VISUAL

"The plaintiffs" — local residents and a powerful labor union — "accuse the authorities of 'grave negligence', which they say exposed city dwellers, particularly children and those working to restore the cathedral, to dangerous levels of toxic lead dust." - The Guardian

Alexandra Lange takes a look at the New York City congresswoman's "ability to get her message across visually, through graphic design, through fashion, and through social media." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)

Sending the picture abroad was unanimously opposed by the expert team, who believed travel puts the prized work at grave risk. - Los Angeles Times

It's not enough that he sold his own NFT for $69 million. The graphic artist and some even richer tech and entertainment types have launched WENEW, which sells NFT images of "iconic" athletes, artists, and such. The platform's motto: "The Memory Palace of the Metaverse." - Artnet

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have repeatedly rejected the heirs’ claims for paintings that were sold at the same auctions. - The New York Times

Two years ago in Germany's well-known Unicorn Cave, archaeologists discovered a deer knuckle with diagonal lines deliberately carved in it, Carbon dating has shown that the bone is 51,000 years old — before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe. But is it actually art? - National Geographic

Museum directors brought home an average annual salary of $320,600, compared to $317,500 in 2019. Meanwhile,visitor services associates, who were most impacted by job cuts, earned less in 2020: an average of $31,600 (full-time) compared to $32,600 in 2019. - Hyperallergic

Once the necropolis for the Pharaohs' capital city of Memphis, Saqqara has lately been the most exciting and productive archaeological site in Egypt. Here's an in-depth look at the location's riches and how they were found. - Smithsonian Magazine

In custody is not a gang of thieves who planned a Hollywood-style heist, but a 49-year-old construction worker, with the Twitter name ArtFreak, who was arrested on Monday. - The New York Times

What I did not expect was how these installations would speak to one another, and to me, about the pandemic. - Artnet

In early June in Milan, conceptual artist Salvatore Garau auctioned off an "immaterial sculpture" for €15,000. Now performance artist Tom Miller points out that he (with a crew of workers!) installed a similar work, titled Nothing, in a Gainesville park in 2016. He and his attorney have written Garau to seek a settlement. - Artnet

Banksy added an asterisk and a tiny bit of corporate-speak to the painting’s bottom right-hand corner: “*Subject to availability for a limited period only.” - Seattle Times

UK museums can hardly try to buy multi-million-pound works of art when they are making large numbers of staff redundant as a result of Covid-19. - The Art Newspaper

Last June Barbara Anderson founded Art on the Ave, which creates free exhibits in New York City neighborhoods by using empty storefronts as gallery space. - Christian Science Monitor

The two New York institutions have collaborated on The Looking Glass, an exhibition in which all the artworks are in augmented reality, and you point your smartphone at a QR code in order to see them. - The New York Times