USA — Klyde Warren Park, Zilker Park, Discovery Green and Buffalo Bayou Park [are] in top five. With spring in the air, now is the perfect time to get outdoors and enjoy free fun in your local city park. We asked a team of park and planning experts to help us nominate the top city parks in the United States. Nearly 60 parks were brought into the discussion, but we narrowed it down to 20 of the best to turn over to our readers to vote.

Earlier this year, Lord Cultural Resources was selected to help Forest Park Forever develop a strategic plan to guide the organization's efforts in restoring, maintaining and sustaining Forest Park. Lord Cultural Resources is partnering with John Hoal of H3 Studio in St. Louis, the firm that completed the Forest Park Master Plan. Forest Park Forever is a nationally recognized leading park conservancy. Congratulations to Forest Park on being named USA Today’s #1 City Park!

TORONTO, CANADA — She's been called both "bulldog" and "urban angel." When Judy Matthews (BA 1978 TRIN) gets tough about transforming Toronto, the results appear heaven-sent. An urban planner, activist and fundraiser, Matthews – along with husband Wilmot (BA 1958 TRIN) – has been a driving force behind such philanthropic projects as the Evergreen Brick Works, ArtScape and the beautification of St. George Street. Recently, the couple donated $25 million to transform a 1.75-kilometre stretch underneath the Gardiner Expressway into a linear park. Matthews recently spoke with Cynthia Macdonald.

TORONTO, CANADA – The Under Line? Toronto's Living Room? Waterfront Toronto and the city are turning to the public to name the $25-million transformation of a drab grey stretch of Gardiner Expressway underpass. Organizers hope Torontonians will organize "brainstorming parties" with their friends to dream up a moniker for the project that was triggered by an unprecedented donation from philanthropists Judy and Wil Matthews. 

Lord Cultural Resources has been commissioned by Waterfront Toronto to provide programming and advisoryservices including cultural programming and program delivery mechanisms as well as operating framework for Under Gardiner project.

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — It's not a pretty sight when you first exit the parking lot and walk toward the main structure at the recently opened National Palace Museum Southern Branch in Chiayi County. Things start looking much better as the main building designed by architect Kris Yao (姚仁喜) comes into view. Monochrome and abstract, it bears no resemblance to its traditional Chinese-style northern counterpart — perhaps alluding to their different natures: the main branch is focused on Chinese artifacts, while the southern branch covers all of Asia. A staircase leads up to the exhibition halls, containing 10 themed exhibitions — including Buddhist Art, tea culture, textiles, South Asian costumes and porcelains from ancient Japan, China and Korea. It takes more than an hour to quickly browse through everything. The first room contains an exhibition on the history and culture of Chiayi, told through a combination of text, images, media and artifacts, including a decorated rare right-spiraling conch, which was brought here by Qing Dynasty generalFukanggan (福康安) to ensure safe passage across the Taiwan Strait on his way to pacify the Lin Shuang-wen rebellion (林爽文事件).

A jury of eight international and local experts chose Lord Cultural Resources as Planning and Development Consultants of its southern branch to be located in Chiayi County in south central Taiwan. Lord led a large team of experts from Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia to conduct comprehensive Master Planning and Functional Planning for not only the proposed museum, but also the site itself, which will be a cultural and environmental attraction. Lord also planned the international architectural competition for this project that selected American architect Antoine Predock. The Museum opened in December of 2015.

WASHINGTON, DC, USA — When the National Museum of African American History and Culture was conceived in 2003, Barack Obama was a state senator in Illinois; the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin was years in the future; and Bill Cosby was a symbol of family decency. Now, as the museum prepares to open here in September, the nation's first black president is nearing the end of his second term, Mr. Cosby is accused of being a sexual predator and Americans are engaged in the most charged conversation about race in decades. As events have complicated the museum's original mission to be a "healing place," curators have rushed to catch up with history — documenting the rallies in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray — while wrestling with how to tell it. How far to go in depicting the cruelty of slavery and the pain of segregation? How to tell the awful story of Emmett Till? And where does this story end — with the accomplishments of President Obama or with scenes of unrest and violence? "What's included, what's not included, that's a really, really huge responsibility," said Kellie Carter Jackson, a scholar of 19th-century African-American history at Hunter College. "It's probably one of the most difficult tasks in curatorial history."

Lord Cultural Resources led the national public engagement process, developed a functional strategy, conducted a collections analysis and operations planning for the Museum. The program planning team was a collaboration of architectural and design firms Davis Brody Bond [Aedas] of New York and Washington; The Freelon Group of North Carolina; Lord Cultural Resources; and Amaze Design of Boston. In 2011, Lord Cultural Resources provided content development and communications services as part of the winning team of Ralph Appelbaum Associates for the exhibition design for the new museum. In 2012, an additional contract was awarded for concept development for the Resource Library.

TARRYTOWN, USA — Historic Hudson River Towns, the lead agency on the development of a prison museum and educational center at Sing Sing Correctional Facility here, announced today that the project is moving forward with the hiring of three prominent museum consulting firms. Public historian Brent D. Glass, director emeritus of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, has been serving as consulting advisor to the Sing Sing Prison Museum project since September, 2015. His new book, 50 Great American Places: Essential Historic Sites Across the U.S., includes a foreward by historian and author David McCullough. www.brentdglass.com Lord Cultural Resources, a global professional practice dedicated to creating cultural capital worldwide, has been engaged to develop a detailed plan for the visitor experience at the museum.  At the same time, the team will work on creating essential community partnerships and developing a business plan.  Their report will provide the framework for collecting artifacts, designing exhibitions and visitor services, and raising funds for the museum.

Lord Cultural Resources is developing a detailed plan for the visitor experience at the Sing Sing Prison Museum, working on creating essential community partnerships and developing a business plan. Their report will provide the framework for collecting artifacts, designing exhibitions and visitor services, and raising funds for the museum.

RICHMOND, USA — Officials in Richmond hope to break ground on a memorial or museum at the site of Lumpkin's slave jail in Shockoe Bottom before the end of the year, though what that site will ultimately look like remains to be determined. "We are in a place where in 2016 there will be ground broken on the site for the creation of something to commemorate the very important events and the impact that the Lumpkin's jail site and places like it have had on the city of Richmond," said Joy Bailey Bryant, a consultant with Lord Cultural Resources. The city is hiring a designer to take feedback gathered through a series of forums called Richmond Speaks, organized last year by Lord Cultural Resources, and shape the information into a site proposal. "This is going to move on to architects and planners who will begin to develop a concept for what should happen at the Lumpkin's jail site," Bailey Bryant said.

Lord Cultural Resources has been assisting the Slave Trail Commission in telling the story of the Enslavement and Freedom Heritage Sites in Richmond, VA. Lumpkin's Jail Site is one of the Richmond's historical places highlighting the story of slavery.

MOSCOW, RUSSIA — Boris Mints, owner of investment company 01 Properties, will open a museum of Russian Impressionism in May. More sensuous works will replace canvasses by such painters of the Russian Itinerant school asVasily Polenov, Igor Grabar and Konstantin Korovin, and will hang in a redeveloped factory building on LeningradskyProspekt. In May 2016, Mints, a Russian banker and investor, is opening a museum based on his collection of 19th-20th century Russian art. It will be held at a former factory building which is being redeveloped by British architectural firm John McAslan + Partners. Many in the art world consider Mints' beloved Russian Impressionists secondary to the French masters whose works they imitate. That does not bother Mints in the least. His museum project — that already has a price tag of $10 million — was designed by the British architectural firm John McAslan + Partners with help from the consulting agency Lordculture.

WHISTLER, CANADA — Philanthropist Michael Audain's Audain Art Museum is set to open this weekend in Whistler. But don't mistake the eponymous museum, which features 180 works mostly from Audain's personal collection, as a vanity project. The museum offers a fine overview of B.C.'s art of the past 200 years – and, as an extension, the story of B.C. itself.

Lord Cultural Resources provided space planning and business planning services to the planning team and subsequently continued to provide advisory services to the Patkau Architects through the design and development phases of the project.

NEW YORK, USA — Thelma Golden used to be mistaken for her own assistant. But these days, there aren't many in the art world who don't know the 50-year-old director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Twenty-five years ago, before her closets were written up in O magazine and her 2008 wedding featured in Vogue, Golden was a young curator at the Whitney Museum — its first black curator, actually. Her looks didn't match people's assumptions about who got to be a mover and a shaker in the world of art. But Golden, who has a knack for turning setbacks into ambition, now calls those early cases of mistaken identity "liberating."
"It allowed me the opportunity to not only create a deep impression," she says, "but also was a way that I personally made goals that moved me toward being known and being understood."

The Studio Museum engaged Lord Cultural Resources to conduct community engagement, an analysis of existing and potential markets for the Studio Museum, and to facilitate a staff planning process for evolving audiences and programs. The resulting research helped to inform a business plan and projections for a new facility slated to begin construction on the eve of The Studio Museum’s 50th anniversary, and set to open in 2019.

TORONTO, ONTARIO — It was after I took off a virtual-reality headset and was watching my seven-year-old daughter play with a robot she had just programmed that it hit me – the future is awesome. At least as it looks from inside the fifth-annual digiPlaySpace Exhibition in Toronto. Opening Saturday and running until April 24 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the exhibition has 25 installations from nine countries. Each of them was chosen to fit this year's theme of tech immersion and to follow a mandate to help develop media literacy in kids. Most of them are sure to blow your mind, whether you're a kid or not. There's the whimsical Marshmallow Clouds that change colour as you move about them. There's the laugh-out-loud fun of being chased by dinosaurs. There's a sandbox like you've never seen before.

In 2005, Lord Cultural Resources was retained by the Toronto International Film Festival Group to work closely with KPMB Architects to review their design plans for the proposed temporary exhibition gallery and film library. In 2006, Lord Cultural Resources continued to work with the Toronto International Film Festival Group on the business and operations plan. In 2010, Lord Cultural Resources was again retained to provide a full range of services including: Programming and communications for the exhibition component of TIFF's new permanent home and public space in downtown Toronto, TIFF Bell Lightbox; Developing partnerships and exhibitions for the Museum Gallery at TIFF Bell Lightbox; and Strategic planning for the TIFF Group.

BENTONVILLE, USA — In London, it was a hulking electric power station (now the Tate Modern). In North Adams, Mass., it was an electronics plant (whose buildings now house the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art). In Beacon, N.Y., it was a Nabisco cracker-box factory (now home to Dia:Beacon, the mecca of Minimalist and Conceptual art). And next in the march of postindustrial artification, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. — home to Walmart — has announced plans to transform a defunct Kraft cheese plant into a raw space for contemporary-art exhibitions, artists' projects, music, theater and film. The 63,000-square-foot space is intended to function somewhat in the way that MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, serves as an edgier, more experimental affiliate of the Museum of Modern Art. It is expected to open in 2018, Crystal Bridges officials said, and the location, in downtown Bentonville, would not only provide a place to show more contemporary art but would also continue a transformation of the small city and the surrounding region into a cultural alternative to cities like New York and Los Angeles

INTERNATIONAL — In the past, when people wondered how to live moral lives, they could look to the saints, or take their questions to church. Today, some of us might instead turn our attention to art and the institutions that house it. That's what several dozen artists did, for a related but different reason, last December during the United Nations climate talks in Paris. One afternoon, in a week when crucial policy negotiations were underway, hundreds of environmental activists gathered outside the Louvre to protest the museum's sponsorship ties to two of the world's largest oil companies. Among the demonstrators were members of politically minded art collectives like Occupy Museums and Not an Alternative, from the United States, and Liberate Tate, from England.

USA — Why have New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles remained such vital centers of trade and finance over the years, constantly reinventing themselves to meet the ever-changing needs of the world's economy? In great part because they have always welcomed immigrants hungry for work and cultural freedom and, in the process, not always easily but ultimately successfully, have built a dynamic, multilingual, and cosmopolitan community open to all that the world has to offer. My wife and I lived in Chicago for seven years, from 2004 to 2011. We came to know it well and to feel a part of it quickly, easily. In its first century, it was one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, doubling every decade through most of the 19th century. By 1890, the city that had had only 30,000 residents at mid-century was the fifth largest city in the world, with large numbers of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and Mexico. Today its population is almost three million, with large numbers of immigrants from Bosnia, India, Nigeria, and Southeast Asia. Almost 30 percent of its population speaks a language other than English at home.  For the six-county area that comprises Greater Chicago, the five most common languages after English are Spanish, Polish, Arabic, Chinese, and Tagalog. What helps Chicago attract and integrate its ever more diverse population? Among other things, I would argue its cultural institutions.

LONDON, UK — London is the "soft power" capital of the world, generating more high-skilled jobs and proving more internationally diverse than other major cities, according to Deloitte LLP. Outpacing New York and five other cities, the U.K. capital created 235,000 new high-skill jobs since 2013 and now employs business leaders of 95 nationalities, a study released by the company on Wednesday showed. One disappointment will be that New York now has largest number of high-skilled financial services jobs. "London is a global city, arguably the world's foremost business hub," said Angus Knowles-Cutler, Deloitte's senior partner in London.

BERLIN, GERMANY — Germany, which has taken in the most migrants in Europe, has initiated projects to integrate migrants into German society. A number of Berlin-based museums and art galleries are offering tours in Arabic for Arabic-speaking migrants who have come to Germany seeking shelter from war and hardship. Museums in Berlin are training refugees from Syria and Iraq to act as art guides. The Multaqa: Museum as Meeting Point – Refugees as Guides in Berlin Museums project has been realized thanks to collaboration between Berlin's Pergamon Museum, the Museum of Islamic Art, the Museum of the Ancient Near East, the Bode Museum and the German Historical Museum. Intended to help integrate newcomers and ease the sense of alienation many refugees feel upon arrival to Germany, the project aims to offer shelter and make them comfortable by showing them the same respect that is shown to German citizens.

USA — In 2014, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a little known but important federal cultural agency, released a new count of the number of museums in the United States. Called the "Museum Universe Data File" (MUDF), the agency's count determined that there are over 35,000 museums in country—more than any single fast food chain. It was also a 100% increase over IMLS's previous count of 17,500. So how does the number of museums in the country double seemingly overnight?

LONDON, UK — The top 10 most-visited attractions in the country were all in the capital, according to figures. UK visitor attractions saw a 3.2% rise in in 2015, with the biggest increase in Scotland which had a 5.48% rise. Edinburgh Castle was the most visited attraction in Scotland - ahead of the National Museum of Scotland for the first time in five years. More than 65 million people visited attractions in London in 2015. Some 6.82 million people visited the British Museum last year, up from 6.7 million the year before. The National Gallery remained in second place with 5.9 million visitors - although it suffered an 8% drop in visitor numbers - and in third place was The Natural History Museum with 5.3 million visitors.

MOSCOW, RUSSIA — Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum, says that although the destruction of Palmyra by Isil militants last year could have been avoided, his museum can help to rebuild the ancient city. Piotrovsky, an expert on the Arab world who first visited Palmyra in the 1970s, told The Art Newspaper in an interview at his office that museums worldwide are preparing "for the moment when it will be possible to recreate Palmyra". The Hermitage is working with its peers—informally, for now—to gather photographs, engravings and other archival documents that capture the ancient city from every possible angle. Piotrovsky's campaign is not limited to Palmyra. He has spoken out about the fate of cultural heritage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali and Yemen. "Today unexpectedly, the whole of culture finds itself in danger," he said at a cultural forum in December.

ITALY — Italy's minister of culture, Dario Franceschini, is determined to make good on his promise to shake up the country's cultural institutions. He announced a radical overhaul of the ministry's regional arms, the Soprintendenze, last month. "We're redesigning the ministry's nationwide network to simplify our relationship with citizens," he said. Until recently, separate government bodies oversaw fine arts, archaeology and parks in each of Italy's regions. Now, a single entity will oversee all three facets of a particular region. There will be 39 Soprintendenze, not including the two special entities that oversee Pompeii and the Colosseum. As part of the reforms, the ministry will also establish ten autonomous museum structures, including the historical complex of the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma and Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli. An international competition has been launched to find directors who are up to the task.

NEW YORK, USA — There are certain things in life that are recommended but not required. Tipping your waiter, sleeping eight hours a night, deodorizing your sweaty body in hot weather. And of course, the most culturally savvy recommendation of the bunch -- paying the full $25 admission fee to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That is, until now. Visitors to New York City's art haven can technically pay whatever they want to get into the storied collection, though The Met's chosen signage has made this caveat somewhat opaque. Until recently, signage at the museum's entrance put the "recommended" aspect of the $25 entrance fee in a notably teeny font, arguably misleading visitors.

DUBAI, UAE — Foster + Partners, BIG and Grimshaw Architects have won a competition to design a trio of pavilions for the 2020 Expo, which will be held in Dubai. The three firms saw off competition from 10 other entrants to the global competition for the pavilions, which will form the centrepiece for the 438-hectare Expo site in Jebel Ali – a port town located between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The title for the Expo is Connecting Minds, Creating the Future and architects were asked to submit proposals under the festival's three core themes: Mobility, Sustainability and Opportunity.

INTERNATIONAL — Following the bankruptcy and collapse of Architecture for Humanity in 2015, local chapters have banded together to create a new organization called Open Architecture Collaborative (+ movie). More than 30 chapters in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa have ground together to form the new organization, which pledges to pursue community engagement through design. The group's stated mission is "design advocacy, facilitation, assessment and small build services to their local marginalized communities." "We believe in group up action, fueled by inclusive participation," says the Collaborative on its website. Former volunteer and long-time collaborator Garrett Jacobs has overseen the relaunch, and is now serving as executive director. "Our focus is community design, participatory design, and this is that accessible platform for people to do community work and to build the collaborations that redefine what architecture and design can be in the 21st," he explained in a YouTube video.

VENICE, ITALY — "Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country" is the title of the German offering at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, and it's fitting in that the German exhibition will take a close look at the explosive political issues surrounding the integration of refugees and migrants. Where and how should the refugees be housed, for instance, and what does the refugee situation mean for the housing market in Germany? Organizers presented their plans for the German pavilion Thursday (10.03.2016) in Munich. The 15th International Architecture Exhibition, also known as the Architecture Biennale, takes place from May 28 to November 27, 2016, in various venues in Venice, under the title "Reporting from the Front." Eighty-eight participants from 37 different countries will be presenting entries.

CHINA — A bird's nest, a boot, an egg, a coin, a pair of trousers—some of China's most infamous contemporary buildings resemble everyday objects more than edifices. Intentionally unorthodox and frequently nonsensical, several of these architectural curiosities have been hailed as marvels, while others have been ridiculed (the penis-shaped headquarters for the People's Daily newspaper is a particularly noteworthy example). But regardless of the debatable success of their designers' ambitions, they collectively embody China's desire to assert its superpower status with extraordinary architecture.

TORONTO, CANADA — Danish Architect Bjarke Ingels' firm BIG has published designs for an eye-catching residential project in Toronto, Canada. The BIG-designed development includes 500 apartments contained within a pixelated-looking block that rises and falls to create five mountainous peaks. The scheme's modular arrangement is reminiscent of the experimental housing complex 'Habitat 67' built by Moshe Safdie in 1967 – the three-dimensional landscape of 354 stacked concrete "boxes" built for the Montreal Expo. Commissioned by property developers Westbank and Allied REIT, the project is proposed for a site between King Street West and Wellington Street and will encompass approximately 67,000 sq.m.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Kimmel Eshkolot Architects has won the competition to design the Kaplan North Masterplan, covering an area of 32,000 square meters in central Tel Aviv. Once a secretive and secluded area, the space has been opened to new development due to the decision to relocate the headquarters of the IDF. "Located between one of the city's busiest intersections and its cultural center, the design creates a new gateway to Tel Aviv, which will be an innovative series of structures that will connect this fragmented area," with the goal of creating a "sustainable coexistence between a busy urban space and an intimate residential neighborhood." The masterplan is separated into two sections—the west side and the east side. The western portion features the Sarona garden, an open urban space that encourages spontaneous leisure activities, gatherings, and events like small concerts. It will also serve as a site for art exhibitions, with the ambition of hosting temporary pavilions, in a similar manner as London's Serpentine Gallery. Furthermore, several small listed buildings will occupy the western side of the plan, and will incorporate extensive shading elements, as well as a water feature.

NEW YORK, USA — Fashion and technology are having a moment, and we're not the only ones who've noticed. Museums, those vaults of history and society, are clearly paying attention to the impact of technology on fashion. Late last autumn, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced the theme for this year's MET Gala and exhibition will be "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology." Around the same time, the high museum of Atlanta launched its exhibit on Dutch Designer Iris Van Herpen while earlier in March, the museum of Fine Arts in Boston opened the doors to #TextStyle, an exhibit exploring the relationship between digital and design when it comes to fashion. Visitors to #TextStyle, which is on display in the MFA Boston's Henry and Lois Foster Gallery, can expect to get a glimpse into the future of wearable technology beyond the wrist, including dresses that move with a mind of their own, clothing that reacts to noise and music and garments that comes out of a 3D printer ready to wear.

USA — Take a virtual road trip around the country through the lens of America's most historic and storied homes. From Gilded Age mansions to humble farmsteads, here are our picks for the most beloved historic homes in each of the nation's 50 states.

MOSUL, IRAQ — The Mosul Museum was the second largest museum in Iraq until it was destroyed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters in February 2015. But even though the bricks-and-mortar building has been wrecked and its artefacts looted, the museum and its exhibits live on, recreated in a VR world – and you can now explore the museum from anywhere in the world with a VR headset. The museum was home to some of Iraq's most important cultural artefacts, and I was able to experience them all again through the world of VR, thanks to a collaboration between Project Mosul and The Economist. I was invited to tour a virtual version of the museum while at the Wearable Technology Show 2016 in London. I strapped on a Gear VR headset and Samsung Galaxy S6, and the tour began with my avatar walking up the steps to the museum door and entering the building. Everything has been stitched together by Project Mosul, which has used a variety of donated photos and other media to get the most accurate representation of how the museum looked before it was destroyed.

INTERNATIONAL — 3D reconstructions of some of Syria's most spectacular archaeological sites go online Tuesday after a big push to digitalise the war-torn country's threatened heritage. French digital surveyors have been working with Syrian archaeologists to map some of the country's most famous monuments after Islamic State jihadists sparked international outrage by blowing up two temples in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Palmyra last year. The eighth-century Umayyad Mosque in the capital Damascus - regarded by some as the fourth holiest place in Islam - and the Krak des Chevaliers Crusader castle near the ravaged city of Homs are the two most famous buildings to have been scanned in minute detail. Photogrammetric technology developed by the French startup Iconem has also been used to record the Roman theatre in the coastal city of Jableh and the Phoenician site in the ancient port of Ugarit, where evidence of the world's oldest alphabet was found. Its technicians have also been working alongside 15 specialists from the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) to digitalise some of the country's major museum collections.

INTERNATIONAL — Bob and Jean Mallory of White Bear Lake remember when going to a see a mummy meant standing in line, shuffling past shrouded petrified remains inside a glass case and you're done. Last week, they stood in front of a "touch table" at the Science Museum of Minnesota's new "Mummies" exhibit that allowed them to virtually unwrap specimens, zoom in and turn the skeletons for a 360-degree look-see. Next door, at an exhibit on race, eighth-graderPeytyn Shevchuk intently played a sort of video game — guessing which of the six faces of varying races on the screen matched the voice that was speaking. She said museums would be "boring" without attractions like these, that help her absorb information.

LOS ANGELES, USA — The New York Times tries to answer the question about LA's newfound role in the art ecosystem: Can it last? Will it continue to grow? The fact that the art world has become more diffuse has contributed to the ascendancy of Los Angeles as a cultural destination, Mr. Poe added. "The world is shifting," he said. "It's not just one place having all the energy, like New York or Paris or London. There's no hot spot anymore; it's all lukewarm, and I think Los Angeles is one of the warmest of those spots." As strong as institutions have become in the city, Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer, finds it more useful to view developments from an alternative vantage point: bottom up. "What makes a city culturally exciting is not how many collectors, galleries or institutions there are," she said. "It's how many artists are working there. Artists create and energize an art scene. That has happened in this city over the last decade and a half."

NEW YORK, USA— Galleries have always provided scholarly support for museums exhibiting their artists' work. Now they're expected to provide money, too. In today's exploding art market, amid diminishing corporate donations and mounting exhibition costs, non-profit museums have been leaning more heavily on commercial galleries for larger amounts of money — anywhere from $5,000 to $200,000 each time — to help pay for shows featuring work by artists the galleries represent. The increasingly common arrangement has stoked concerns about conflicts of interest and the dilution of a museum's mission to present art for art's sake. Such cozy situations raise the specter of a pay-to-play model and could give galleries undue influence over what the public sees.

CANADA — Canada's most famous living photographer, the country's representative at the 2009 Venice Biennale and a textile artist from Salt Spring Island, B.C., are among the eight winners of the 17th-annual Governor-General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts, it was announced Monday morning in Ottawa by the Canada Council for the Arts. Each of the laureates, honoured for lifetime achievement, receives $25,000 in cash and will be recognized by Governor-General David Johnston at a ceremony March 23 at Rideau Hall. This year's winners are evenly split between men and women, with the single largest bloc of winners, four, based in Ontario. Edward Burtynsky, born in 1955 in St. Catharines, Ont., has gained international attention with his large-scale colour photographs, at once beautiful and disturbing, of man's desecration of the natural environment. The Toronto-based artist's work has been featured in solo and group exhibitonsthroughout North America, Asia and Europe, in films (2006's Manufactured Landscapes, Watermark from 2013) and in books (Residual Landscapes, Oil, Burtynsky – China). His photographs are in the permanent collections of more than 50 institutions, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Madrid's Reina Sofia among them.

INTERNATIONAL — In one of the last letters artist Vincent van Gogh ever wrote, he proclaimed: "The truth is, we cannot speak other than by our paintings." Today, a group of filmmakers, artists and hardcore van Gogh devotees are taking the artist's words quite seriously. A biopic about Van Gogh's tumultuous life and mysterious death entitled "Loving Vincent" is currently in the works, and the film will be made entirely of animated paintings in the swirling style of van Gogh's canvases.

USA — Contemporary art as social anchor and cultural capital for regionals cities looking to revive their urban appeal seems to be getting a boost from the 21c chain of art hotels. These boutique hotels use art as an attraction in cities like Durham, North Carolina and Bentonville, Arkansas. Louisville, Kentucky just opened its branch with more on the way: Wilson founded 21c along with fellow art collector Laura Lee Brown. Like its other sites, Lexington's 21c includes a contemporary art museum offering curated exhibitions, interactive installations and planned cultural programming. The other 21c are in Louisville; Cincinnati; Durham, North Carolina; and Bentonville, Arkansas. The company said two more are under construction, in Nashville, Tennessee, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

TORONTO, CANADA — According to a Martin Prosperity Institute study due out later this year, venture capital investments tend to cluster in certain neighbourhoods, even within cities that are generally seen as good places to start a company. The study, by Martin Prosperity Institute director Richard Florida and researcher Karen King, mapped venture capital funding for tech-oriented startups in several global cities, including Toronto. They found that the area close to U of T, encompassing the Annex, Yorkville and midtown neighbourhoods attracted more venture capital – $81 million in 2013 – than any other part of the city, with the King-Spadina fashion district and all its digital start-ups coming in a close second, at $74 million. Between them, these two areas soaked up almost half of all venture funding in Greater Toronto. This kind of mapping, says King, has become increasingly crucial because entrepreneurially driven firms – especially in sectors such as financial services, information technology, and software – like to cluster and to situate themselves close to pools of potential employees. It also "shows how great research universities such as U of T have become magnets for technology and talent, spurring startups and catalyzing new businesses and industries," says Florida.

HALIFAX, CANADA — Canada's heritage minister says stimulating economic growth starts by investing in innovation, and that means putting money into arts and culture. "Investing in arts and culture is so key to our government," Mélanie Joly told CBC News: Nova Scotia at Six. "Innovation is not created by just by saying so — you have to have the rightecosystem, you have to have the right people developing new ideas. The fauna and the flora of that ecosystem is arts and culture, is media," Joly said. "All that content development is the core of the creative economy that we know will be our future economy."

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA— The National Urban Heritage Center (NUHC) is restoring four historic palaces in order to transform them into cultural and heritage centers which, besides hosting events, will also house museums to exhibit local culture and heritage, and promote domestic tourism. Given by their owners to the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, the SCTNH will use these historic palaces after restoration to house local museums and will periodically host cultural and heritage events for tourism purposes, which will help the local population with jobs, an SCTNH official said Thursday. The donated mansions are Bin Raghoosh Palace in Al-Baha Province, Therban Palace in Al-Nammas municipality, Al-Asskar Palace in Al-Majm'a and Al-Rashid Palace in Al-Qassab. The official pointed out that the restoration work is progressing at speed at all these palaces to transform them into significant landmarks in their respective regions.

INTERNATIONAL — Two weeks ago, a 32-container train from Wuyi, China arrived in Tehran, Iran. You might think the arrival of cargo by rail would be no big deal, but in this case you'd be wrong. This was the first journey of its kind between the two cities, and it shortened the typical ship-based travel time by 30 days. This new connection is among the first visible signs of a massive trade network that China is currently constructing across Eurasia. The Silk Route is being rebuilt.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY — Over 500 years old, surviving fire and earthquakes, it welcomes up to 400,000 people a day and takes pride in being the world's most visited destination -- more popular than the Eiffel Tower. So it's hardly surprising that Istanbul's venerable Grand Bazaar, built in the mid-15th century, has suffered some wear and tear over the years. The labyrinthine bazaar is now about to undergo a much needed renovation that will last a decade and cost tens of millions of dollars. But the revamp is not without controversy, especially among traditionalists who fear the spirit of the historic market will be lost. "It's the most visited destination in the world, so it's very important for us," said MustafaDemir, the mayor of the Fatih district of Istanbul where the bazaar is located. "It's a very long project which is going to need a decade," he said. The cost is estimated at $33.5 million (30 million euros) which will be largely financed by the Turkish authorities.

TORONTO, CANADA — The award-winning public arts organization STEPS, responsible for the World's Tallest Mural atSherbourne and Wellesley is teaming up with Slate Asset Management, Councillor Josh Matlow's Office, local community groups and internationally renowned  artist PHLEGM to create a 12 storey mural at the heart of Toronto's busy Yonge & St. Clair community, and we want you to be a part of it.