A decade ago, the international art world derided Hong Kong as a “cultural desert.” The opening of the multibillion-dollar M+ museum epitomizes the city’s ambition to shake off stereotypes by creating “Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture." - ARTnews
The giant billboards now or until recently plastered across the churches for products ranging from OPPO smartphones to Recarlo jewellery – signal that these companies are financing the restoration of the fragile facades. - Apollo
The spokesperson said in a statement: "We can confirm that the artwork at the end of 'The Outlaws' was an original Banksy, and that Christopher Walken painted over that artwork during the filming of this scene, ultimately destroying it." - CNN
The catalogue for this fall's Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the Madrid museum has reclassified The World's Most Expensive Artwork into the "attributed works, workshop or authorised and supervised by Leonardo" category. (Not that Salvator Mundi is actually there, mind you; its current whereabouts are still unknown.) - ARTnews
During restoration work at Calverley Old Hall, between Bradford and Leeds, workers discovered what turned out to be floor-to-ceiling paintings ("basically Tudor wallpaper") in a fantastical style ultimately based on the emperor Nero's Golden Villa. - The Guardian
When plans for Asia's biggest contemporary art museum were announced back in 2007, Xi Jinping wasn't yet president of China, few people anticipated political crackdowns in Hong Kong, and the biggest concerns were over the money being spent. Now people just hope M+ can survive. - Artnet
Robert Nelson of Melbourne's The Age wrote several hundred words about Jeremy Deller's Father and Son — life-sized grey wax candles, lit and gradually melting, in the shape of a seated old man and his standing adult offspring — while completely overlooking the piece's key characteristic. - The Guardian
The two most-attended are the same as most years, the Louvre and the National Museum of China; below them, pandemic closures changed the rankings considerably, with the Met falling to eighth and the most popular Smithsonian museums gone from the top 15. - World Economic Forum
The library’s first public exhibition space is meant to “support the culture of encounter,” according to librarian Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça. - Artnet
Plans are for the $85 million complex, to be called Museum Parc, to include two buildings containing 250 apartments (50 of them "affordable"), 2,400 square feet of retail space, a new restaurant and gift shop inside the existing museum, and a revamped sculpture garden. - NJ.com
The blaze at the National Museum of Gungu, about 400 miles southeast of Kinshasa, began late at night on November 4; an estimated one-third of the collection was destroyed. The museum's director suspects arson. - ARTnews
After the Los Angeles Herald Examiner folded in 1989, the building became an out-of-context medieval ruin along a quiet stretch of South Broadway, as plan after plan to revitalize the landmark fell through. - Curbed
In 1974, Angelo Fregolent, now 94, parked his car at the newsstand he ran with his wife in the town of Conegliano, according to The Mirror, and never came back. - Insider
King George III in New York, the Buddhas in Afghanistan, a traitorous general in Virginia - "scrutinizing monumental statuary is an integral part of what open societies do as they reassess past values and seek new ones to guide their futures." - Washington Post
The museum has become "the latest Western cultural institution — and one of the most prominent to date — to agree to explore returning items that were stolen in 1897 from Benin City, in what is now Nigeria." - The New York Times
