — Denver Post

“The scale of artifacts in question is staggering. Up to 95 percent of Africa’s cultural heritage is held outside Africa by major museums. France alone holds 90,000 sub-Saharan African objects in its museums.” — The New York Times

The organization — called Aliph, based in Geneva, chaired by billionaire Thomas Kaplan, and funded with $60 million so far — will work on restoring the museum in Mosul and the fourth-century Mar Behnam monastery in Iraq, both wrecked by ISIS, and the 15th-century Askia tomb, a victim of Boko Haram, in the Malian city of Gao. — The Art Newspaper

“After confiding in just 20 trusted people of his suspicion that a painting in his church was a lost masterpiece, a priest in the small Flemish town of Zele, 45 miles north of Brussels, has had to call in the local police over its sudden disappearance. …The work, depicting Mary, Joseph and a sleeping baby Jesus, was due to be assessed within days by a respected Michelangelo expert.” — The Guardian

The rapper decided to donate the money after making what he called an “art pilgrimage” last month to see Turrell’s Roden Crater in Arizona’s Painted Desert. Turrell has been working on the project since 1977. — The Art Newspaper

Jorge M. Pérez, the real estate developer whose lead gift for a new building inspired the renaming of what is now the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), has endowed the $50,000 Jorge and Darlene Pérez Prize, an unrestricted award to a living artist selected by PAMM. An additional grant of $25,000 will go to a young alumnus of the National YoungArts Foundation in Miami. — Artnet

“Hundreds of Christians protested outside the Haifa Museum of Art in Israel on Friday against Jani Leinonen’s McJesus sculpture of a crucified Ronald McDonald, conflating the American fast-food chain with the crucifixion. Yet the Finnish artist insists that he requested the work be removed … last September and that it is on display against his wishes.” — The Art Newspaper

The stolen silkscreen was old enough that concerns about it being used once again to make new prints are nonexistent. But as a relic of a those heady, prolific Factory days when Warhol and his assistants were creating the modern Pop Art movement along with a whole bouquet of Flowers is enormous. – The Daily Beast

This is what happens when you poke around in old collections: Three unknown shark specimens spur scientists to look at other dead animals, not to mention live ones, to determine the sharks’ closest relatives and to see if any may still be alive. – Gizmodo

Sure, the Mugrabi divorce is tawdry and full of allegations of sexual impropriety, drugs, and a lot more, but “more than a tabloid story, the divorce also threatens to expose the private dealings of one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the art world.” – The New York Times

The ban started in 2010, when the National Gallery removed (aka censored) a video by artist David Wojnarowicz because of conservative political pressure. Every year since then the Foundation has reviewed its decision. “We thought that a period of time has to go by before you know whether someone has really changed,” says the Foundation president. – The New York Times