– Ai Weiwei NYC Project to Go Ahead: Despite his recent arrest in China,
Ai Weiwei's public sculpture project for New York — featuring
giant-sized animal heads based on the Chinese zodiac
— will open as planned next month. [NYT]

– Michael Jackson Statue Flops: The late King of Pop has been reincarnated in the form of a truly awful
statue erected outside a British stadium. Costing £100,000, the heavily
criticized sculpture is meant to be a pilgrimage site for Jackson fans
from all over the
world. Soccer club owner Mohammed Al Fayed, who unveiled the eyesore, addressed the critics diplomatically: "If some stupid fans don't understand and appreciate such a gift this guy gave to the world they can go to hell." [Time]

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– Meet the Very Scary Gauguin Attacker: During her ineffectual attack on Gauguin's "Two Tahitian Women" at
the National Gallery, 53-year-old Susan Burns said that the painting was
"very homosexual. I was trying to remove it. I think it should be
burned ... I am from the American CIA and I have a radio in my head. I
am going to kill you," according to her criminal complaint. In court
over the weekend, Burns, who has a record that includes convictions for
carjacking and assaulting a cop, pleaded not guilty. The painting,
valued at $80 million, returns to view today. [Daily Mail]

– The Brooklyn Museum Follies: Controversial Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman, who has done pretty much everything wrong in running his could-be-inspiring institution, proudly defends his record to the Wall Street Journal's Judith Dobrzynski. Membership is growing, its average visitor age is getting younger, and "40-plus percent of the visitors are people of color," Lehman says. But, as the unfooled reporter points out, attendance "dropped to a low of 300,075 in fiscal 2006. With 2.5 million residents in the borough, and an additional 5.7 million elsewhere in New York, that's not very impressive. What's worse, about 20% of those visitors arrive on just 11 nights—the free "Target First Saturdays" that are centered on drinks, music and dancing along with art." For his part, Lehman says he doesn't plan to budge from his post until a new set of anxiety-inducing renovations are finished, around 2018. Hoo, boy. [WSJ] 

– Time Magazine's Opinion of Museumgoers: "Do you love modern art, but hate all the snobby, faux-intellectual posturing that comes with going to the museum?" That's how the publication's review of the new MoMA iPad app begins. [Time] 

– "China's New Age of Enlightenment": This, ironically enough, is the headline of the long top story on the Art Newspaper's site two days after the country disappeared its most famous artist. The article is about the pomp-and-circumstance unveiling of Beijing's National Museum, which is both the biggest museum in the world and, in light of Ai Weiwei's arrest, the emptiest. [TAN]

– Abstract Indeed: A painting by renowned physicist Homi Bhabha, who dabbled in abstract art on the side as a way of working out his abstruse ideas, will be auctioned by Pundole Art Gallery in Mumbai. [DNA India]

– Officer Krupke Turns on the Tunes: Establishments from the New York Port Authority to 7-Eleven are piping in classical music and opera in an effort to keep the youths from loitering and spraying graffiti and doing other classical bad behavior. The Los Angeles Times points out that classical music has also been a tool of hooligans, as in the case of "Silence of the Lambs" (in which Hannibal Lecter digs Bach) and "A Clockwork Orange" (which is a little more complicated). [LAT]

– Curatorium Venalitas!: "Harry Potter: The Exhibition" is coming to Discovery Times Square today, complete with 14,000 square feet of paraphernalia from the most magical films ever. Just kidding. But really, all the wands, ties, broken spectacles, and dragon eggs are on display that you could ever hope for. Also, apparently, best "exhibition" gift shop ever. [NYT]

– More Aldon James Weirdness: Apparently the on-a-"permanent vacation" ousted president of the National Arts Club recently made an appearance in the dining room of his tony former stomping grounds. It seems he may have never left his apartments upstairs following accusations that he had done everything from slaughter finches to hoard flea-market buys. The club's bookeeper, meanwhile has been questioned by the office of the DA. [NYDN]

– Yinka Shonibare Picks Kid Plinth-Toppers: The Fourth Plinth artist has announced the winning submission to the Fourth Plinth Schools Award, a prize for the best work inspired by the Trafalgar Square art program. Dinesh Kalamegam, 12, has nabbed the award, for a piece titled "Eco London." [press release]

– Vice on Voina: The grossly hip magazine has picked up on the Russian artist collective, and called upon them for a chat. Oddly the two don't bond more effusively over their love of weirdly gross stuff, like shoving chickens up lady orifices (a Voina, not a Vice thing, surprisingly). [Vice]

– Peter Zumthor's Not-So-Secret-Anymore Garden: The Swiss architect has offered up images of his Serpentine Garden pavilion design, a "hortus conclusus" contemplative "garden within a garden." According to Zumthor: "The building acts as a stage, a backdrop for the interior garden of flowers and light. Through blackness and shadow one enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden, a place abstracted from the world of noise and traffic and the smells of London – an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers. This experience will be intense and memorable, as will the materials themselves – full of memory and time." Certainly not the usual Serpentine pavilion fare. [Guardian]