Barry Lord is the author of Art & Energy: How Culture Changes (The AAM Press, 2014) and co-founder of a cultural planning agency that has worked with museums in 56 countries.
The Day, 29 June 2016

UNITED KINGDOM — One of Canada's top thinkers believes we can use increased democratic powers to transform our current culture of consumption into a conservationist society of stewardship and sustainability.

It is not surprising that London voted to remain. In London the price of the globalised trade and geopolitical agreements that come along with EU membership also offer many opportunities. In Scotland and Northern Ireland people understood that they had to express their determination to remain in the larger union of the EU, either within the UK or outside it on their own terms.
But throughout the other cities, towns and farmland of England and Wales live the people who have been most harshly affected by the global trade deals and the geopolitical agreements that have made it progressively harder to find and keep jobs.

Barry Lord's most recent article "Why I believe Brexit can boost sustainability" published online by "The Day", a news service for U.K schools, includes his encouraging and optimistic view of the Brexit and its possible effect on efforts to improve sustainability. Reprinted by permission of "The Day" (theday.co.uk) Britain's leading news service for schools.

TORONTO, CANADA – Jorn Weisbrodt, Luminato's artistic director for the past five years, is going, going and almost gone, but he was waxing eloquent about the shining future of Toronto's annual arts festival when I caught up with him the other day. In particular, he was feeling "absolutely wonderful" about how his gamble of moving most of the festival to Hearn for Luminato's 10th anniversary celebration. "It was a beautiful bomb that exploded, and people love it," says Weisbrodt, whose contract ends officially this week. The costs of pulling off this transformation probably exceeded revenue this year, though final numbers won't be available for weeks or months. But one big win was Luminato set a record for ticket sales, with more than $1 million in ticket revenue, easily exceeding 10 per cent of the festival's budget. Weisbrodt's boss, CEO Anthony Sargent, is also upbeat about the future.

ABU DHABI, UAE – After seven years of holding off the sea to keep the building site of the Louvre Abu Dhabi dry, the temporary sea protection walls have now been removed allowing water to surround the building. The museum is being built on Saadiyat Island and the return of the water fulfils the architect Jean Nouvel's vision of the space as a "museum city on the sea". The opening date is yet to be announced.

Lord Cultural Resources worked with the Abu Dhabi Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC) to develop many of the exciting new cultural institutions on Saadiyat Island including a Concept Plan for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and Master Plans for the Abu Dhabi Maritime Museum and the Zayed National Museum. We were subsequently asked to help develop a Governance Structure for these museums.

GLENDALE, USA – Representatives from more than 60 Armenian American organizations active in Southern California met on June 8, 2016, at the Brand Library and Art Center in Glendale to learn about the current status of the project and provide input on the development and vision for the Armenian American Museum (AAM). The AAM Executive Committee chairman Berdj Karapetian greeted guests by giving an overview of the project initiated by the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of Western United States in 2014 and introducing the representatives of the 9 regional institutions and organizations responsible for the construction and operation of the museum complex at Central Park in Glendale. "The mission of the Armenian American Museum is to promote understanding and appreciation of America's ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Armenian American experience," remarked Karapetian, who has been serving on the Committee for more than 2 years. Zaven Kazazian, who has also served on the project since its inception, explained that the vision for the museum is "a cultural campus that enriches the community, educates the public on the Armenian American story, and empowers individuals to embrace cultural diversity and speak out against prejudice." The mission and vision is articulated in the museum's Concept Development Plan prepared by the leading global museum consulting firm Lord Cultural Resources.

Lord Cultural Resources is in the process of developing an Institutional Plan for the Museum. Phase 1 has been completed and included Concept Development that will use the story of Armenians to connect with stories of Americans all over the globe.

NEW YORK, USA – Two years ago, the International Center of Photography bowed to the realities of Manhattan real estate, giving up its Midtown home on Avenue of the Americas and going dark. Now it is set to reopen on June 23 in a new incarnation downtown, after institutional introspection compelled not only by the move but also by the presiding quandary about what, exactly, defines photography today as the medium keeps morphing and mutating within a vast, evolving technological landscape. The smartphone has turned us all into photographers; social media floods us with an endless array of images; omnipresent video threatens the relevance of the still photograph; and the hovering eye of drone surveillance chronicles our every move. The center had to recalibrate.

In 2005, Lord Cultural Resources was commissioned to engage in a comprehensive strategic plan that would ensure the Center could exceed its goals. Consequently, in 2010, Lord was engaged once again to develop an Institutional Master Plan that helped informed the Center as it planned for its new permanent home.

HAMILTON, CANADA – People outside Hamilton and Burlington might be forgiven for thinking of San Francisco when they hear "Bay Area" — but it's actually within living memory that the San Francisco Bay Area was better known as a derelict dockside city called Frisco and the blues tune, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. It took about five decades of persistent reimagining and redevelopment for the glittering phoenix of museums, galleries, parks, restaurants and hotels to rise from the ashes to become one of North America's most expensive cities, right up there with New York and Toronto. Active redevelopment was conducted through public-private partnerships spearheaded by the city and funded in part by federal government monies earmarked for housing and transportation. These are the types of initiatives that our own Bay Area Economic Summit will advance when it meets on June 21 at Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG). I'm thrilled to have been invited to contribute to this regional conversation as a session moderator.

Gail Dexter Lord discusses the value of Cultural Planning in the Bay Area of Ontario (Hamilton-Burlington) in her article published in "The Hamilton Spectator" on June 5, 2016. While the article focuses on the upcoming economic summit in the Bay Area and specific Hamilton Burlington examples, the methods of unlocking Bay Area growth through cultural planning are relevant to cities across the globe.

WASHINGTON, DC, USA – The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture was over a century in the making. In 1915, black Civil War veterans collected funds they later put toward creating a museum on the National Mall that would celebrate African-American achievement. In 1929, President Calvin Coolidge signed Public Resolution 107, establishing a commission to plan its construction, but the project went nowhere. It took a renewed effort by lawmakers and African-American leaders beginning in the 1960s, and then decades of planning and proposals, before President George W. Bush signed legislation in 2003 authorizing the museum, which is set to open September 24, steps from the Washington Monument.

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.

DUBAI, UAE – Dubai, renowned across the world for its oil wealth, now wants to forge a reputation for the arts. In recent years, the emirate has built several contemporary art galleries including Artspace and the Mottahedan Projects. Now, construction crews are putting the final touches on a striking building designed by Janus Rostock, a Danish architect. Featuring a protruding roof on top of a window-covered oval building, the edifice is the 2,000-seat Dubai Opera House, in their own words a "radiant centre of culture and arts" in the "shining pearl of The Opera District". When a concert hall for classical music is built in a metropolis such as London—as the British government has said it intends to do—it is big news, though mostly to that area's classical-music lovers. When a city (or city-state) like Dubai, with no history of Western classical music, builds one, it is major news to classical-music lovers and foreign policy analysts alike. It signals soft-power ambition, a desire to be taken seriously in the high-brow world of the arts.

TORONTO, CANADA – Toronto libraries have something new you can check out and take home: wireless internet. Google is partnering with the city to offer portable WiFi hotspots, which will be loaned out for up to six months at a time. Six library branches, all located in low-income neighbourhoods, will offer the service. Fight for affordable internet to take centre stage at CRTC hearing. The project's goal is to give free internet to Torontonians who can't afford it. "Google hopes to give some of the most underserved in our city a way to bridge the tech divide," the tech giant said in a news release.

BEIRUT, LEBANON – Despite being in a conflict zone, Beirut is somehow rising like a phoenix from the ashes. The past 12 months have seen the reopening of the Sursock Museum, a contemporary art gallery supervised by renowned French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, and the inauguration of Aishti, a cutting-edge art foundation that rivals the Punta della Dogana in Venice. In September, the doors will open to Beit Beirut (beitbeirut.org), a museum and arts centre dedicated to the memory of decades of conflict.

INTERNATIONAL – The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London is the latest European institution to turn the spotlight on Iran. The museum has a major exhibition focusing on Iranian heritage and history in the pipeline. "The V&A is in the early stages of planning an exhibition that will showcase an important private collection of Iranian art supplemented by the V&A's own holdings," a museum spokeswoman says. No opening date has been set.  Museums in the West continue to woo Iranian cultural bodies after last year's deal on Iran's nuclear programme and the lifting of sanctions imposed on the country by the United Nations.  Martin Roth, the director of the V&A, told The Art Newspaper last year: "Let's start slowly and see the establishment of diplomatic networks, so there's something to support co-operation. Iranians are super-smart and they know when the time is right."

NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA – This summer, library cards in Nova Scotia will allow holders to check out more than just books. The culture pass program — a joint venture between the Nova Scotia Provincial Library and the Nova Scotia Museum — lets library card holders borrow a downloadable pass through the libraries' digital media sites. Nova Scotia Museum represents 28 museums in the province. The pass allows unlimited access to all of those museums for a period of three weeks for either one adult or an entire family.

SHENZEN, CHINA – Culture is big in China. And institutions from around the world want a piece of it. While many international art institutions have been actively building bridges with China in recent years, staging touring exhibitions to promote their names and collections, the first to plant roots in the vast country will be Britain's Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). China Merchants Shekou Holdings (CMSH), a subsidiary of the state-owned China Merchants Group, is partnering with the V&A to create a 1 billion-yuan (US$152 million) new cultural space within its development project in Shekou, Shenzhen. The new institution, titled Design Society, will become part of the Sea World Culture and Arts Center (no relation to the American water park), a hub spanning 70,000 square meters and set to open in 2017.

LONDON, UK – The new Tate Modern in London opened to the public on Friday 17 June. The new Switch House building is designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron, who also designed the original conversion of the Bankside Power Station in 2000. It is considered by many to be the most important new cultural building to open in Britain since the British Library.  Speaking at a press conference on 14 June to mark the opening Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate said: "The Tate has become the most visited modern art museum in the world. We initially expected it to attract two million visitors a year but at present it gets five million. Thanks to Herzog & de Meuron for this marvellous extension - one of your best buildings."

PARIS, FRANCE – With Mona Lisa's intriguing smile, the Venus de Milo, the Law Code of Hammurabi and so much more, it's no wonder that the Louvre is the most popular museum in the world. For the fourth year in a row, the Louvre dominated the recently released TEA/AECOM Global Attractions Attendance Report's museum rankings. The Paris museum attracted 8.7 million visitors, according to the 2015 Museum Index. About 106.5 million people visited the top 20 museums in the world last year, a slight drop from 107.3 million in 2014, according to the index. Fluctuation in museum attendance numbers is often driven by popular temporary exhibits, such as Tate Modern's "Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs" in 2014. London had six museums in the top 20, the most of any city. Washington, D.C. came in second place with four, while Paris and New York tied for third place with two each.

LONDON, UK – For the first time in its 170-year history, the Smithsonian Institution will establish a permanent presence outside the United States. The Washington-based Smithsonian and the Victoria and Albert Museum in the British capital announced on Monday that they would collaborate on a new exhibition space in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London, the site of the 2012 Games. A new branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum will share space with the Smithsonian outpost — alongside a cluster of other institutions, including Sadler's Wells Theater, University College London and the London College of Fashion — in a major cultural complex called Olympicopolis, due to open in 2021.

LENS, FRANCE – Football fever is spilling over into French museums and galleries for the next month as France plays host to the 15th UEFA European championship (until 10 July). The Louvre-Lens is leading the pack, welcoming fans with an exhibition celebrating its local club RC Lens, titled RC Louvre: Memories of Blood and Gold (until 17 November). The show traces the history of the team and its stadium, the Stade Bollaert-Delelis, which is visible outside of the glass pavilion gallery space. On display are mementos and testimonies from RC Lens fans, former players and coaches as well as archival material and contemporary art works.

OTTAWA, CANADA – Canadians are visiting museums more often but they aren't interested in memberships, according to data the federal government is looking at to determine the state of the museum in 2016. On Thursday, the standing committee on Canadian Heritage began a study looking at the challenges facing museums and non-profit art galleries across the country. The study includes federal museums – there are six, and four are in Ottawa – as well as small and medium facilities. Challenge number one for most museums, unsurprisingly, is money.

LONDON, UK – Hannah Rothschild is a chair of the UK's National Gallery and a novelist who has written a satire of the art world. The Telegraph quoted the member of the Rothschild banking family from her appearance at the Hay Festival. The Telegraph tries to make thing out of Rothschild saying, "Anyone or any group of people who want to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a piece of cloth with some oil on it are, I would say, de facto pretty crazy." That was the headline for the newspaper. But what the author said next was probably more controversial to some: When asked about "ludicrous" prices paintings now fetch, and its impact on how the public feel about art, Rothschild said: "I get conflicted about this question, because in some ways there's been huge growth in visitors to our national museums. "In some ways these big prices and all the stuff written about art is driving people in to look at it." Which way the tide runs—from popular interest to the market or from the market to popular interest—is hard to tease out. Conventionally, the assumption is that museum attendance reflects a broader interest in art among the public than has previously been recognized.

MEXICO – Mexico's luxury resort boom is leading to a surge in demand for locally sourced products, according to Mexican design brand Luteca. US firms that are building in Mexico City and constructing high-end resorts across the country are choosing to furnish the spaces with designs produced locally over imported pieces, said the company's co-founder Amanda Reant. "Latin America and in particular Mexico is a booming growth market for design and architecture," she told Dezeen. "They're specifying Mexican design since a lot of the corporations that own the resorts would like to use local sourcing," she added.

RIGA, LATVIA – The Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation (LMoCAF) announced on 16 June that the competition jury has selected Adjaye Associates – working with the Latvian team AB3D – as the winner of the invited international competition to design a new contemporary art museum for the centre of Riga. The jury reached their decision following a thorough deliberation process that was informed by a panel of experts, and which included public presentations and individual interviews with the designers. The Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art will be the first major public-private cultural initiative in Latvia and is set to be a cultural institution of interregional significance, shaping international perceptions of Riga and Latvia. The museum will support the nation's growing artistic community and give Riga and the Baltic Region an attraction which speaks to new audiences as well as art lovers.

IRAN – Iran is "on the verge of a new era for architecture" according to local architects, as change sweeps through the Islamic republic following the lifting of crippling economic sanctions. An expanding economy, growing demand for contemporary lifestyles and booming investment in tourist infrastructure are combining to create new opportunities for professionals in the once isolated nation. "Iran is opening its doors to the world," Reza Mafakher of Iran-based firm Xema architects told Dezeen, citing the election of reformist president Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and the lifting of international sanctions in 2016 as key drivers of change. After that, "the projects referred to our firm were different both in terms of scale and function," Mafakher said. "This represents the beginning of a boom in the industry," he added. "We believe that we are on the verge of a new era for Iran and its architecture."

LIVERPOOL, UK – The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) will open a new national architecture centre, RIBA North, in Liverpool this August. The centre will house an exhibition gallery, a conference and event space, a cafe and a shop, and aims to build upon the Waterfront location's status as a lively cultural destination. The centre is sited within the newly redeveloped Mann Island, for which Broadway Malyan won a RIBA North West award in 2015. The prominent waterfront site sits in close proximity to the Three Graces, the New Museum of Liverpool, Liverpool One and the attractions of Albert Dock, and is consequently already the recipient of high foot traffic and public interest. The centre aims to "offer perspectives on the built environment to architecture and design enthusiasts, families, students and professionals."

INTERNATIONAL – We have integrated architecture with the digital ream and we should continue to do so. At its simplest integration, architecture married with the digital world with the advent of CAD (Computer Aided Design). We've gone further now with BIM (Building Information Modeling). But what's more promising is how the architectural industry is beginning to keep up with the advancement of digital technologies. The integration of architecture and digital realms has endless opportunities.

INTERNATIONAL – When was the last time you treated yourself to a cultural event to enjoy the music, art, and lively atmosphere that it had to offer? Hopefully not too long ago, but if you are struggling to find yourself at these events, then you should know that you're not alone. About 31 million Americans are in the same situation as you. An entire 13% of the whole American population want to attend these events but can't due to various reasons such as a lack of time and general interest. This particular group of people is referred to as the "missing audience", and its size continues to grow - hinting at our society's loss of touch with the arts. The inevitable truth is that people are getting busier and our immediate attention is being consumed by other events in our lives. Naturally, less and less adults are reading poems, novels, or plays and museums and galleries have been seeing a continuous decline in traffic. In such a busy time and media-saturated landscape, how do we restore our relationship with the arts? According to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) institution, it is essential that arts organizations adapt to "shifting demographics and a rapidly changing participatory culture". In effort to address this new need, virtual reality and augmented reality can show us new ways to explore the arts and help spark a new interest and motivation for arts-goers.

PARIS, FRANCE – At the Google Cultural Institute in Paris, Charlotte Fechoz is admiring Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night. The painting, of course, isn't here; it's been in the MOMA in New York since 1941. Instead, Fechoz - the co-ordinator of Le Lab, as the Paris workspace is known - is viewing the masterpiece on The Wall, an 18m-wide, two-storey-tall screen designed for viewing artworks at massive scale. The Starry Night, one of hundreds of masterpieces to have been scanned using Google's gigapixel Art Camera, is blown up to astonishing clarity. "You can see the canvas has not been fully covered," Fechoz says, zooming in until a single brushstroke is rendered at twice her size. "According to experts, that means van Gogh painted this in a rush. He had this feeling of necessity."

INTERNATIONAL – Humans are a fortunate species. We are not the strongest or fastest. We don't have the biggest brains or live the longest. Yet we are dominant over the planet. From cuneiform to computer chip, our memory technologies give us a unique survival advantage: knowledge. But that knowledge is not secure in the digital age. We're moving from an information economy of relative scarcity to one of abundance. And we have yet to build an infrastructure that can manage titanic masses of data at scale. The high cost of publishing books and making films forced us to ask what we can afford to save. But anyone with an internet connection can write blogs and post home movies to YouTube. Now we must decide what we can afford to lose.

PARIS, FRANCE – Paris Museés, the organisation that represents 14 museums in the city, partnered with the digital agency Kindai and ten popular Instagram users to promote the launch of its searchable digital archive last month, which include images of more than 180,000 works from museums such as the Louvre, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Paris Museum of Modern Art and others under its umbrella. The campaign, titled Parallels by Paris Museés, recreates classic works of arts—such as Woman with Blue Eyes (1918) by Modigliani and Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt (1876) by Georges Clairin—with a modern twist. Prints of the campaign will be displayed on the walls of the Gare Saint Lazare railway station in Paris until 31 July this year.

NEW YORK, USA – In February of last year, the Islamic State militants ransacked the Mosul Museum in Iraq, macerating historically important artifacts and statues with drills and sledgehammers in hand. One of the destroyed pieces was aAssyrian lion statue, which was carved from limestone around 860 BC. Over one year later, thanks to the organization Rekrei, the destroyed collection of artifacts, including a 3D printed replica of the Assyrian limestone statue, was restored within the seventh-floor gallery of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York (MAD), approximately 5,800 miles away from the site previously destroyed by ISIS.

TORONTO, CANADA – Outsider art – a term coined in 1972 by British art historian Roger Cardinal –was often displayed in the 1970s without the artist's name, who was rarely even invited to openings of exhibitions that featured their work. In fact, disabled artists and their perspectives often weren't considered integral based on the assumption that they produced artwork "in spite" of their disability, were void of intention and unable to develop their craft to begin with. They were more spectacle than work of art. But even in the 19th century, artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – whose genetic disorder pushed him to take refuge in art when he couldn't participate in physical activities – were able to make a name for themselves. And of course, Claude Monet, the renowned French Impressionist painter, had impaired vision later in his career due to double cataracts, leaving him only able to see and paint in a range of blues, which became his predominant palette. He lived in perpetual fear that his career was over because of his disability. "These legacies of outsider art still haunt us," says Eliza Chandler, artistic director of Tangled Art Gallery, the first art gallery for disabled artists in Toronto, that is also entirely accessible. "We work hard to dispel the assumption that disability artists aren't professional while also bringing attention to the systemic and attitudinal barriers (facing them)."

LONDON, UK – Back in 2014, a group of artists sick of being exploited organized a de facto union. Three years on, Artists' Union England (AUE) has finally been formally recognized in a landmark decision that will make it the country's first official union for professional visual and applied artists, the group has announced. The average annual income for visual artists is between £5,000-£9,000 ($7,000-$12,000) and yet, time and again they are misused and asked to work for free, often given the excuse of being offered "exposure" in exchange for their work. According to their website, AUE was founded to "redress the fact that all other cultural workers had independent representation from a Trade Union." The organization hopes to combat the ramifications of austerity measures and cuts to arts organisations, local authorities, galleries, and publicly funded bodies. The formal "certificate of independence" was finally granted after the group raised the £4,500 cost of the certification, which acknowledged the union as a democratic operation.

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – When Berlin-based artist Christian Jankowski was tasked with curating Manifesta 11, the travelling European biennial that takes place in Zurich through 18 September, he selected the title 'What People Do for Money' and a theme called 'Some Joint Ventures', pairing local citizens — 'hosts' — in various professions of the Swiss financial capital with participating artists. 'Specific professions that are chosen by different artists add to mapping and reaching into the city, almost like arms from an octopus,' said Jankowski. 'Each arm of the octopus is another host-artist relation that goes into another society of Zurich that goes into another professional background that goes into another geographical area.'

INTERNATIONAL – In 2013, one of the world's leading public relations experts, Bob Pickard, cried out to the climate world: "mobilise us!" In a frustrated op-ed, he listed 20 key problems with climate communication. One of them was "story fatigue": bland stories with "highly repetitive and stale" themes. Climate information is still often confusing, unengaging and absent from the wider public discourse. Linguistic analysis found that the most recent IPCC report was less readable than seminal papers by Einstein. Last year, in America, climate news media coverage rates dropped despite the historical Paris Climate Summit and Pope Francis' climate Encyclical. One key risk is complacency – a perception that the issue is now resolved. This is despite the risk increasing, as our response lags.

NEW YORK, USA – If museums, theaters and zoos seem more crowded lately, don't blame the tourists. New York City residents are joining cultural institutions in droves, a perk of signing up for IDNYC, the city-issued identity cards. With about 800,000 cards distributed since the program began in January 2015, residents from all boroughs have initiated nearly 400,000 free yearlong memberships at 40 arts and cultural groups, according to the Department of Cultural Affairs.

LONDON, UK – More than 10 million music tourists visited festivals, concerts and small venues across the UK in 2015, generating almost £4bn for the UK economy, according to a new report into the live music industry. Wish You Were Here, UK Music's latest study into the economic impact of live music and music tourism in the UK, has also revealed that overseas tourists spent an average of £852 whilst in the UK, helping to sustain an estimated 39,034 full time jobs. The report is built on "vast quantities" of raw ticketing data collected from festivals, concerts and grassroots venues where live music was the primary attraction.

STANFORD, USA – Beijing, Mexico City and Mumbai are cities whose recent histories have notably been reconsidered, and are being rebuilt with art as a central lens. According to two new Stanford Arts Institute (SAI) fellows, Detroit and New Orleans belong on that list of cities as well. The scholars will be researching the role that arts are playing in the reimagining of these cities next academic year under the theme Creative Cities, and sharing their findings with the Stanford community. Under the leadership of Peggy Phelan, the Denning Family Director of the Stanford Arts Institute, and working closely this year with the Stanford Program on Urban Studies, the fellows are expected to reach across disciplines and artistic media in this new fellows program. The first fellows are Andrew Herscher, associate professor at the University of Michigan with appointments in the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Department of the History of Art, and Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; and Johanna Taylor, independent scholar and arts practitioner. They arrive on campus in the fall.

LOS ANGELES, USA – Art and gentrification have a long and complicated relationship. The arrival of galleries and artists' studios to a neighborhood is often the first step in successive waves of disruption as boutiques, high-end restaurants, and condos follow. Long-term residents are displaced as rents rise in these newly desirable areas. As reported in Artnet, a new study titled "Quantifying the link between art and property prices in urban neighborhoods" illustrates a correlation between high concentrations of images tagged with #art on photo-sharing site Flickr and areas with increases in property value. Regardless of artists' intentions, politics, or personal finances, their arrival in a previously undeveloped neighborhood can signal big changes for their new neighbors.

DETROIT, USA – The Detroit Creative Corridor Center will launch its 10-year UNESCO Detroit City of Design initiative on June 28 in Detroit. The official start of the initiative will be at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit and feature Ralph Gilles, head of global design at FCA US LLC; Maurice Cox, Detroit planning director; and Katy Locker, program director for Detroit at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, DC3 announced Thursday at the Mackinac Policy Conference. The launch event will detail plans to build public awareness and a common vision for Detroit City of Design. The UNESCO designation showcases Detroit's design heritage and strong commitment to growing its creative sector. Detroit is one of 22 cities selected worldwide to be a City of Design in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. It is the only American city.