Banksy Thieves Strike Again, Denim Moguls Plan L.A. Museum, and More

– Another Banksy Mural Boosted: The Banksy mural "No Ball Games," which had adorned the side of a store in Tottenham in north London since 2009, was removed on Thursday, and though the company that sold "Slave Labor" — the previous mural by the elusive street artist to be stolen — Sincura Group, could not say who was responsible for its removal, it will say that it has been approached to sell it. "The Banksy was an important cultural feature of the area and if it has been removed it will be another indication that local people's wishes come second to the interests of profit," said Keith Flett, secretary of Haringey Trades Council. [BBC]

– Guess Jeans Founders Building L.A. Museum: Maurice and Paul Marciano, the co-founders of Guess Inc., have bought the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple on Los Angeles's Wilshire Boulevard for $8 million, with plans to renovate the nearly 90,000-square-foot and turn it into a private museum for their contemporary art collection. "We have been looking for a home for the collection," William F. Payne, a spokesman for the Beverly Hills-based Maurice and Paul Marciano Art Foundation, said. "It's a legacy project for the family." [LAT]

– Met Launches Global Museum Directors Summit: From April 7-18, 2014, the Metropolitan Museum will host its first-ever Global Museum Leaders Colloquium, at which 12-15 directors, deputy directors, and chief curators from major museums throughout the world, as well as public officials who oversee museums, will meet at the Manhattan institution to discuss issues related to museum administration and collections management. "Given the breadth and depth of our holdings, it is our responsibility to encourage a dialogue that can benefit museums worldwide, one that reinforces their relevance and encourages their appropriate stewardship," said Met director Thomas Campbell. Participants will be announced in November. [Press Release]

– National Gallery Goes Shopping: The National Gallery of Art has acquired dozens of new artworks for its permanent collection, including a pair of sculptures by Robert Smithson, photographs by Edward Weston and Sally Mann, and its first pieces by 17th-century Dutch painter Cornelis Bega and 19th-century French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. [Washington Post]

– Calle Contemplates Gardner Heist: Two works by Sophie Calle in which she ruminates on the loss of the artworks stolen during the infamous 1990 heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston — 1991's "Last Seen" and 2012's "What Do You See?" — will be on view in the Gardner's new wing from October 24 through March 3, 2014. [NYT]

– St. Louis Slams NYC Critic: Artforum freelancer Michael Wilson recently visited St. Louis on a press trip paid for by the city's taxpayer-supported Convention and Visitors Commission, only to blast the city, its attractions, his accommodations, and the weather in his Artforum Diary entry, earning him a pointed response from not one but two local journalists, including Riverfront Times writer Chad Garrison, who proposes a thought experiment. "Close your eyes for a moment and picture the snobbiest art critic possible," he writes. "Got it? Good. Now somehow make that person ten times douchier than you imagined, and you still won't arrive at anyone quite as pretentious as Michael Wilson." [Riverfront Times, KSDK]

– The American sculptor and Land Art pioneer Walter de Maria has died at age 77. [Helsingin Sanomat, LAT]

– Connecticut-based collectors Andrew and Christine Hall are loaning their holdings of works by Malcolm Morley to Oxford's Ashmolean Museum for an exhibition curated by Norman Rosenthal. [NYT]

– On Friday the JCC in Manhattan will unveil its new Sol LeWitt mural, the 36-foot-tall "Wall Drawing #599" (1989), which is on long-term loan from the artist's estate. [DNAinfo]

– The Springfield Art Museum has reunited 19th century portraits of Lewis Allen Dickens Crenshaw and his wife Fanny Smith Crenshaw painted by George Caleb Bingham that have been apart for more than 100 years. [Springfield News-Leader]

–  In an unusual rags-to-riches story, cleanup worker Darryl Kelly found artworks worth a small fortune while cleaning up deceased photographer Harry Shunk's New York City apartment. Six years later, the recovered works raised nearly $250,000 at auction.