At the Barbican Center in London, the Curve gallery is an example of an unusually shaped art space in the middle of a traditional, rectiform center. Its 90-degree curved design, wrapping around the back of the performing arts center's main hall, has been by turns a challenge and a blessing, and its function continues to evolve even after 30 years' experience. — nytimes.com

As the ranks of the super-rich swell, pride in property has expanded from the house and its trappings to the grounds. Bulldozers are mounding hill and dale, while hydraulic lifts heave massive trees into place and landscape designers orchestrate the creation of a new wave of artful estates. [...]

Why marvel at the scenery of a Romantic plein-air painting, when one can commission one’s own version of the sublime? — nytimes.com

Ai’s studio, called 258 Fake, has become China’s equivalent of Andy Warhol’s Factory. And Ai himself has increasingly taken on Warholian overtones: there is now little distinction between Ai the artist who creates artworks, and Ai the dissident who gets beaten by the cops. (In 2009, police pummelled his face, causing a cerebral haemorrhage.) Both are merged in an ongoing performance in which the man has become the art, and the art is the man. — aeon.co

We're always very excited to discover new work by Swiss artist, Zimoun, known for his "architecturally-minded platforms of sound." His latest site-specific installation, 36 ventilators, 4.7m³ packing chips, recently opened at the Art Museum Lugano, Switzerland. The show still runs until July 11. — bustler.net

"Buildings in paintings have always been treated as a background, as something subordinate to the figures themselves," says co-curator of Building the Picture, a new exhibition at the National Gallery that aims to put the architecture of Renaissance paintings on centre stage. "We're arguing that the buildings are active protagonists. They're not just propping up the characters, but are also capable of carrying key messages and performing a series of crucial roles themselves." — theguardian.com

Next week in London, The Sincura Group will be holding a similar auction of street pieces formally by Banksy. That’s the same company that last year successfully sold the Banksy “Slave Labour” wall at auction for just over $1 million. They’ve titled their auction Stealing Banksy? and it will include approximately 18 works, at least 7 of which are street pieces formally by Banksy that have been removed from their original locations, some of them specifically removed for this sale. — blog.vandalog.com

A major exhibition opens in Berlin this week of the work of Ai Weiwei, China's most famous artist. Events like this are the very thing that protect him against further repression at home. The show is packed with moving works that are critical of the regime. — spiegel.de

The Rendering Eye: Urban America Revisited presents 3D screenshots of the urban US as they appear in Apple Maps: deserted streets, post-apocalyptic buildings and industrial plants, melting harbors. Cars and boats turn into shadows, trees into sculptures, containers into wax.[...]

The cityscapes captured by artist REGULA BOCHSLER for the publication are abstract, machine generated, and cold. And yet they are poetic, not least because of their “mistakes,” which give them a painterly composition. — 032c.com

[...] Dutton and Piper have traced a path, broadly following the Meridian, extending from the 02 Arena in Greenwich across the Thames by cable car to the Olympic Park in Stratford: a largely flat and buggy-friendly three-hour meander through an extraordinarily varied and little-known urban landscape that will be punctuated by striking pieces of modern sculpture. They’re calling it the Line, and the hope is that it will be up and running by midsummer. — telegraph.co.uk

Alice Aycock, the sculptor, was holding her breath.

[...] a massive crane, blocking traffic, lifted one-half of “Cyclone Twist,” a swirling series of white aluminum bands, into place, precisely connecting with its other half already standing on the avenue’s slim median. [...]

Called “Park Avenue Paper Chase,” and stretching from 52nd Street to 66th, they are inspired variously by tornadoes, dance movements and drapery folds, and will be up until July 20. — nytimes.com

The way it works is each loop, outside and in, is equipped with a bed, study, kitchen, bathroom, and little dresser, arranged so that when the wheel stops the matching item is available to each person at the same time. To switch over to a new activity, they both have to walk in tandem... — hyperallergic.com

In 2013, we picture cities a little differently, with demography and photography. Cities live in Instagram, in patterns of light from space, in blueprints and visualizations and—most like Canaletto’s civic landscapes—on Google Street View.

Now, an artist in London has done some creative, comparative history, pairing Canaletto’s Venice and London with contemporary depictions, as glimpsed by the Google van. — theatlantic.com

For 76 years, the gray steel eastern span of the Bay Bridge was cursed and reviled but mostly just taken for granted. [...]

At least two groups of artists and architects have mounted campaigns to spare some of the steel from the recyclers so that they can transform it into artworks that might include a home, a public gathering space and an Airbnb rental space - with a view of the new Bay Bridge. — sfgate.com

Yesterday, art lovers around the world were shocked when someone strolled into the Pérez Art Museum Miami and destroyed a $1 million vase by Ai Weiwei. [...]

The vandal is actually Maximo Caminero, a well-known local painter who has shown works at the Fountain Art Fair. He tells New Times that he destroyed the vase to make a point. — blogs.miaminewtimes.com