An initiative to create a plan for the role that arts, culture and creativity can play in helping the region grow and addressing community issues now has some cash behind it: Louisville Metro Government and the Jennifer Lawrence Arts Fund each have kicked in $250,000 toward the Imagine Greater Louisville 2020 initiative.

Having recently completed EmcArts’ Arts Leaders as Cultural Innovators (ALACI) Fellowship, Lord Cultural Resources senior consultant Priya Sircar reflects on her learnings and experiences. She discusses building adaptive capacity, "inexpert" input, and how to elicit meaningful information in conversations with the public.

They came from all over Ottawa for a celestial spectacle — and the sun and moon delivered. Several thousand people walked, biked and endured traffic jams to get to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in the city's east end to catch a glimpse of the partial solar eclipse.

Lonnie G. Bunch, the Smithsonian's founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, has long practiced a tradition of bringing historical analysis to events of the day. He writes in Smithsonian magazine, "The Smithsonian is the great convener, bringing diverse points of view into contact. A primary goal of the museum is to help America find whatever peace it can over issues of race."

Bell Yung says the Xiqu Centre has the potential to be the place to experience the best in Chinese performing arts, especially if it features its own resident Cantonese opera company.

The American Kennel Club (AKC), the world’s largest purebred dog registry and leading advocate for dogs, and the AKC Museum of the Dog are pleased to announce their new tenancy in the prestigious Kalikow Building located at 101 Park Ave. in New York City. The headquarters will begin its tenancy in early fall 2018, with the Museum following in early 2019.

In 2017, Lord began work with the American Kennel Club to develop a Master Plan for this upcoming Museum relocation.

The state-of-the-art museum, about 20 miles south of Washington, has been under construction since October and is set to open in late 2019, officials said. It will house scores of historic Army artifacts and works of art. The Sherman tank and several other “macro” items are so big that they must be installed in place, and the museum built around them.

The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced that the Government of Canada will provide up to $35 million in funding to build Canada’s Diversity Gardens at Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg. The Gardens will use living plants to showcase Canada’s biodiversity and multicultural heritage.

The City of Dallas is drafting a new cultural plan. But what should it focus on? Cultural equity? Arts education? Financial support for artists? Everything’s on the table for the new cultural plan being built this year. 

When you want to make substantive changes to your community and do meaningful work, it's natural to first seek out the most powerful people in town. But anthropologist and data scientist Karen Stephenson suggests something different, and that soft power "is, in fact, more durable and more sturdy than ascribed power."

As stated by The Soft Power 30 in their report, not long ago, museums were a form of hard power. Acting as safeguards of the spoils of war and conquest of mankind, they were a form of expression of the state hegemony and cultural diplomacy. However, the role of museums has gone through some changes in the past years.

Located in the heart of London's museum quarter (or "Albertopolis"), an $87.4-million project at the Victoria and Albert Museum by Amanda Levete Architects signals a new spirit in museum design: This is an architecture of openness and inclusivity, a building that deliberately reaches out to embrace the city.

Artist Qiu Zhijie curated the Chinese Pavilion for the 57th Venice Biennale. Titled “Continuum – Generation by Generation,” the pavilion features the work of artists Wu Jian’an, Wang Tianwen, Tang Nannan, and Yao Huifen. In this op-ed, Qiu argues that nationalist readings of the pavilion misinterpreted its intent.

The story of Detroit’s July 1967 riots is, in some ways, a tale of two cities, one black and one white. Now, 50 years later, three neighboring museums here are revisiting that fateful summer with exhibitions that portray and explore the riots in sharply different ways.

The lingering influence of Expo 67 is subtle, yet hard to escape in Montreal during the fair's 50th anniversary. The city's art galleries and museums have taken turns examining the fair's remains, through displays of artifacts, costumes, photos, films and other documentation.

For the fourth year, Architectural Record is honoring five American architects with its Women in Architecture awards. “These awards allow us to recognize women pushing the boundaries of innovation and creativity in design,” says RECORD editor in chief Cathleen McGuigan.

The brainchild of Italian architect Stefano Boeri, Bosco Verticale (meaning “Vertical Forest”) is the concept of residential high-rises packed with greenery, which can help cities build for density while improving air quality. The first “vertical forests” were realized in 2014 in Milan, where two towers — with over 100 apartments between them — together host nearly 500 medium and large trees, 300 small trees, 5,000 shrubs, and 11,000 plants.

While the struggle continues to slow the rate of environmental degradation, Architectural Record's editor in chief Cathleen McGuigan argues that architecture can help connect us to the land, by enhancing the human experience of cultivated nature.

Snapchat’s newest feature, Snap Map, combines two major trends in modern cartography: mapping life in real time, and mapping subjective, emotional information.

While several institutions have experiemented with virtual reality offerings in recent years, the Smithsonian American Art Museum is hoping to go one step further. It teamed up with Intel to develop an experience that takes advantage of room-scale VR's immersiveness to let anyone visit its exhibits from anywhere.

The Canada Council for the Arts said that between 2017 and 2021, it will invest $88.5 million towards initiatives that aim to develop a user-centred culture of innovation in the arts. The funding will also support the adoption and deployment of available technological solutions in Canada’s arts sector.

Artist Zarah Hussain has had one of her installations, Numina, selected for the Lumen Prize longlist. Her work, which sits at the intersection of science and spirituality, drawing and coding, is an ideal candidate for this international award which celebrates and promotes digital art and creativity. 

Nearly two dozen teenage immigrants and refugees — who have never used a camera before an award-winning American photojournalist taught them how — will be sharing photographs from their communities at Toronto's Aga Khan Museum. "This is transformative for these students," said Fredric "Fred" Roberts, founder of the international photography workshop. "They never see the world the same way again." 

The first International Biennial of Contemporary Art of South America (BienalSur) launches this September across 30 cities in South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Centred in Buenos Aires, the show aims to rethink the current biennial format.

Matchmaking empty spaces with local businesses and the tiny house movement are innovative solutions that can help post-industrial cities across Europe and North America adapt to the future. Reinvigorating these legacy cities, as they are sometimes called, is not easy—but it is not impossible.

The Artist Campaign School, a new initiative from Fractured Atlas, will train artists in the practical skills necessary to successfully run for elected office.

As the rapid development of cities places strain on affordability, many cultural spaces are threatened by displacement. How are global cities responding to artists and arts organisations on the brink? This latest handbook in the forum’s Policy and Practice Series, is a collection of proposals exploring how cities can respond to this threat, protecting their cultural vitality and character.