Here are a few local and global arts stories that caught my eye over recent weeks:

From a record 546 entries, the 24 finalists in the 2014 John Fries Award for emerging artists were announced. This year’s award is curated by Sebastian Goldspink and will be announced on 12 August.

Marah Braye, CEO of the Biennale of Sydney for the past eight years has moved on to take up the position of CEO of the Harbourfront Centre, Toronto.

An artists membership organisation in the UK has found that in the past three years, 70% of artists who exhibited in publicly-funded shows received no fee for doing so.

And finally, this daguerreotype depicts the earliest-born person ever to be photographed!

Conrad Heyer, Waldoboro, ca. 1852
Daguerreotype, leather case
9 x 7 cm
Image: Collections of Maine Historical Society

Art reaches into all corners of life, often in surprising ways. Here’s some of the more unusual stories that caught my attention this week:

London’s Victoria & Albert Museum is to publish the full list of 16,558 ‘degenerate’ artworks compiled by the Nazis at the height of the Second World War. The list includes notes on what was destroyed as well as information crucial to establishing the provenance of surviving works.

I was heartened to see this ABC profile of a suite of photographs by Melissa Powell. Powell has documented a community of Karen people from the Thai-Burmese border who now live in Nhill in regional Victoria, contributing socially and economically to the town.

I recently discovered the Sydney Theatre Company magazine’s archive feature which focuses on the oeuvres of noted Australian actors, including one of my favourites the terrific Paul Capsis.

Public Art Now published The New Rules of Public Art – a manifesto for a universally contentious art form.

Brooklyn gallerist Stephanie Theodore confronted a couple at the Tate Modern, London whose child was climbing on a Donald Judd work.

British ceramic artist and noted transvestite Grayson Perry received his OBE from Prince Charles. Perry described his ensemble as ‘Italian mother of the bride’.

Happy new year! Here is the latest selection of arts news that caught my eye recently:

The Herzog & de Meuron-designed Pérez Art Museum Miami is now open, and isn’t shy to show off its setting.

The directors of two of Sydney’s iconic arts institutions discussed the necessary evils of private and corporate philanthropy.

Sydney commercial gallery Breenspace closes its doors after seven years.

Tacita Dean advocates the continuing importance of film as a medium in parallel to digital photographic technologies on the occasion of her recent exhibition at ACCA, Melbourne.

Curator Glenn Barkley demystifies the museum visit for those hesitant about what to do once you’re inside the white cube!

New York Times art critic Roberta Smith was unimpressed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s ‘Jewels by JAR’ exhibition featuring the baubles of the rich and famous.

A selection of arts-related news and views that caught my attention recently:

Mostafa Heddaya took on Bill Gates’ approach to arts philanthropy in Hyperallergic.

MoMA’s conservators found a surprise lurking underneath Magritte’s The Portrait.

A tragic manifestation of gun violence in an Iranian punk band based in Brooklyn, New York.

At the Guggenheim, visitors who are blind or have low vision joined a tour and discussion of the current exhibition Robert Motherwell: Early Collages conducted through Verbal Imaging and touch.

Researchers partnered with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, to study the effect on school children of visiting an art museum. The results are heartening.

Parisien department store Galeries Lafayette has established a new art foundation which will commission new work and stage exhibitions at a space to be developed in the Marais.

As analogue television comes to an end in Australia, artists Frances Barrett and Kate Blackmore are currently in Sydney watching every Simpsons episode ever made, while undergoing a fast, in the endurance performance Box Set as part of the Tele Visions project.