France: The billionaire Bernard Arnault is due to open his Paris museum on 20 October. The €100m building was originally scheduled to launch by 2012 in the capital’s Bois de Boulogne district. Designed by Frank Gehry, the museum will house the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation.
The Netherlands: The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is to make its images freely available. The museum has, for example, permitted Nestlé in France to use the figure of Vermeer’s The Milkmaid on its yoghurt cartons. Wim Pijbes, the Rijksmuseum’s director, said museums should stop charging each other for the use of images.
Russia: Manifesta 10, the roving contemporary art biennial, is to launch this month at St Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum. The chief curator, Kasper König, will focus on the “current geo-political situation” through the works of 55 artists. The Russian artists’ collective Chto Delat withdrew, however, after König defended his decision to keep the biennial in the city following Russia’s military intervention in Crimea.
US: New York’s American Folk Art Museum is to open an annexe in Queens. The venue, based in Long Island City, will provide the institution with additional space for exhibitions. In April, the Museum of Modern Art began to demolish the folk art museum’s former midtown home as part of an expansion plan.
Seen in the Art Newspaper, Guardian and BBC
