For the New Museum and Rhizome’s latest iteration of the Seven on Seven Technology Conference, Ai Weiwei has teamed with Wikileaks and Tor Project activist Jacob Appelbaum for a project dealing with surveillance and international borders, with the collaboration filmed and presented by Laura Poitras, director of the Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour.  “It was important to bring together these two courageous people who are disseminating their messages using art and technology respectively, and facing similar levels of scrutiny and hardship as a result,” says Heather Corcoran, Senior Executive of Rhizome. (more…)

An article in Bloomberg this week notes the statement of Laurence D. Fink, head of the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock Inc., that contemporary art has surpassed gold as a more secure investment.  “Historically gold was a great instrument for storing of Fink said at a conference in Singapore. “Gold has lost its luster and there’s other mechanisms in which you can store wealth that are inflation-adjusted.” (more…)

Seeking to strengthen its international ties, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the “Global Museum Leaders Colloquium,” a two-week program next April that will bring over a dozen museum heads from institutions in Asia, Africa and Latin America to the table, discussing the shared challenges and issues museums are facing worldwide.. “It’s all about promoting international collaboration,” said Met Director Thomas P. Campbell. (more…)