A six-story-tall floating "Rubber Duck" is making its West Coast debut at the Port of Los Angeles, where it will lead more than a dozen battleships and sailboats in the Tall Ships Festival L.A. parade [...]

Dubbed the world's largest rubber duck, the giant inflatable was created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman.

"The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties," Hofman said on the event's website. "It can relieve the world's tensions as well as define them." — latimes.com

Olafur Eliasson has tried something else. For his latest site-specific project, which opens on 20 August, the artist has transformed the entire south wing of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark into a convincing riverbed – a messy, stony accumulation of sedimentary rock and watery channels that threatens to silt up the white space of the gallery entirely. The result is an uncanny collision of manmade and natural views, and a Sublime reminder of the slow power of nature to erode [...]. — apollo-magazine.com

The installation you see above is a project by Masakazu Shirane and Saya Miyazaki called "Wink," their entry into Kobe Biennial's Art Container Contest. The kaleidoscope concept uses mirrors (in keeping with Sir David Brewster's classic), but is also held together by zippers. Shirane and Miyazaki claim this makes it the first "architecture" based on zippers; proving you can create an adaptable, reconfigurable space using the same tech found in your pants. — engadget.com

Cuba is in talks with the Bronx Museum to organise the first major exhibition by a US museum in the country, according to local reports. The show would be part of the 12th edition of the Havana Biennial next year, and could be followed by an exhibition in New York in 2016 that would feature work by Cuban artists. [...]

During her opening remarks, Perera emphasised the role of culture in “breaking barriers imposed by governments that have nothing to do with the will of the artists” [...]. — theartnewspaper.com

But, with all this push to quantize and characterize, there are dangers. Cities clearly are more than a new kind of physics problem. They are also creations of the human imagination and, as such, they live or die by the quality of the imagination we bring to them.

Thats why no discussion of the health of cities can be complete without thinking about the role of art — public art. — npr.org

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

The leading Saudi artist Ahmed Mater, who caused a stir with a series of photographs depicting the rampant redevelopment around Mecca, is due to take part in his first public talk in the UK at Sotheby’s London (12 August). Mater will also discuss this work in relation to other cities such as Jerusalem and Medina during the discussion, entitled “Contemporary photography and hybrid architecture”. — theartnewspaper.com

When Alfredo Jaar’s glittering “A Logo for America” video first played on a Times Square billboard in 1987, it riled up New Yorkers. [...] shows the words “This is not America” inside the outline of the United States. “A Logo for America” will receive a second life this week; beginning on August 1, the video will pop up on Times Square signs and screens between 11:57 pm and 12:00 am. But this 2.0 version loses some of the video’s original intent to reach a broad—and hopefully attentive—audience. — artfcity.com

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

Damien Hirst’s art complex in south London, which was initially due to open this year, will take a little longer to complete. A spokeswoman for Science Ltd, Hirst’s company, says that it is now due to open “in May or June” next year. The centre, which is designed by Caruso St John architects, runs the length of Newport Street in Vauxhall. The former theatre carpentry and scenery production workshops will become six galleries. Office space and a restaurant are also planned. — theartnewspaper.com

Goldsmiths, which is part of the University of London and home to one of the UK’s leading art schools, plans to build a public art gallery behind the art department’s home, in an early 20th-century former public baths. To help raise the £2m needed to convert the old water tanks of the Laurie Grove Baths into an art space, the institution is asking its star alumni and emeritus professors [...] to donate works that will be auctioned by Christie’s, possibly next year. — The Art Newspaper

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

Many in the art world were staggered by recent reports that the Italian curator Germano Celant is being paid €750,000 to organise a pavilion for the Milan Expo 2015. Celant’s fee, and the incredulity it provoked, raises questions about how much curators are typically paid for organising biennials and large-scale international exhibitions.

The Art Newspaper surveyed around 40 international curators and biennial organisers [...]. — 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