A Mexican federal agency has denied the environmental permit to allow the construction of the $105m International Baroque Museum in Puebla, less than a month after the groundbreaking ceremony.

The project, designed by the Japanese architect and 2013 Pritzker Prize-winner Toyo Ito, was deemed “not applicable” by Semarnat’s (the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources) General Directorate of Environmental Impact and Risk. — theartnewspaper.com

The Aga Khan Museum, which opens Sept. 18, offers a welcome antidote to these clichés through art that celebrates the rich cultural history of the Islamic world.

The building’s architect, Fumihiko Maki of Japan, has used geometric patterns inspired by the great mosques of classical Islam, repeating them in the inlaid floor of the courtyard, etched glass, and wood screens in the auditorium. — news.nationalpost.com

The Holocaust museum planned for Rome since 2005 could open next year in a new, bigger location at EUR, named after the Esposizione Universale Roma, in time to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

After almost a decade of delay and €15m spent to acquire a plot of land, the first Museo della Shoah quietly stalled before construction even started. — theartnewspaper.com

Jean-Luc Martinez, who was promoted to the directorship of the Musée du Louvre last year, is proposing the most ambitious renovation of the Paris museum since the Grand Louvre project of the 1980s. [...]

Planning the museum’s comprehensive renovation began in June and work is due to start on the main entrance this month. [...] Martinez also plans to devote 1,500 sq. m of space to major temporary exhibitions in the Napoleon Hall, which is beneath the museum’s I.M. Pei-designed entrance pyramid. — theartnewspaper.com

The hardworking Skyscraper Museum, in the belly of a condo complex on Battery Place, doesn’t have much space or much of a budget, but with admirable frequency its director, Carol Willis, stages smart shows that uncover telling moments of New York skyscraper lore and architecture history. The museum has just opened “Times Square, 1984: The Postmodern Moment,” about the battle 30 years ago for the soul of Times Square and the profession. — nytimes.com

The director of the Museo Reina Sofía, Manuel Borja-Villel, has just announced that Madrid’s main Modern and contemporary art museum will expand its permanent exhibition space by a total of 3,000 sq. m by the end of 2015. In an interview with EFE news agency, Borja-Villel said the project will “finally” join the Francisco Sabatini-designed building, which fully opened as an art museum in 1992, with the extension by Jean Nouvel, completed in 2005. — theartnewspaper.com

Culture officials in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine have ordered museums to put their most valuable pieces into storage, and some institutions have closed to the public, as fighting continues between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces.

Ukraine’s culture ministry has also asked that the media refrain from “emphasising objects of cultural heritage” to avoid their being targeted [...]. — theartnewspaper.com

Next Saturday at 5 p.m., after a week of member previews, the 35-year-old Aspen Art Museum in Colorado will open the doors of its new building to the public and then keep them open for a 24-hour celebration.

There is much to celebrate. The four-story building is the first American museum designed by the innovative Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. — nytimes.com

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas on Monday will announce an architectural team for his controversial planned museum on Chicago's lakefront: an avant-garde Chinese designer whose credits include Toronto-area skyscrapers dubbed the "Marilyn Monroe Towers" and Chicago's Jeanne Gang, shaper of the undulating Aqua Tower here. — chicagotribune.com

The Cranbrook Educational Community Board of Trustees announced today that after a comprehensive one-year search, Christopher Scoates has been named Director of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum. He begins his tenure August 1.

Scoates is a graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art, having received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography in 1986. Scoates succeeds Reed Kroloff, who is stepping down after seven years in the position. — cranbrook.edu

The North Carolina Museum of Art on Tuesday received a $1.9 million grant from the State Employees’ Credit Union Foundation for art education research. The grant will establish a high-tech education center that will serve as a portal for accessing the museum’s collection, exhibitions and programs. — WRAL

On Cape Town's waterfront at the southern tip of Africa, the world's biggest museum of contemporary art from across the continent is being carved from a conglomeration of concrete tubes nine storeys high. The $50 million (36.7 million euro) project to transform the grim functionality of 42 disused colonial grain silos into an ultramodern tribute to African creativity is driven by an international team of art experts and architects. — Ahram Online

US museums are teaming up with the Syrian Interim Government’s Heritage Task Force to help protect Syrian museum collections and stem the loss of cultural heritage amid the country’s ongoing civil war.

Late last month, experts from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the Pennsylvania Museum’s Penn Cultural Heritage Center quietly organised a three-day training session for curators, heritage experts and civilians in an undisclosed location outside of Syria. — theartnewspaper.com

[...] the Crystal Bridges acquisition reflects an increasingly popular attitude toward architecturally significant homes among private collectors. Such buyers now see that historic homes can be collected, preserved, and appreciated much like fine art. — blouinartinfo.com

“I started to cry a bit when I saw the finished result for the first time this morning,” said architect Annabelle Selldorf at the June 27 press preview of the newly expanded Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. [...] Visitors might have similarly emotional reactions to the results, including Pritzker-winner Tadao Ando’s multipurpose visitor center, which prioritizes circulation and the views of lush hills behind the Clark [...]. — blouinartinfo.com