– Louvre Teams Up with Nintendo: The Paris museum has teamed up with the Japanese video game giant to replace its traditional audioguides with 3D game consoles. Nintendo is supplying 5,000 of the latest-generation consoles, which offer 3D vision without the need for special glasses. Visitors can use them to locate themselves within the museum and choose themed itineraries. “Digital development has become a strategic issue for museums,” said Louvre director Henri Loyrette. [AFP]
– Swizz Beatz to Open Art Gallery: The rapper and producer, who for years has been pushing art appreciation in hip-hop, plans to open his own art space to showcase the artists he has discovered on his international travels. “I feel like I found the new Warhol in Japan, the new Murakami in Hong Kong — not to compare their work so much but as far as thinking outside of the box. I found a couple of sick artists in Africa, in Mexico too,” he said. Earlier this year, Beatz, a visual artist and art collector himself, also snagged the rights to produce Jean Michel Basquiat apparel and footwear, and counts MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch and gallerist Tony Shafrazi as mentors. [Life + Times]
– John Elderfield Joins Art.sy: The widely respected chief curator emeritus at MoMA, who organized this year’s de Kooning retrospective, is the latest boldface art-world name to join Art.sy, the art search engine backed by Dasha Zhukova, Larry Gagosian, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Elderfield will continue to organize shows, but will also work as a senior advisor to Art.sy, assisting it on art-historical matters and getting museums excited about making parts of their collections accessible on the site. Art.sy is poised to launch this spring. [NYT]
– Meet the L.A. Artist Behind the Obamas’ Holiday Card: The first family employed California artist and illustrator Mark Matuszak to design its holiday card, a warmly lit scene of first dog Bo lying in front of the fireplace in the White House library. It is the first White House holiday card to be completely digitally designed. [LAT]
– Banksy's Catholic Church-Inspired Christmas Gift: Britain's best-loved street artist has installed the piece "Cardinal Sin," a response to the paedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church, at Liverpool's Walker Gallery. Hanging, per the artist's instructions, with the museum's Old Masters collection, the work features the classical bust of a religious figure, its face sawn off and replaced by bathroom tiles resembling pixels. [BBC]
– An Art Center for Malevich's Grave: Aleksander Matveyev, a physicist who has been researching the Russian Supremitist artist for decades, and German fund manager Jochen Wermuth have teamed up to create a Malevich Foundation on the newly-rediscovered original spot of the artist's grave. [TAN]
– Frick Collection Gets an Updated Space: New York's venerable Frick Collection has expanded, transforming an outdoor colonnade into an indoor exhibition space called the Portico Gallery. Ken Johnson describes the addition as "subtly noninvasive," and notes that the gallery's initial show of porcelain sculpture features a selection of "lovely and curious objects" drawn from the Western race to copy the Chinese material, which has now become commonplace. [NYT]
– Paris Museum Gets Charlotte Bronte: The French Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits has bought a miniature manuscript, the second issue of Young Men's Magazine written by Charlotte Bronte when she was 14, for a staggering £690,850 ($1,070,776), more than three times its lower pre-sale estimate of £200,000 ($309,988). Andrew McCarthy, the director of the Bronte Parsonage museum, which owns four of the six copies of the magazine and hoped to acquire the manuscript, said he was "very disappointed." [BBC]
– Andrew Bird Hits Chicago Art Museum: Folk singer Andrew Bird is beloved in indie music circles not only for his amazing ability to whistle, but for his unique aesthetic that extends to the artist's surreal stage sets. The twisting horns that Bird uses as speakers, designed by Ian Schneller, will go on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago as part of its "Sonic Arboretum" exhibition. [Chicago Journal]
– Rotten Present for Oscar Niemeyer's Birthday: The legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who celebrated his 104th birthday yesterday, will have his name removed from his latest creation, a cultural center in the northern Spanish city of Avilés. The incoming government is accusing the center's board of mismanaging public money and the whole center is set to close only nine months after its inauguration. [Guardian]
– Controversial Maya Lin Project Approved: Despite objections from a group of vocal opponents, the city council of Newport, R.I., voted to approve the use of a small park for a permanent installation designed by Maya Lin to honor the heiress Doris Duke. [NYT]
– Cindy Sherman Awarded 2012 Roswitha Haftmann Prize: The CHF 150,000 ($159,459) award is given every year to a living artist who has created an oeuvre of outstanding quality. Filmmaker Harun Farocki received a CHF 75,000 ($79,729) "special prize." [Art Daily]
– Is it Possible to Buy Class?: Kim Kardashian was among those scooping up Liz Taylor’s sparkly belongings at this week’s Christie’s sales. The reality star paid $64,000 for a set of three Lorraine Schwartz bangles made out of diamond and jade, over a high estimate of $8,000. [ITA]