GATINEAU, CANADA — The Canadian Museum of History is adapting to new technology with the launch of a 4K digital laser projector in its theatre before the end of March. After being associated with IMAX for more than 25 years, the Gatineau museum said it acquired the new technology from Barco — a Belgium based technology company. According to the museum, the laser projector provides sharper images and brighter colours compared to the current projectors. With the new addition to the cinema, the museum's cinema becomes one of only four in Canada to possess 4K technology, according to the museum.

Lord Cultural Resources developed an innovative public engagement and consultation process for the Canadian Museum of Civilization's cross-Canada tour that sought input from the public on what they would like from their national history museum. The feedback from the consultations was synthesized in a report by Lord Cultural Resources and informed the new permanent exhibition and other programming strategies at the Canadian Museum of History.

WINDSOR, CANADA — History buffs in Windsor finally got their chance to step into the Chimczuk Museum Thursday. The grand opening ceremony for the museum, located on the ground floor of the Art Gallery of Windsor, featured a traditional greeting from a First Nations elder and a reading from Marty Gervais, Windsor's poet laureate. The museum is named after Joseph Chimczuk, a tinsmith at Ford Motor Company who left $1 million to the City of Windsor when he died in 1990 in order to "build a building to be known as the Chimczuk Museum," according to his will.

Lord Cultural Resources began working with Museum Windsor in 2011 and developed an implementable and sustainable Feasibility Study for the Museum's expansion. In 2014, Lord was hired again to help execute this plan and to develop new permanent exhibitions for the new Chimczuk Museum and the François Baby House buildings. Together with a team including Hariri Pontarini Architects, WeatherstonBruer Associates, and Holman Exhibits, Lord was responsible for overall exhibition development.

SAN DIEGO, USA — San Diego is rich in the arts but, to become richer, it needs to take steps such as knitting together existing arts institutions and advancing arts education, said panelists at a Zócalo Public Square event, "Will San Diego Ever Become a Great Art City?" at the Lux Art Institute in Encinitas Saturday evening. The panel—which was moderated by arts journalist Kinsee Morlan of the Voice of San Diego and included an artist, a museum and urban planner, a public art manager, and a curator—struck an optimistic tone and celebrated the growth of the arts across greater San Diego, from High Tech High to rapidly opening galleries in the city’s Barrio Logan. But the night’s discussion also was critical—the area lacks media coverage of arts, communication between people and arts institutions in San Diego, and sufficient financial support for the arts from local governments, art patrons, and collectors; San Diego is the only sizable county in California without an arts council. When Morlan, author of the Voice of San Diego’s Culture Report, opened the evening by asking for a show of hands of those who think San Diego is already a “great art city,” just 15 hands went up in the large audience that overflowed the room.

Priya Sircar, Senior Consultant, Lord Cultural Resources, participated in a dicussion on how San Diego can raise its art profile on a panel hosted by Zocalo Public Square at the Lux Art Institute on February 20, 2016. The Panel of Speakers, moderated by Kinsee Morlan, Engagement Editor, Voice of San Diego, included: Artist Jenessa Goodman, Lord Cultural Resources Senior Consultant Priya Sircar, and City of San Diego Senior Public Art Manager Christine Jones.

WINNIPEG, CANADA — A watercolour sketch drawn by Justin Trudeau months before he became prime minister has been auctioned off on eBay for $25,200. Trudeau drew the image of the Canadian Museum For Human Rights after visiting the Winnipeg building last spring. Postcard prints of the image were given recently to Liberal party donors, and museum officials approached Trudeau about getting the original for a museum fundraiser. The framed and signed image, measuring 41 by 31 centimetres — plus a note Trudeau wrote to chief fundraiser Gail Asper attached to the back — was up for bids on eBay for 10 days. A spokesperson for the museum's fundraising arm had said the sketch was appraised at $2,000, but a bidding war would be welcomed.

Lord Cultural Resources has worked with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights since 2000. We have helped to develop the concept and to craft the three-volume Master Plan and business plan, provided the space program, assisted with the international architectural competition that selected Antoine Predock to design the building, and organized and facilitated the cross Canada consultation process that gathered human rights stories from thousands of Canadians in 19 cities. We have continued to provide advisory services to Board and senior management on all aspects of implementation, content and the inauguration.

LOUISVILLE, USA — A new master plan for arts in the Louisville region is underway, with the goal of not only galvanizing Louisville's arts community but also helping the regional economy. The officially titled "Greater Louisville Master Plan for the Arts" is the city's first new arts master plan in more than a decade, according to a news release. A corresponding website, GreaterLouisvilleArts.com, has additional details about the vision as well as a timeline. Louisville will work on its first arts master plan in more than a decade. The planning process is budgeted at nearly $200,000, which is being funded by a range of supporters: Owsley Brown III, the Humana Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, the Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Louisville Downtown Partnership, the Austin & Jane Musselman Foundation and Jim and Marianne Welch.

In 2015, Lord Cultural Resources was commissioned to facilitate the creation of a Master Plan for the Arts for Greater Louisville in partnership with Louisville-based marketing firm, M2 Maximum Media.

WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — Music has the power to transcend borders and bring nations together, and what better way to foster cultural understanding than through the timeless elegance of opera. On February 8th, in collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Russian Embassy in Washington DC held a joint concert featuring aspiring artists from Russia and the United States. This concert was held in celebration of the 6th anniversary of the cultural exchange between the young artists of the Washington National Opera and the Bolshoi Theatre—a program dedicated to promoting cultural exchange through operatic music—and featured music from Rimsky-Korsakov, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Leoncavallo, and de Curtis.

ROME, ITALY — Culture promotion, the expansion of made-in-Italy brands and the internationalization of Italian talents are regarded as the mainstay of Italy's soft power policy, the president of national statistics institute Istat, Giorgio Alleva, told Xinhua in a recent interview. Soft power is "the other face of power, something different from the military, economic or demographic strength ... it is the power of persuading, convincing, attracting through intangible resources such as culture, values and institutions," Alleva said. For this reason, soft power has different characteristics in different countries as it marks the traditional sense of identity of a country. "In Italy, this sense of identity is cultural heritage, one of the richest in the world," he said. Italy has the largest number of sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List, 51, and is one of the most important touristic destinations in the world, the fifth after France, the United States, Spain and China according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), with more than 50 million foreign visitors every year, the Istat head noted.

NEW YORK, USA — The role of the arts in city life is a hot-button issue among urbanists. I have long argued that street-level arts and cultural scenes signal the diversity and economic vibrancy of cities. My own Bohemian Index has linked artists, musicians, writers, designers, and entertainers to innovation and high tech industries, and I have often highlighted the connection between vibrant music scenes and startup cultures in cities and urban neighborhoods. But others disagree, arguing that arts and culture simply flourish in already wealthy places. Still others contend that arts have an even more perverse effect, ultimately leading to higher real estate prices, gentrification, and the displacement of working class and lower income residents from their neighborhoods.

LONDON, UK — It is more than 50 years since a British government announced its intention to make the UK “a gayer and more cultivated country”. That quotation comes fr om A Policy for the Arts: the First Steps, Britain’s first White Paper on cultural policy, published by the first minister for the arts, Labour’s Jennie Lee, in 1965. Until this year it was the only comprehensive statement of a government’s attitude to the arts and heritage. Ed Vaizey, the minister of state for culture and the digital economy, is putting that to rights. Following a consultation launched in September 2015, he and a small team of officials at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) are working on “a new, far-reaching cultural strategy”, for publication this spring.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — If you walk down the sloping green lawns of the Palais des Nations, you will see 193 blocks of stone, one for each of the nation states recognized by the United Nations, arranged like the infinity symbol, with an extra loop. Titled “Rebirth,” the sculpture was erected in 2015 for the 70th anniversary of the United Nations. Given the endless talks that take place in Geneva aimed at ending the world’s wars, you might think of the infinity symbol as an emblem of the infinite patience required of peacemakers — perhaps also of the interminable bloodshed in Syria, which the latest talks have been unable to stanch. Geneva is brimming with reminders of the city’s role in hosting talks aimed at saving humanity from itself.

PITTSBURGH, USA — The Center for PostNatural History's mission is to collect, document, and study living organisms that have been intentionally altered by people. Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and founded by artist and Carnegie Mellon professor, Richard Pell, the Center is the result of years of research and an art project slowly transforming into a tiny and unique museum. As world leaders meet to discuss the fate of the planet and climate change, we should take stock of our role on Earth. On a macro-level the science is clear; humans are having substantial and negative impacts on this planet. The effects are growing more fierce annually while we do little to slow the causes. What's unclear is the role humans should have on this planet. When we ask ourselves this, the divide between "us" and "nature" quickly begins to blur. We are inexorably part of this planet. There is no pristine "wilderness" or "nature" to return to that doesn't involve us. This reveals what few natural history museums ever discuss — that we, too, are nature.

CHINA — Hunan province in central China is offering a reward to anyone who can decode the inscription on the back of six ancient gold coins. The Cultural Relics Bureau of Jinshi city has offered 10,000 yuan (1,500 U.S. dollars) to anyone who can explain the mystery of the coins, housed in the city's museum. The coins are believed to have been manufactured during the Delhi Sultanate period, sometime in the middle of China's Yuan Dynasty (1271-1358), said the bureau director Peng Jia. In the 1960s, a small white glazed pot containing six gold foreign coins was discovered at a farm. Each coin is as big as China's one yuan coin currently in circulation. Since they were sent to the museum in the 1980s, archaeologists have been puzzled. The coins are classified as first-level national cultural relics.

MILWAUKEE, USA — Although the Milwaukee Art Museum managed to reopen at the end of November, in time for the holiday rush, it was still installing objects into December. Even though I put off my visit until January, the better to see the final product, finishing touches were still being applied to MAM’s sweeping $34-million renovation, expansion and reinstallation. Some works in its augmented display of about 2,000 highlights from the 30,000-object permanent collection (plus additional loans) were being reshuffled; many object labels were not yet affixed. But the makeover’s most important goal was adroitly achieved—remedying the decrepitude of the mold-ridden physical plant, which had threatened the health of people and art. Now the great strengths of MAM’s holdings—particularly in modern and contemporary art, American paintings, and carved 18th-century American furniture (on long-term loan from the Milwaukee-based Chipstone Foundation)—are not only better preserved, but shown off to greater advantage, thanks to the reorganization spearheaded by chief curator Brady Roberts under the enthusiastic oversight of director Daniel Keegan, who leaves the museum in May.

BOSTON, USA — The days that followed ISIS’s savage murder of the distinguished and widely admired archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad last August were filled with shock and outrage. At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which possesses a world-class collection of ancient art, including 10 funerary sculptures from Palmyra, a group of colleagues sat down to discuss ways we could respond to this horrific crime. While no one at the MFA had a personal connection to al-Asaad, he was a fixture in the international archaeological community, lecturing at conferences, generously providing experts with access to Palmyra, and collaborating with them on publications. He stood for the common cause of not just archaeologists and museum professionals, but all people who endeavour to safeguard the past and preserve it for future generations. How could the MFA best honour his life and sacrifice in a way that would connect meaningfully with our audiences?

LANZAROTE, CANARY ISLANDS — Jason deCaires Taylor is sinking fast. Below, 15 metres under the surface of the sea, a crowd of figures, unmistakably human, are motionless. It is eerily still but for the schools of fish weaving through this newly arrived sunken society. Taylor has just submerged these sculptures in what will become Europe’s first underwater museum, Museo Atlantico, in Lanzarote. Under the surface of the water, The Raft of Lampedusa, a sculpted boat carrying 13 refugees, is still just visible as it is lowered. Divers surround it, inflatable buoys hold it while Taylor waits with a waterproof clipboard, ready to place it in its new home.

NEW YORK, USA — New York-based Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners sought to preserve the "authentic patina of aging materials" in its subtle refurbishment of the former Whitney Museum, which will reopen this month as The Met Breuer. The Met Breuer is the new, temporary home for the contemporary and modern art collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met). The landmark concrete and granite building was designed by the Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer and opened in 1966 in the city's Upper East Side neighbourhood. It formerly housed the Whitney Museum, which moved to its new Renzo Piano-designed home in the Meatpacking District last April.

INTERNATIONAL — On a special edition of "60 Minutes," explore three memorable buildings where architecture is honored and history is kept alive.

LONDON, UK — Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG have been selected to design this year's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, while four other studios will create accompanying summerhouses. Copenhagen- and New York-based BIG – whose built projects include the pioneering 8 House and the Danish Maritime Museum – will create the 16th edition of the pavilion, which is constructed every summer outside the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. But for the first time, the pavilion will also be accompanied by four architectural follies. These will be created by Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi, Berlin studio Barkow Leibinger; Paris-based architect Yona Friedman and British architect Asif Khan.

LONDON, UK — The iconic buildings of central London in the UK could soon be dominated by skyscrapers after Westminster city council recently made public its plans to review a cap on tall buildings. So far most of London's skyscrapers have been concentrated in the capital's financial districts and zones earmarked for development. But now the local authority for the city of Westminster — an area that includes the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park — plans to review its opposition to tall buildings. A Westminster city council spokesman has been quoted as saying: "We will be consulting later this year on our approach to taller buildings in Westminster."

PARIS, FRANCE — A major international architecture competition for the urban regeneration of Paris has concluded, with 22 design teams selected to develop their innovative visions for the future of the French capital. The project, calledReinventer.Paris, launched in November 2014 with an invitation for architects, designers, investors, companies, collectives and artists to "prefigure what the Paris of tomorrow might be" for "an urban experiment on an unparalleled scale." Over 800 proposals were received, and this was whittled down to 75 finalists before the final winners were announced on Wednesday (3 February). The successful proposals – including entries from David Chipperfield, SouFujimoto and Olivier Palatre Architectes – each highlight an ecological and innovative approach to developing existing sites and buildings.

ROSKILDE, DENMARK — The Danish Rock Museum, the headquarters of the annual Roskilde Rock Festival and the Roskilde Festival Folk Music School will soon all be housed in one new complex, called Ragnarock. The facilities will be located inside renovated factory buildings with new volumes constructed above. Dutch studio MVRDV, in collaboration with Danish practice COBE, have designed the 45,000sq m (484,300sq ft) project and have included some typically innovative touches. The festival offices are shaped as a stack of loudspeakers with a black rubber facade, and some of the speakers can be used for real during concerts taking place in a new public plaza below. The museum – the focus of the complex – is clad with golden spikes intended to reflect the colourful rockstar experience "like the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust".

UNITED KINGDOM — Hadid was personally approved by the Queen for the 2016 award, which was presented by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) on Wednesday evening. She said: "I am very proud to be awarded the Royal Gold Medal, in particular, to be the first woman to receive the honour in her own right. "We now see more established female architects all the time. That doesn't mean it's easy. Sometimes the challenges are immense. There has been tremendous change over recent years and we will continue this progress." In the UK, Hadid's most recognisable works are Cardiff Bay Opera House and the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games. Globally, her notable designs include Guangzhou Opera House in China and the Vitra Fire Station in Germany. In 2012 she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire for achievements in architecture.

INTERNATIONAL — The social media giant announced a new website on Thursday dedicated to resources for nonprofits and NGOs to get the most out of their Facebook Pages. The new site reads like an extensive instruction manual, covering everything from setting up a Page to building a support network of "likes," and it also includes a step-by-step guide covering how to use the platform's latest fundraising tools. Facebook says the new resource will be essential for nonprofits and NGOs looking to create a presence on the social network — or for organizations looking to up their game when it comes to their existing Pages. The site serves as a simple, accessible roadmap of best practices, with tips and tricks coming from the platform itself.

NEW YORK, USA — The Smithsonian's museum of design, the Cooper-Hewitt, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, offers all of its visitors a connected pen to use as they make their way through the collection. The pen was created in collaboration with the interactive design agency Local Projects, and it has done a remarkable job of connecting visitors with the institution, according to new numbers provided to the Observer. There were two goals in creating the museum’s pen, the firm's principal, Jake Barton, said: "One is practical, operations-based, and the other is capturing inspiration of the visitor experience." The pen allows visitors to do, broadly speaking, two things. First, it lets them "collect" objects digitally (that's the practical use case). Any object or design they encounter at the museum can be saved in the pen, by touching it to the object's label. Second, the museum has two spaces in which visitors can create designs based on digitized objects in the collection (the inspiration use case), which the pen also saves. By visiting a unique URL printed on their visitor ticket, guests can retrieve all the objects they collected online. More detail on Fast Company, from just after the pen's unveiling, in late 2014.

WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — For centuries, museums have been the primary means through which we’ve preserved and exhibited our collective pasts. In general, we experience them as primarily physical spaces that contain mostly physical things, but technological developments are rapidly changing our understanding of what we preserve in them and how we do it. To better understand some of the ongoing changes, Future Tense convened a panel of experts on Jan. 28, 2016, at New America in Washington, D.C., to discuss the ways technology can be used to protect the past.  Event moderator Sarah R. Graff, a senior faculty fellow at Arizona State University, kicked off the event by asking the panelists how technology had changed their work. Scott Branting, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Central Florida, said that the availability of satellite data had made a significant impact on preservation projects, allowing scholars to monitor damage to sites and helping them zero in on especially imperiled regions. While they can’t always prevent crises, Salam Al Kuntar, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, said that scanning and digitization technologies have revolutionized archaeology, allowing researchers to produce digital copies of imperiled locales and artifacts.

NEW YORK, USA — Today 18 of New York City’s biggest museums are repping one another’s collections on their Instagram accounts. For 24 hours, each institution will be posting images taken at a partner museum, to draw parallels between the two institutions’ themes and exhibitions. For instance, the Museum of Modern Art will post photos of collections housed in the American Museum of Natural History (and vice versa); the Frick Collection will be showcased by the folks at the New-York Historical Society; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Queens Museum will trade off, too. The idea came from a similar project that happened last August in London when ten museums traded accounts as a way to digitally swap collections and find common themes in the work.

CINCINNATI, USA — The Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) has partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to commemorate and celebrate Black History Month. Through the creation of digital exhibits, CAM joins over 50 other institutions displaying 4,000+ items in this remarkable project – bringing together important archives from Black history for anyone to access not only during Black History Month, but throughout the year. The CAM digital exhibition tells the story of renowned 19th-century landscape painter, Robert S. Duncanson (1821-1872) and his role in African American artistic identity in the Queen City during his lifetime. CAM is one of three museums in the world where Robert S. Duncanson's work can be examined in-depth. Thanks to this new virtual exhibition, users will be able to see eight notable works by >Duncanson and many other treasures of the museum in just a few clicks here.

NEW YORK, USA — An ancient Egyptian frieze will be shown in all its Technicolor glory as the Met's the Temple of Denduris illuminated in an experimental display. Color the Temple: Scene 1, shown every weekend until 19 March, is the joint effort between the museum's Egyptian art scholars and its MediaLab, a team that works with digital technology to enhance the visitor's experience. The colour projection will light up a ritual scene carved onto the sandstone of the temple. depicting the Roman emperor Augustus styled as a Pharaoh, making an offering to ancient Egyptian deities.

USA — This September, NASA will launch a mission to collect the first ever geological sample from an asteroid, hoping to solve the mystery of very origins of life. At the same time, they'll also be shooting a whole pile of art into space. Your art, if you like. And whether you dabble in painting or sketching or poetry or music or animated GIFs of pepperoni pizza, there's a place for your work on board the spacecraft OSIRIS-REx. On this mission — campaign name: We the Explorers — all forms of creative expression are welcome. "Space exploration is an inherently creative activity," Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, said in a statement about the campaign launch. "We are inviting the world to join us on this great adventure by placing their art work on the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft, where it will stay in space for millennia."

MASSACHUSETTS, USA — Whether a five-minute walk through one man's life or a maze that would take two millennia to explore, Jason Rohrer creates meaningful experiences that could only exist as games. The Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer, now open at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, just west of Boston, celebrates his decade-plus of experience in gaming design with an interactive exhibition. According to the Davis Museum, this is the "first museum retrospective dedicated to the work of a single video game maker." More interesting than just games being highlighted by an art museum is the way they're explored here. Patrick Jagoda, assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago, writes in the accompanying catalogue from MIT Press that it's "not that Rohrer's video games merely adhere to some transhistorically stable definition of 'thought' or 'art.' At a historical moment during which digital media have grown increasingly ubiquitous, his works are all the more important for the ways they use participatory and collective elements to reimagine these terms."

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS — Starting today, the Parisian print world can be discovered online. Due to its size and light sensitivity, the Van Gogh Museum’s spectacular collection of nearly 1800 prints, posters, and books cannot be exhibited in the permanent collection on a continual basis. The new website makes the complex and fascinating Parisian print world accessible to the public. Visitors can now browse the collection at their leisure, exploring the various links and connections that the site has to offer. This unique design allows visitors to decide for themselves how much information they would like to absorb. All prints are now available at high resolution and can be zoomed up to the very fibres of the paper they are printed on. The online print collection, developed by the award winning web agenciesFabrique and Q42,will appeal to numerous target groups. Thanks to the multi-layered offering of information, the site will serve the needs of a wide range of individuals, from young, visually-oriented users to serious academics. The development of the Parisian print world site has been generously supported financially by the Vincent van Gogh Foundation and Fonds 21.

PARIS, FRANCE — France and the Netherlands signed a historic deal Monday acquiring two large Rembrandt portraits for 160 million euros ($174 million), the French culture ministry announced.  The agreement, signed by French culture minister Fleur Pellerin and her Dutch counterpart Jet Bussemaker seals the multi-million dollar deal agreed upon in September for two of the Dutch master's works.  The acquisition — costing the Louvre 80 million euros — is the largest ever made by a French museum.   The portraits, dating from 1634, are of prominent Dutchman Marten Soolmans and his future wife Oopjen Coppit, both wearing black with white lace on the eve of their marriage.

THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS — Art historians on Monday revealed that a painting stored for decades at an American museum was in fact a work by Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch. The surprise discovery comes as 's-Hertogenbosch, the hometown of the artist whose nightmarish visions on canvas earned him the moniker of "the devil's painter", marks the 500th anniversary of his death.  The newly-uncovered painting has been lying forgotten for years in storage at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, which acquired it in the 1930s. Entitled "The Temptation of Saint Anthony", it shows the saint gathering water in a jug as he leans on a staff in what was probably part of a larger panel, possibly a triptych. Initially it had been believed to be the work of one of the many students who flocked to Bosch's workshop in 's-Hertogenbosch. But a team of international researchers who carried out a five-year research project using sophisticated infra-red technology determined that the painting was in fact by the master himself.

CAPPADOCIA, TURKEY — The Turkish equivalent of the famous Burning Man festival in Nevada is due to run again this summer in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey. The fledging festival, entitled Cappadox (19-22 May), includes music concerts and food-related events, along with a large-scale, sprawling exhibition dedicated to site-specific works. The ticketed event, now in its second year, is organised by the Turkish concert promoter Pozitif Live. This year, Fulya Erdemci, the curator of the 2013 Istanbul Biennial, will oversee the art section, which runs until 12 June without an admission charge. Participating artists include the Berlin-based Ayse Erkmen, the German artist Christoph Schaefer and the Brazilian video artist Marilá Dardot. The artists will focus on the effects of tourism on the area located around Uçhisar andGöreme.

NEW YORK, USA — The city announced Thursday it will open business hubs in midtown and the Brooklyn Navy Yard to increase jobs in tech and expand its efforts in urban problem-solving. The new centers are part of a new $7.2 million program called UrbanTech NYC. The two locations will total more than 100,000 square feet and cater to companies that are too big to participate in incubator or accelerator programs, but can't afford market-rate office space. The spaces will offer affordable rents and access to manufacturing software such as 3-D printers for prototypes, along with educational programs and display space for whatever products are dreamed up. Both hubs are set to open this summer. "The [UrbanTech NYC] program will provide the resources that entrepreneurs need to build resiliency into the DNA of our city’s economy," said Maria Torres-Springer, president of the Economic Development Corp., in a statement.

BERLIN, GERMANY — A German collector and medical technology billionaire has hired the British architect DavidChipperfield to restore and develop a masterplan for a former brewery turned cultural complex in central Berlin. Hans Georg Näder bought the 19th-century Bötzow Brewery in 2010. The venue already hosts art exhibitions, including one on Neo Rauch (until 15 March). The €250m project, due for completion by 2019, will include a 2,000 sq. m gallery space. "The gallery will be completed as part of the last construction phase," says Ulrich Goertz of Chipperfield Architects Berlin. Funding is coming from Näder's company, Ottobock.

ITALY — Italy's minister of cultural heritage, Dario Franceschini, has enacted a new reform to streamline the country's cultural institutions. As part of this new initiative, ten new museums and archaeological parks will be created, though the program does not represent a pure expansion per se: Some of the created venues will be mergers of previous institutions. After a joint meeting with the cultural commissions of the Senate and the Parliament, he announced that Italy's cultural departments will "speak with a singular voice to the public—to reduce time and bureaucratic costs," Exibart reports. A newly created department of architecture, fine arts, and landscape (Soprintendenze Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio), will help unify the current, regional administrations. It will address operation, artistic and historic heritage, and education and research among the new institutions.

SWEDEN — Many of Sweden's most popular state-owned museums are now free to visit after a change in the law. The museums letting tourists and locals in without charge include the modern art Moderna Museet venues in Stockholm and Malmö, the Naturhistoriska riksmuseet (Swedish Museum of Natural History) and the Världskulturmuseet i Göteborg(Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg). The move will be funded by Swedish taxpayers and was first mooted as part of the government's autumn budget, as The Local reported in September. It came into action on February 1st. Prime Minister Stefan Löfven's Social Democrat party also introduced a similar scheme when it last was in power 10 years ago, but fees were reintroduced by the centre-right Alliance government in 2006. Culture Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke told Swedish broadcaster SVT last year that she hoped the move would encourage people from a more diverse range of backgrounds to attend exhibitions. "We need to open up and show our shared treasures to reach groups other than those who usually go to museums," she said.