The result is a 360-degree, fully immersive experience that lets museumgoers get as close as they want to, say, Manet’s Olympia or Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. Using a computer’s arrow buttons, a visitor can virtually “walk” around the museum, zooming in on different works of art. The user-friendly setup feels much like a computer game. – Smithsonian

Brad Downey, a conceptual artist from Kentucky based in Berlin, said the statue that replaced an earlier wooden carving destroyed in an arson attack in July, was motivated by his “frustrations with the policies of my birth country.” – The Guardian

150,000 exhibits? Art in a pretty warehouse? All of the art owned by a particular museum? Yes. All of it, on display, all of the time: “Sjarel Ex, the Boijmans’ director, is wearing the look of a man who can’t quite believe it’s finally happening. ‘A treasure chest, no?’ he exclaims, gesturing towards a dizzying lattice of glass stairwells above our heads. ‘Every single thing we have will be on display.'” – The Guardian (UK)

Honestly, how is the Guggenheim supposed to conserve something like a banana duct-taped to a wall? Ah: The artwork contains no actual banana. “Comedian, as sold, does not include a banana or tape. What one buys is a ‘certificate of authenticity,’ a surprisingly detailed, 14-page list of instructions, with diagrams, on how the banana should be installed and displayed.” – The New York Times

Should the Royal Academy sell the “Taddei Tondo,” nickname for Michelangelo’s The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John? “The 515-year-old sculpture had been given to the London gallery in 1829 following the death of its owner, Lady Margaret Beaumont, as an inspiration to students in the academy’s schools.” The debate is contentious. – The Observer (UK)

“With precision and boundless energy, a team of carpenters used medieval techniques to raise up — by hand — a three-ton oak truss Saturday in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, a replica of the wooden structures that were consumed in the landmark’s devastating April 2019 fire that also toppled its spire.” The feat was intended to show that officials made the correct decision to rebuild the cathedral using the same methods as builders did 800 years ago. – St. Louis Post-Dispatch (AP)

Other than necessary mechanical systems and bathrooms, the building’s entire second story will be devoted to galleries, a total of 110,000 square feet of exhibition space. The galleries are composed of two dozen rectilinear spaces — basically, boxes — arranged in clusters and surrounded by interstitial spaces that will also display art. – Los Angeles Times

“The artwork, which depicts a masked protester throwing a bouquet of flowers, appeared on a wall in Jerusalem in 2005. It has since been reappropriated by the UK card company Full Colour Black, which has used the artwork on cards. In 2014, Banksy successfully applied for an EU trademark for the work, which was then challenged by Full Colour Black. The company argued that the artist was not entitled to the trademark as he did not wish to use it for trade purposes or for branding.” – The Independent (UK)

Two years ago, when Bill Arning stepped down “effective immediately,” he told ARTnews, “I was feeling I wasn’t making progress, and I wasn’t getting done what I needed to get done. … They need a new leader, and I need a new life.” Last week, as Arning announced that he would open a commercial gallery in Houston, allegations appeared on Instagram charging him with serious sexual misconduct. Now CAMH has released a statement: “In October of 2018, [the museum] immediately removed Bill Arning as director when allegations of improper — but not illegal — communications and actions with artists were investigated by our legal counsel and found to be credible.” – Glasstire

Three tall twin-panel stained-glass windows unveiled at Tholey Abbey, Germany’s oldest surviving monastery building, constitute what the 88-year-old artist says will “certainly” be his last numbered opus. (He plans to limit himself to drawings and sketched from now on.) – Artnet

Instead of occupying a sealed, monolithic glass office tower, Second Home inhabits a converted community center where the majority of the work spaces are housed in individual studios (there are 60) in a lush garden that was once a vast parking lot. – Los Angeles Times

I visited four galleries, three by appointment and one as a drop-in. It wasn’t the old normal, of course, but neither was it the hassle nor the heartbreaker I dreaded. At the end of the day, I felt invigorated, quenched — and reassured. – Los Angeles Times

“It is the kind of sale that once would have engendered criticism, perhaps even sanctions: The Brooklyn Museum is putting 12 works up for auction at Christie’s next month — including paintings by Cranach, Courbet and Corot — to raise funds for the care of its collection. But it is now completely within the parameters of loosened regulations, which are themselves a measure of just how financially damaging the coronavirus pandemic has been for cultural institutions.” – The New York Times

“Design is one of our most powerful tools in the COVID-19 crisis. The ingenuity, resourcefulness, and generosity of designers and their collaborators worldwide has produced innovations that are helping to protect us from the pandemic, to improve its treatment and to prepare for the radical changes it will introduce to our lives in the future.” – Fast Company

The page has published dozens of accounts of alleged abuses of power in the art trade since it was started in July, amid similar calls by accounts such as @changethemuseum and @abetterguggenheim, which accuse institutions of discriminatory practices. – The Art Newspaper

The fair went ahead on September 10 through 13, offering a model of what a socially distanced art fair could look like, with controlled crowd flow and attendees capped at 3,000 at a time in the main thoroughfare under the cavernous glass roof. Nonetheless, it welcomed some 56,931 visitors, just 10 percent fewer than last year. – Artnet

The move is part of the Italian government’s drive to recruit so-called “super-directors” with experience of fundraising as well as scholarly credentials. Crucially this shift, which gave museums greater autonomy, was set in motion in 2015 under culture minister Dario Franceschini when the centrist government hoped to overturn the image of outdated bureaucracy associated with Italian institutions by appointing foreign museum chiefs. – The Art Newspaper

“The museum was meant to showcase the arms, art and fashion of the Mughals, Muslim rulers who reigned over [much of] the Indian subcontinent from the 16th to the 18th centuries. But officials this week in Agra, home to the Taj Mahal — the world’s most famous example of Mughal-era architecture and India’s best-known building — had another idea: a complete overhaul of the museum so that it would instead celebrate India’s Hindu majority, leaders and history.” – The New York Times

When we speak of monuments in America, we’re often talking about structures such as statues, obelisks, and memorials that celebrate a relatively narrow band of our history: the Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, the civil-rights era. Our monumental landscape preserves a sense that we are an exceptional, upstart nation. (American civilization may not boast standing stones that date back to the prehistoric era, but we do have Carhenge.) – The New Yorker

Focusing on purchases of art from major auction houses by Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, two Russian nationals described as ‘oligarchs’ by the report, the Subcommittee makes a series of pronouncements about the supposed prevalence of money laundering in the art market, and the need for regulation to address this perceived problem. – Apollo

“For almost a century, the lighthouse, near the Cantabrian town of Ajo, was a mute, monochrome sentry beaming its light out over the Atlantic. Now … the 16-metre tower is a collision of colours, geometric shapes and animals, which is intended to boost visitor numbers to one of the lesser known spots on the [northern] coast of Spain.” – The Guardian

The museum’s origins date back more than a century, when it became the first to be dedicated specifically to American art. It’s shocking that the Everson has now chosen to sell off an irreplaceable artifact — a rare formative work by the first American painter with profound international impact. – Los Angeles Times

Its sale will fund acquisitions of work by artists of color, women artists, and other marginalized artists underrepresented in the museum’s collection. The early Pollock painting will be included in Christie’s New York Evening Sale of 20th and 21st Century Art on October 6 and is estimated to sell for between $12 and 18 million. – Hyperallergic

The reason for the orange—and for the wan yellows and sickly grays that followed—is a combination of atmospheric chemistry and the physics of teeny-tiny things. – Wired

The debate over statues—and the wider debates around the Black Lives Matter movement—have thrust the issue of our relationship to history into public consciousness. We should seize this moment to think more deeply about the complexities of the past that have shaped the present. – New York Review of Books

They have used a LiDAR (light-detection and ranging) scanner, which sends out a pulsed laser light towards the target object and measures the time it takes the laser to return. It calculates the distance the light has travelled, and plots that point in a digital 3D space. The LiDAR has recorded inscriptions so high up they cannot be read from the ground. – The Art Newspaper

To mark the place in Pennsylvania where the fourth plane went down on 9/11/01, architect Paul Murdoch and his team designed the Tower of Voices, a 93-foot-tall open-air structure with 40 specially designed and tuned aluminum chimes, one for each passenger and crew member. Carolina Miranda talks to Murdoch and others about the incredible technical and aesthetic (and, yes, political) challenges that building the memorial posed. – Los Angeles Times

“Before the crypt could reopen, masses of toxic lead dust from the fire had to be removed, ancient stones cleaned, ventilation systems vacuumed, lighting and interactive programs reorganized, molds eliminated and anti-COVID measures imposed. … The crypt celebrated the opening with an exhibition on the two 19th-century men who helped restore the 850-year-old medieval monument to greatness: the novelist Victor Hugo and the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.” – Smithsonian Magazine