As more corporations and real estate developers across the country turn to murals to hawk their products, controversy follows. In New York City, for instance, Target had to apologize for a mural it installed inside a new store in the East Village. While the mural was designed as an homage to the neighborhood’s history as a home to punk rockers and struggling immigrants alike, it drew criticism for making light of the gentrification that had transformed the neighborhood. – In These Times

In Sotheby’s recent New York Old Master sale, a copy of the Mona Lisa soared past its estimate of $80,000-$100,000 to sell for $1.69m. It seems extraordinary that someone would pay so much for a copy (in fact, that’s probably an auction record for any copy). Then there is the fact that the painting had been offered privately before the auction for considerably less, but with no takers. Some have seen the transaction as suspicious. – The Art Newspaper

“The bona fide version of The Crucifixion, donated to Santa Maria Maddalena church in the small Ligurian town of Castelnuovo Magra more than a century ago, was safely stored away last month as part of a carefully concocted bluff.” – The Guardian

Authorities who accepted street art just a couple of years ago are now whitewashing murals, harassing artists, and having them turned out of their studios. Yet they keep on, painting on everything from fallen chunks of concrete to bicycle taxis to El Paquete, the Cuban “internet” that’s passed from house to house on external hard drives. – Pacific Standard

“‘It’s a disgrace that the Netherlands is only now turning its attention to the return of the colonial heritage’, Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbets [said]. ‘We should have done it earlier and there is no excuse.’ … The Rijksmuseum has around 4,000 colonial objects, not all of which, Dibbits says, were stolen. All objects are owned by the state so museums cannot take the decision to return an object on their own.” – DutchNews.nl

“The plan recognizes the shifts in art-making in the 40-odd years since we were founded,” said Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu. “Many artists create work on a larger scale, and we want to create a space for performance and other interactive work.” – Washington Post

Parks and squares are littered with markers that failed at their only job: to keep their topics from falling into oblivion. You may have paused a thousand times at the feet of that mounted king with the two swords crossed above his head in Central Park, but would you be able to pick Jagiello out of a lineup or recite a single fact about his exploits at the Battle of Grunwald? – New York Magazine

“Seeking to raise its visibility and welcome more visitors, the Hirshhorn Museum plans to redesign its sunken sculpture garden to create an expanded entrance on the Mall and directly connect the artsy oasis to the museum’s main plaza.” Says the board chairman, “You have 25 million people walking on the Mall every year and right now our garden is largely invisible.” – The Washington Post

“Scattered throughout the four levels of Terminal 2 of Mumbai’s international airport are more than 5,500 pieces of Indian art and handicrafts, including tribal totem poles and a 3-D map of Mumbai built from recycled chips and circuit boards. Together they make up the Jaya He, GVK New Museum.” – The New York Times

It isn’t just the normal wear-and-tear of millennia; too many figures have their other features intact for that. In fact, it’s because of a particular set of Egyptian beliefs, and a particular type of iconoclasm that resulted. – Artsy

“Presenting a new book on their research, art historians revealed extensive documentation from the Renaissance that appears to prove the [terracotta] statue” — which surfaced about two decades ago in northern Italy — “was made by Michelangelo, as well as striking similarities between the object and other, confirmed masterpieces by the artist.” – The Telegraph (UK)

The first scent is said to include notes of, among other things, “neon light effect,” “green,” and “animalic”; the other scent is said to include notes of “damp concrete,” “paper,” and “cold.” I was, I admit, won over by the perfumery’s endeavor; there’s something charming about attempting to translate between senses—forging ahead while recognizing the impossibility of the task.  – Artsy

Frances Morris, the Tate Modern director, said: “Kara Walker fearlessly tackles some of the most complex issues we face today. Her work addresses history and identity with a powerful directness, but also with great understanding, nuance and wit. Seeing her respond to the industrial scale of the Turbine Hall – and the wider context of London and British history – is a hugely exciting proposition.” – The Guardian

Curators have to ask themselves, “Has this ever, does this now, and will this ever spark joy?” (Ha ha, kidding. What they have to ask is more like, “What letter grade would I give this Marc Chagall painting?”) – The New York Times

Smith is “known for her seriality, spinning concepts and images into one work after another, until something new piques her interest. Her sources of inspiration remain in flux, but Smith’s work itself tends to revolve around the body, death, mythology, and nature. Rumpelstiltskin may have been able to weave hay into gold, but there’s no alchemy to Smith’s practice: just hours of making, year after year.” – Artsy

Violence against women and girls, and lack of access to abortion services, led the list of things activists and artists were protesting. The artists – a group known as Nosotras Proponemos – focused on inequalities in the arts last year, but this year widened their focus to safety for women and girls in Argentina. They created a huge green braid to snake through the protests as they were “singing joyfully, hoping for ‘the patriarchy to go down and Latin America to be feminist.'” – Hyperallergic

Leonardo da Vinci died in 1519, and in the last 500 years, no three-dimensional works of art by him have come to light. “The 20 inch-tall sculpture, made of red clay, depicts the Virgin Mary, with an enigmatic smile similar to that of Mona Lisa, looking down at a smiling baby Jesus on her lap.” – NPR

There has been plenty of disagreement about whether the painting of Judith beheading Holofernes that turned up in Toulouse in 2016 is an original Caravaggio or a copy. But the people selling it are doing the right things: allowing every scholar that wants examine it access, being generous with shows to the public, and leaving the sale to the auctioneer that found it rather than passing it to Sotheby’s or Christie’s. If only this sort of behavior weren’t so rare. – Apollo

“After a five-month search, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem has hired Brian Kennedy as its new director and CEO. Kennedy, now 57 years old, was born in Dublin and has worked for museums on three continents, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and the National Gallery of Ireland. He currently heads the Toledo Museum of Art, where he’s been since 2010.” – WBUR (Boston)

The role of copies still raises larger questions about the mission of museums and the nature of authenticity. Does it matter if the works of art or historical objects on display are copies? Does it render the experience of visitors less meaningful? And are the institutions that don’t clearly identify the copies in some way shirking their responsibility to the public? – Washington Post

If they hadn’t found each other in the New York art scene, the players involved could have met on a Spike Jonze film set: a computer scientist commanding five-figure print sales from software that generates inkjet-printed images; a former hotel-chain financial analyst turned Chelsea techno-gallerist with apparent ties to fine-arts nobility; a venture capitalist with two doctoral degrees in biomedical informatics; and an art consultant who put the whole thing together, A-Team–style, after a chance encounter at a blockchain conference. Together, they hope to reinvent visual art, or at least to cash in on machine-learning hype along the way. – The Atlantic

“Archaeologists hunting for a sacred well beneath the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula have accidentally discovered a trove of more than 150 ritual objects — untouched for more than a thousand years — in a series of cave chambers that may hold clues to the rise and fall of the ancient Maya.” – National Geographic

Justin Davidson: “There’s a certain slyly subversive quality to the displays of manuscripts, ceiling frescoes, foods, scientific instruments, silverware, home furnishings, and scenes of Monteverdi opera and Shakespeare performed in Spanish. Here [in Puebla, Mexico], a formerly colonized people have placed the colonists’ culture on display, as if to acknowledge with a hint of surprise that Europe such an advanced civilization in the 17th and 18th century.” – New York Magazine

When it comes to stealing from museums, Stéphane Breitwieser is virtually peerless. He is one of the most prolific and successful art thieves who have ever lived. Done right, his technique—daytime, no violence, performed like a magic trick, sometimes with guards in the room—never involves a dash to a getaway car. – GQ

A growing number of artists claim that their works in the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) have gone “missing” and may have ended up on the market without their knowledge.  – The Art Newspaper

“The announcement on Tuesday of architecture’s highest award was seen by many as a long overdue honor for this 87-year-old architect, urban designer and theorist … Mr. Isozaki’s more than 100 buildings include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona and the Qatar National Convention Center in Doha.” – The New York Times

Last fall, the culture ministry of Italy’s new populist government took exception to the Louvre’s plan to assemble an unprecedented number of da Vinci’s paintings for a major quincentennial show this fall. A ministry official accused the Louvre of “[leaving] Italy on the margins of a major cultural event” when “Leonardo is Italian; he only died in France” and cancelled all loans from Italy for the event. But, after a meeting last week, differences have been ironed out and the Louvre show will proceed as planned. – Hyperallergic