The San Diego Museum of Art on Friday announced the acquisition of a major painting by one of the most important Spanish artists of the 17th century.

The Museum said “The Visitation” by Juan de Valdés Leal will be a “transformative presence” in the European art galleries, where it joins an already world-renowned collection of Spanish paintings.

“We are thrilled to acquire this extraordinary painting, which is the first work by Juan de Valdés Leal to enter the collection. It builds on the existing strength of our holdings of Spanish art and raises the overall significance of the collection to a new level.” said Roxana Velásquez, executive director of the museum.

An arch formed by trees that becomes more like a gothic stained glass window than a scene from nature. Bird escaping an ominous forest overlaid with ... is that sound? Hidden images meant to signal "dangerous brooding," "the fear of loneliness" or "imbecility." That's just a few things visitors will discover in the Brandywine River Museum of Art's latest exhibit, "Exalted Nature: The Real and Fantastic World of Charles E. Burchfield," on view through Nov. 16. It looks specifically at Burchfield's landscapes.

The works are nearly hallucinogenic: The more you look, the more that blade of grass or that stand of trees or that fallen leaf morphs something else. And while Burchfield meant to depict how this one scene looked, smelled and sounded at this one moment, viewing the show becomes a much more internal exercise than a communal one.

Gustave Courbet, who was born on June 10, 1819, in Ornans in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France and died December 31, 1877, in La Tour-de-Peilz on Lake Geneva, counts among the most important forerunners of classic modernism. His self-confident demeanor, the emphasis he placed upon his individuality as an artist, his inclination towards provocation and breaking taboos, not to mention his revolutionary painting technique, were to set standards that have influenced generations of artists. The exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler is the first dedicated to Gustave Courbet in Switzerland for over fifteen years.

The show presents pioneering works from all phases of the artist’s career, including a number of paintings that have rarely been seen in public or which indeed for many decades were not publicly accessible at all.

Christie’s has announced that two monumental works by Andy Warhol will lead its highly anticipated Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on November 12. The silkscreen paintings, “Triple Elvis [Ferus Type]” (1963) and “Four Marlons” (1966), are expected to fetch around $70 million each. Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s, suspects that interested buyers could try to acquire both works and keep them as a unique pair. Warhol’s current record at auction was set last November at Sotheby’s when his two-panel painting “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” sold for $104.5 million.

“Triple Elvis” and “Four Marlons” are being offered for sale by the German casino company WestSpiel.

From a human perspective, there’s no such thing as an objective object. Anything that comes to a person’s attention — a rock, a tree, a dog, a painting, another person — will evoke ideas, feelings, memories and fantasies. Every object tells a story.

Depending on where you live, some objects speak more resonantly than others. If New York City is or ever was your home, you’ll find numerous such eloquent items in “A Brief History of New York: Selections from ‘A History of New York in 101 Objects,’ ” a small jewel box of an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society.

Katya Kazakina puts a lot of guess work together to postulate what might have happened in the private sale of three of Bunny Mellon’s paintings, two of the nine Rothkos the Mellons once owned and a Richard Diebenkorn. The Rothkos were the monumental 10 x 15 foot No. 20 (Yellow Expanse) which the late David Anfam described as the “the jewel in the crown.” The 1953 painting was casually valued at $125m as early as 2010. The conjecture that the group were sold for $300m—and that’s just conjecture as you will see below—would suggest that No. 20 was sold for $200m or more:

Alexander Forger, the executor of Mellon’s estate, confirmed in a telephone interview that three paintings had been sold. He declined to identify the paintings, the price or buyer’s identity, citing confidentiality agreements.

The Detroit Institute of Arts is launching a new, free series that will offer an in-depth look into contemporary art through conversations and panel discussions featuring key players in the scene. It's called "Which Side Up: What Moves Contemporary Art" and it's being presented by the Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art. It's set to start Sept. 21.

The first installment of the series, called "Unpacking the Concept," will feature Rebecca Hart, the museum's curator of contemporary art.

Major art collector and polarizing figure Bert Kreuk has sued Danish-Vietnamese artist and Hugo Boss Prize winner Danh Vo for €898,000 (approximately $1.2 million), according to a report in the Netherland’s RTL Nieuws. Kreuk claims that Vo failed to deliver an artwork for an exhibition of Kreuk’s collection, titled "Transforming the Known," at the Hague’s Gemeentemuseum (Hague Municipal Museum), which closed in September of last year.

That artwork in question reportedly cost Kreuk $350,000.

YBA Douglas Gordon is set to collaborate with pianist Hélène Grimaud on a large-scale commissioned piece that will debut in the Park Avenue Armory’s 55,000-square-foot drill hall on December 10 and run through January 4. A “monumental installation and performance piece” titled “tears become … streams become … ,” the piece is inspired by water and brings a giant pool of the stuff into the armory.  Grimaud is set to activate the space with nighttime performances of water-inspired works by composers including Debussy, Ravel, and Liszt from December 9 through 21, while a player piano will play during the day.

San Antonio’s international flavor takes on a distinctly French accent this fall when the McNay Art Museum hosts "Intimate Impressionism" from the National Gallery of Art, an extensive exhibition of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings on its first-ever worldwide tour. The exhibition, on view at the McNay September 3, 2014 – January 4, 2015, is comprised of nearly 70 paintings, including work by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh.

The collection features a selection of intimately scaled still lifes, portraits, and landscapes that are among the most beloved paintings at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition is visiting Rome, Tokyo, San Francisco, Seattle, and San Antonio, making the McNay the only opportunity to see the collection in the United States outside of the West Coast.

Public and private institutions are joining forces to restore the 13th-century Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio in the earthquake-damaged town of L’Aquila, Italy.

According to the plan presented to the mayor Tuesday, the regional heritage authority will oversee the design, construction work and security of the site, while three universities (Milan, Rome and L’Aquila) and the Italian energy group Eni will advise on technical matters, such as improving the long-term earthquake resistance of the building. Eni is financing the €12m project. A call for tenders has been released to appoint a contractor by December, with a projected completion date in 2016.

Public transport in Venice is like an endless sightseeing tour, and not only for the amount of tourists on the central vaporetto routes.

The waterfront architecture is truly spectacular, from Palladian churches to private palazzos.

And now during the Biennale contemporary artworks and installations are scattered around the city.

Venturing along the waterways leads to some unmissable exhibitions, where art and architecture blend into a beautiful dialogue.

From September 10-18, Christie’s auction house will host a pop-up exhibition of post-war and contemporary art in downtown Los Altos -- an affluent community in California’s booming Silicon Valley. Passerelle, a local real estate and urban planning firm, helped organize the show, which will present major works by Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Richard Diebenkorn, and Tracey Emin as well as cutting-edge contemporary art. The exhibition will include works available for private sale as well as highlights from the upcoming fall auctions in New York.

A panel discussion titled “StART Up: Beginning (and Growing) Your Art Collection” will be held on September 13.

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center announced on Tuesday afternoon, Sept 2, that it has received a $646,685 grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

The award places the 20-year-old nonprofit museum among a growing list of Western North Carolina art-and-craft institutions that have received funding from the Siloam Springs, Ark.-based organization. In the past year. the foundation has awarded over $5 million in capitol projects, funding and programming grants to Warren Wilson College, The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design and the Penland School of Craft, among others.

“The grant marks the next stage in our development,” says Dr. J. Richard Gruber, board chair for the museum.

Famed British architect Norman Foster and a son-in-law of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim were named Wednesday to design a sprawling, new $9.15 billion international airport for Mexico City.

The glass-roofed terminal -- shaped like an X reminiscent of the eagle's open wings in the Mexican flag -- will have six runways and serve 120 million passengers per year, four times the existing airport's capacity.

The new facility will be built next to the current Benito Juarez international airport, which has two terminals but struggles to accomodate the growing number of travelers in Latin America's second biggest economy.

These days, success for museums often means expansion—whether it is with new buildings or international satellites. The Louvre’s new director, Jean-Luc Martinez, has another idea. Having taken over the museum in April 2013, he wants to refocus on the core of the institution: its collections and permanent displays. And to do so, he’s ready to launch a behemoth refurbishing initiative, which in his own admission could “take decades.”

After 12 years characterized by the aggressive development policy of Martinez’ predecessor Henri Loyrette—who oversaw the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s €1 billion deal—the new director’s position feels particularly radical.

Following its inaugural outing in 2012, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ 5×5 program takes to the streets again this fall. The city’s largest public arts project kicks off with an opening weekend celebration on September 6 and 7, promising both visual art and cultural events spread across each of the city’s eight wards through December. The works take the form of everything from site-specific performance art to sculpture to screenprinting demonstrations, all of which are free and open to the public.

The 25 participating artists — as chosen five apiece by five curators, hence the festival’s name — range in both medium and background.

Christopher Bedford, director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, has announced two major grants, both for $100,000, from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Warhol Foundation grant will support the exhibition “Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood,” opening in September 2015. The Mellon Foundation grant will support three years of programming triggered by the hiring of a Curator of Academic Projects, an innovative position specifically designed to integrate the Rose’s collections and programs into teaching and learning at the university, according to Brandeis.

This is the first time that the Rose Art Museum has received a grant from either foundation.

The board of the performing arts center planned for ground zero has scuttled the design for the building by Frank Gehry, the project’s original architect, and will instead select a design from a field of three finalists.

“We’re in the process of selecting a new architect,” said John E. Zuccotti, the real estate developer who is the chairman of the arts center’s board. “Three architectural firms are being considered.”

Officials at the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center said they were not ready to name the finalists but confirmed that the list did not include Mr. Gehry.

The first significant new museum of American art in nearly half a century debuted in 2011. But to view Crystal Bridges' collection—from a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington to Jackson Pollock canvases—you don't travel to New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. You head down a forested ravine in a town in northwestern Arkansas.

As museum founder and Walmart heiress Alice Walton scooped up tens of millions of dollars' worth of art from across the country, thinly veiled snobbish rhetoric began to trickle out from the coasts. Most notably, when she purchased Asher B. Durand's 1849 "Kindred Spirits" from the New York Public Library for $35 million, some culturati bristled at the thought that this famed Hudson River School landscape would be leaving for Bentonville. The controversy raised the question: Who deserves access to great art?