– Banksy Murals Attacked in Utah: A pair of murals that the British street artist Banksy created in Park City, Utah, the host town of the Sundance Film Festival— allegedly during a visit to promote his film "Exit Through the Gift Shop" — were attacked by one or more anonymous vandals. One stencil of a praying child with pink spray-paint wings and a halo had its plastic cover broken and brown paint splattered over it; the second, which depicts a cameraman filming a flower, also had its protective cover broken, but was not vandalized. Security camera footage shows a white male in a baseball cap attacking the latter mural. "Because of the fact that they weren’t sanctioned, it could come down to a judge to determine the value of each of these," said Park City Police sergeant Jay Randall. [Independent]
– Crowdsourced MFA Exhibition: For a special new exhibition called "Boston Loves Impressionism," the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is inviting people to vote on the works they would like to see included in the show. Voters can go to the MFA’s website and choose their favorites from 50 works in the museum’s collection, which will ultimately be whittled down to 30 final selections. "While the Museum’s popular European Impressionism Gallery is closed for renovation, we thought it would be exciting to let the public choose which of their favorite works would remain on view," said MFA director Malcolm Rogers. "This is the first time we’ve ever presented an exhibition selected by the public." [Artdaily]
– V&A to Break Ground in Dundee: Construction will soon begin on the Victoria & Albert Museum’s new outpost in Dundee, Scotland, after the project received a £9.2 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, the new museum will be built on the Tay River and is the showpiece of waterfront revitalization efforts in the city. Although the building was originally slated to open in 2014, it is now expected to open in late 2016 or early 2017. "While it would be unwise at this stage to state defined opening dates, the projected date for the main fabric of the building to be in place is the end of 2015," said Phillip Long, director of the V&A at Dundee. "Its completion, interior fit-out and exhibition installation will follow throughout 2016, leading to the first full year of programming in 2017." [Guardian]
– Palestinian Museum on Track for 2015: The new Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, which broke ground in the spring of 2013 and is being funded by the London-based Welfare Association, is on track to open in April 2015, though it will be difficult for Palestinians living outside the West Bank to visit it due to the visas needed to enter the territory. To deal with this problem, chief curator Jack Persekian is planning as many as five outposts in Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza, and elsewhere. [Forward]
– South Africans Don't Get Performance Art: In a confusing and condescending article about the state of performance art in South Africa, the Wall Street Journal's Patrick McGroarty notes that South Africans, like everyone everywhere, find weird performance art strange. "Most people aren't like, oh, this is a piece of performance art," performance artist Anthea Moys tells him. "They're like, what the hell is that chick doing?" [WSJ]
– Art Ain't Pure: "A year-end wrap-up of art in Gotham would be meaningless without mentioning the single greatest transformation to have struck the visual arts globally: namely, that the art market has turned into one big corrupt casino, a place where price fixing, market manipulation, bribery, forgery, theft, and money laundering have become as popular as risky mortgages were in 2007," writes Village Voice art critic Christian Viveros-Fauné by way of a 2013 recap. [Village Voice]
– The 21c Museum Hotels chain is securing financing options to open a seventh planned location in Oklahoma City. [Business First]
– New Orleans Saints fans are going to run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art before a playoff game with the Philadelphia Eagles on Saturday in an event they are calling the "Who Dat ‘Rocky’ Run." [Philadelphia Inquirer]
– After eight years of renovations and expansion, the Cleveland Museum of Art fully opened on Thursday. [Fox 8 Cleveland]
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