Manifesta, the roving European biennial, announced today that the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) will be creative mediator for its upcoming 12th edition, set to open in Palermo, Italy, in 2018.

As creative mediator, OMA will investigate how Italian cities are governed, looking specifically at immigration, environmental issues, gentrification, and tourism. Led by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, the team will also explore how artists can intervene in places around the city. — artnews.com

Last week, the White House held its very own arts and culture festival in D.C., South by South Lawn (SXSL). Organizers arranged a list of panel discussions and programs that brought together a diverse troupe of creatives for a "festival of ideas, art, and action.” SXSL kicked off with a conversation between illustrious light artist James Turrell and award-winning architect David Adjaye, which was streamed live on The Creators Project’s Facebook Page. — thecreatorsproject.vice.com

An exhibition of rarely seen paintings, drawings and digital works by Zaha Hadid is due to open at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London this winter (8 December-12 February 2017), throwing new light on the late British-Iraqi architect’s accomplishments as an artist and calligrapher. [...]

Sketches and paintings linked to major projects, both realised and unrealised, will go on show. — theartnewspaper.com

What makes a museum building successful? Until the arrival of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao in 1997, this question might have been almost exclusively focused on the best environments in which to view art. But the Guggenheim’s phenomenal success, which allowed the Basque government to recoup the construction costs within three years, moved the debate on to issues of branding and statement architecture.

Now the discussion has moved on again. — theartnewspaper.com

Hyper-Reality is a concept film by Keiichi Matsuda. It presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media. — hyper-reality.co

the artist says we should not “sentimentalise or romanticise” the crisis, which has seen more than 2,000 children die on their way to Europe. [...]

Ai first visited Lesbos on Christmas Day last year, and has since dedicated most of his life to helping refugees there, even moving his studio to the island. [...]

“The goal is to make everyone conscious of the struggle of refugees. We need to protect humanity. The fight is endless. If we don’t fight, our children have to fight,” he says. — theartnewspaper.com

Set to open on 17 June, the Tate Modern Switch House – named after the part of the power station that the new galleries occupy – expands the museum by 60% to accommodate the surging numbers of visitors, which reached 5.7 million last year, well over double the number the building was designed to cope with when it opened in 2000. But the arresting brick ziggurat is also a physical symbol of the effect the Tate has had on its surroundings. — theguardian.com

Inside 516 Sampsonia Way, a 19th-century row house in the Mexican War Streets neighborhood, there no longer appear to be any 90-degree angles. Any corners have become cavernous and rounded from the innumerable lines of yarn of Chiharu Shiota’s Trace of Memory, creating acute and obtuse angles.

And while some people try to cleanse spaces or their superstitious gateways by sageing doorways, this installation does the opposite, appealing to some kind of liminal god to crack open time — hyperallergic.com

“2 wires + weights + tape + thin foam rubber” - one of Eva Hesse's shopping lists — the art newspaper

The greatest work of art at New Haven’s Yale Center for British Art is arguably the landmark building itself—and Louis Kahn’s last structure is due to reopen this month after a 16-month renovation of its public galleries and lecture hall, and an upgrade of its accessibility, security, mechanical and electrical systems. This is the third phase of a $33m conservation project that began in 2008. — theartnewspaper.com

Bardell and Howe have been working together for the past decade and have started executing guerrilla-style living sculptures in the river, a project they call the River Liver Series. [...]

“One of the things that keeps us here is how exciting we think the next 10 years is going to be,” Howe says of L.A. “When they actually do this river revitalization, it’s going to be L.A.’s Central Park. Culturally, I think it’s the spot to be on the West Coast.” — laweekly.com

It once seemed like a herculean, if not insurmountable, challenge – raising $600 million or more for an ambitious modernist building to serve as the new home for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Skeptics abounded when plans were first announced three years ago. But momentum now seems to be shifting in LACMA's favor with the announcement this week of two major donations that will push the fundraising campaign near the halfway point. — Los Angeles Times

Höller wanted to show that you don’t necessarily get to know a sculpture better by literally travelling through it; that once inside it begins to look like something else entirely... The Slide, a permanent fixture at London’s Olympic Park, will give people a full 40 seconds to experience this and decide for themselves as they make their way down the 178m chute at an estimated 15mph. — wallpaper.com