“There is this great shift in what’s going on in collecting,” said Sara Friedlander, Christie’s head of postwar and contemporary art. “Collectors across the board are looking for something new that is also of great quality—in concert with what’s happening curatorially in museums and in scholarly gallery shows.” The result, she said, is “shifting the conversation away from simply dead white men to artists of color and women.” – ARTnews

These ten museums opened in 2019. We’re not saying they’re the best, but they sure are fun buildings to look at. – Dezeen

The Hermitage in St. Petersburg has just opened a branch in Omsk, the Pushkin in Moscow is setting up in Samara and Nizhny Novgorod, and both museums are making plans to open outposts in Yekaterinburg. Similar plans are in the works from Kaliningrad (wedged between Poland and Lithuania) to Tomsk in Siberia to Khabarovsk in the Far East and (especially) Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. – The Art Newspaper

“A civil engineer named Tamim Kasmo, 73, has joined a team of architects and engineers, stonemasons and woodworkers who have taken on the task of rebuilding the [12th-century] mosque. … Kasmo’s team must put the minaret back up and repair the broken columns, scorched ceilings, and bullet-scarred walls of the prayer hall and arcades that surround the courtyard.” – Atlas Obscura

Berlin’s most prominent art fair evolved out of its previous iteration, Art Berlin Contemporary, and was held for the past three years in the historic Tempelhof airport each September, showing mostly contemporary art. But the fair’s owner which also runs Art Cologne, has decided after months of discussions that the conditions in Berlin are too unpredictable for its liking. – Artnet

If you don’t like something that’s presented as art, if you think it’s offensive or stupid, go ahead and say it’s offensive and stupid. I’m an art critic, I will be right there with you. But to say simply that it’s not art is, for me, a cop-out. – Washington Post

“The 4.5-metre-long panel … seems to depict wild pigs found on Sulawesi and a species of small-bodied buffalo, called an anoa. These appear alongside smaller figures that look human but also have animal traits such as tails and snouts.” – Nature

“At stake [in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city,] is not one building or artefact but the entire central junction of the city as it existed in late Roman times: a covered, colonnaded space where carriages once rattled past, and copper-smiths, jewellers and silk-merchants did a roaring trade.” – The Economist

“The location of Portrait of a Lady, one of the world’s most sought-after missing artworks, has been a mystery since it was stolen in 1997. On Tuesday, a gardener clearing up ivy on an exterior wall of the Ricci Oddi modern art gallery, in the northern city of Piacenza, discovered a metal panel which, when opened, revealed a cavity with a painting in a bag.” – The Guardian

Yes, he looted much of the statuary at the ancient Greek monument (his booty now sits in the British Museum), but he also had Athenian craftsmen take plaster casts of much of what he left in Athens. Now those casts reveal a lot of detail that has since been worn away by the corrosive effects of air pollution. – The Guardian

“Protesters stormed the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City on Tuesday over a painting showing revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata striking an unconventional pose. They shouted ‘burn it, burn it’, arguing that the painting, which shows Zapata in high heels and a pink hat, naked on an aroused horse, is offensive. … The work by Fabián Cháirez, called La Revolución (The Revolution), is part of an exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of Zapata’s death.” – BBC

Sebastien Smee: “What happened to “Comedian” after it became a media sensation sums up our collective disorder — a kind of media-based bulimia — exquisitely. First, at lunchtime on Saturday, David Datuna, a little-known and well-fed-looking performance artist wanting to become better known, showed up at the gallery, took the banana off the wall and, claiming to be a “hungry artist,” ate it.” – Washington Post

Bettina Korek, who currently runs the Californian outpost of the Frieze art fair, will start work in March and team up with the gallery’s artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist in time for next year’s 50th anniversary. – London Evening Standard

“Jonty Bravery, who turned 18 in October, … told the police he had to prove a point ‘to every idiot’ who said he had no mental health problems … As well as having an autistic spectrum disorder, Bravery has an obsessive compulsive disorder and is likely to have a personality disorder.” – The Guardian

About 15,000 new archaeological sites have been discovered over the past two decades. But where are they? The truth is that most have been physically removed. Are we to believe, therefore, that they were not worth keeping? That thousands of sites deserved nothing more than a dusty report on a shelf? – Irish Times

Let’s go deep: “You are not a hopeless philistine if you find this all a bit foolish. Foolishness, and the deflating sensation that a culture that once encouraged sublime beauty now only permits dopey jokes, is Mr. Cattelan’s stock in trade. But perhaps you will find more to appreciate in Mr. Cattelan’s work if you take note of two points: one formal, one social.” – The New York Times

It’s a candy Venice. A Venice of candy and gingerbread, royal icing (“basically like glue”) and buttercream for decoration. And when roofs collapse? The teams soldier, or solder (with buttercream), on. – NPR

The now-18-year-old said he did it because “he had to prove a point ‘to every idiot’ who said he had no mental health problems, asking police if it was going to be on the news.” – BBC

A judge for next year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction probably won’t be awarding multiple prizes, looks like: “If you can’t get past this inherent flaw in the business of prizegiving – that there can only be one winner – then frankly you can’t be involved on any level and you should absent yourself from the process, whether as a judge, nominee or fan.” – The Observer (UK)

LA’s MOCA employees now won’t need to go through additional certifying steps – or employer “education” either. MOCA Director Klaus Biesenbach said recognizing the union was “in full alignment with this vision we have set forth for our institution. Ultimately, we’re taking this step to come together as one team, one MOCA.” – Los Angeles Times

The New York-based performance artist David Datuna recorded for Instagram (of course) the removal and eating of the banana, a much-discussed artwork by Maurizio Cattelan. But, plot twist: “Gallery officials replaced the banana with another one, saying that the artwork was not destroyed and that the banana was simply an ‘idea.'” – The New York Times

“In the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein became obsessed with the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar, who is notorious for waging bloody wars to seize large swaths of current-day Iran and Israel. Saddam saw himself as a modern reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar, and to prove it, he spent millions building a massive reconstruction of Babylon. … Today, it seems to fall between picnic site and abandoned theme park.” – Atlas Obscura

“On December 3, one day after Mira Dzhangaracheva resigned her post as director of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Bishkek, a commission of officials from the Culture Ministry confiscated half a dozen exhibits. Organizers the maiden Feminnale of Contemporary Art in Bishkek placed signs reading ‘censored’ in their place.” – Eurasianet

Don’t call it a name change, though. Museum officials say it is a rebranding that clarifies the missions of the joint institutions. And, they say, it has absolutely nothing to do with international protests over the Sackler family’s connection to the opioid crisis. – Washington Post

Armenian pottery has become synonymous with Jerusalem, so it’s a shock to learn that the city’s ceramic tradition, beyond major monuments such as the Dome of the Rock, is just 100 years old and that it was inspired by a single Turkish-Armenian master craftsman. – Times Of Israel

“The Turner has always been premised on there being a winner. The award garners publicity, feeds the bookies and, apparently, generates discussion. It is all, supposedly, good for the climate in which contemporary art gets talked about. But artists whose works and attitudes have nothing to do with one another are often pitted against one another for no good reason.” – The Guardian