OSSINING, USA — If you say Sing Sing, most people will know what you mean. This famous (or infamous) prison is getting its own museum, offering insight into the history of the US correctional system.

HUNTSVILLE, CANADA - A public meeting to discuss the future of Huntsville’s Muskoka Heritage Place was held November 24th. Brad King (Vice President, Lord Cultural Resources) opened the meeting with a presentation on historically-focused attractions.

TORONTO, CANADA — Old City Hall may be the location of a "Museum of Toronto" when the lease for the court space ends in 2021. Public consultations are underway to decide what the future of this Toronto landmark. Sean Stanwick (Director, Facility Planning) helped make the case for its use as the long-awaited Museum.

LONDON, U.K. — The competition, organised by Malcolm Reading Consultants, attracted almost 100 entries from 26 countries. As well as the memorial, the scheme could also include a subterranean learning centre, housing recordings of testimony from British Holocaust survivors and camp liberators. 

WINNIPEG, CANADA — Winnipeg’s Human Rights Museum has won another award. Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the New York-based master designer for the museum’s inaugural exhibitions, received the gold award for best scenogrpahy for a permanent collection at the International Design and Communications Awards for museums.

LONDON, UK — The first thing to say about the new improved Design Museum, which will open in new £83m premises on the 24th of this month, is that it is an exceptional achievement.

TORONTO, CANADA — A public-private partnership could be just one option for funding the construction, operation and maintenance of Toronto's Rail Deck Park, says a man who works on design and planning for New York City's High Line Park.

TORONTO, CANADA — A view may be priceless, but one city expert on planning and cultural institutions says it’s time to stop pretending they’re free. Gail Dexter Lord, Co-President of Lord Cultural Resources, believes Toronto should be capitalizing on the views condo and apartment dwellers have of parks and cultural institutions.

SHANGHAI, CHINA — “The audience for art is growing very quickly here,” says Larys Frogier, director of the highly respected Rockbund Museum in Shanghai. “The younger generation is very well educated and well travelled. The new middle class wants culture, not just entertainment.”

MONTREAL, CANADA — The Museum of Fine Arts’s newest pavilion is much more than the bigger galleries that nearly double what it can show of its collection of international artworks – it is a concrete statement of chief curator Nathalie Bondil’s goal of remaking the museum as a “humanist” institution to improve the social well-being of the citizenry in the 21st century.

MONTREAL, CANADA — On 1 November, UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, addressed the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations on 'Soft Power and Global Governance in the 21st Century'.

CANADA — The Canadian government is encouraging Canadians to apply for several positions on the boards of museums across the country.

CHICAGO, USA — While many art museums have pursued big-budget expansions in their bids for larger and more loyal audiences, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is rethinking and reconfiguring its public spaces without altering its basic footprint downtown. This week the museum revealed plans for a $16 million renovation by the Los Angeles architects Johnston Marklee, led by Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee.

LONDON, U.K. — The Design Museum's new £83-million London home by John Pawson and OMA is set to open next week at the former Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington.

WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — President Barack Obama honored experimental architect Frank Gehry (winner of the Pritzker Prize and AIA Gold Medal) and artist Maya Lin (designer of Washington, D.C.’s Vietnam War Memorial) with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House for their career achievements.

BERLIN, GERMANY — Architectural designer John Pawson has transformed a pair of second-world-war telecommunication bunkers into an art and furniture Museum in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighbourhood.

SZCZECIN, POLAND — A subterranean museum in Poland with a huge public space on its roof has won the title of World Building of the Year 2016 at the World Architecture Festival. The National Museum in Szczecin was designed by Polish architect Robert Konieczny, who leads a studio called KWK Promes.

NEW YORK, USA — Wireless ear-bud maker Doppler Labs has partnered with six organizations to bring its Here One “augmented reality listening” to sporting events, museums, concert halls, and more.

BERLIN, GERMANY — The German Museum of Technology has a new employee. A one and a half meter tall android service robot aided by computer-controlled motors is to guide visitors in the museum.

LISBON, PORTUGAL — On a sunny afternoon last month, droves of people lined up in an industrial waterfront area of Lisbon, Portugal. Hundreds of people were lined up at this UFO-like building, which faces the River Tagus. All were waiting to be the first to enter the brand new Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), which is the latest piece of sci-fi architecture.

CANADA — The National Ballet of Canada is programming Cinderella and Pinocchio; the Royal Ontario Museum is celebrating its 10th season of running a Friday-night dance party and the Vancouver Opera has decided to reinvent itself as a festival next spring. Everywhere you turn, arts institutions are getting wildly creative about drawing new audiences – or is that wildly desperate? Anecdotal evidence from arts administrators suggests their audiences are in serious decline. And this week the Canadian Index of Wellbeing came out with a challenging report suggesting that the decline is real and part of a larger social trend.

TORONTO, CANADA — “One crack of the hammer, one giant leap for Canadian art,” said David Heffel, the president of the auction house Heffel Fine Art, on Wednesday night, as he closed bidding on the record-shattering sale of the evening’s star lot, a landscape painting by the artist Lawren Harris.

NEW YORK, USA — For the first time in 20 years, the lead-up to The Whitney Biennial coincided with the presidential election, a background that could not help but inform the selection of artists and artwork that will be on view when the biennial opens on March 17, the first in the museum’s new downtown building.

LONDON, U.K. — Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, recently announced the identity of the city’s first ever “night czar”. Amy Lamé, a British television and radio personality, was the successful candidate of a competition that garnered hundreds of applicants.

INTERNATIONAL — According to new survey results released by Adobe, creativity pays off. The research involved 5,000 adults across five countries and it found that investment in creativity results in numerous benefits from greater national competitiveness to higher income levels.

SAUDI ARABIA — THE United Nations chose the city of Al-Ahsa in east of Saudi Arabia as the most creative cities in the world on World Cities day. According to Reuters, the world is undergoing the largest wave of urban growth in history, with millions of people moving to the fast-growing cities of the developing world, shedding spotlight on them.