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New York–based architect, urbanist, educator, and writer Michael Sorkin—a singular activist voice in the design field—has died of complications arising from COVID-19. He was seventy-one. As the director

Twelve New York galleries will each present two works by a single artist in Zwirner’s digital viewing room.

I KNEW PAUL KASMIN ALL HIS LIFE. When Paul was a small baby, his father used to have a Tuesday evening soirée, where I met a lot of people, David Sylvester and Francis Bacon among them. And then, in

My first impulse when this all began was to buy groceries. My second was to see how people were doing. The art world, for all its flaws and fissures, is a community, and it’s the one I’ve got. When

We asked arts workers for their stories of how the lockdown is affecting their livelihoods. Here are their responses

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This week we asked arts workers to share how their livelihoods were being affected by the coronavirus. Since then, the UK government’s measures to give financial aid to the self-employed will help the sector – but many are still deeply concerned about the lack of work available in the coming months. Here are some of the nearly 150 stories we received. Thanks to everyone who got in touch.

Stephen Laughton, 38, playwright and TV writer
My play, One Jewish Boy, opened in the West End on 10 March – a huge step up for me. I had TV deals lined up, a movie deal on the cards, another play about to start in New York. The play managed to stay open for one week. It got us to press night, and much like its original fringe run, was a critical success – four and five stars, and that first week was packed out. It was the moment I’d been waiting for. But I knew what was coming – a moment I hoped I would cherish for ever was tinged with crushing defeat. It felt as if everything we had worked for – all the abuse (my play is about antisemitism and I was on the receiving end of a lot of it), all the hard work, the blood, joy, sweat and tears – just faded away. The next day it got worse: I didn’t quite take in the monumental loss of having every gig I had lined up, cancelled. In the short term, I’m pretty screwed, the financial loss from the cancellation of two plays, a TV and a film gig has hit the tens of thousands. That makes it sound as if I always earn at this level – I don’t and I haven’t. I’ve been working hand to mouth and now, when it looked as if I might finally be able to breathe, I don’t know when I’ll get paid again. I just need to find a way to keep my head above water.

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With his deserted cityscapes and isolated figures, the US painter captured the loneliness and alienation of modern life. But the pandemic has given his work a terrifying new significance

Who can fail to have been moved by all the images of people on their doorsteps clapping for the NHS last night? They filled TV screens and news websites, presenting a warming picture of solidarity in enforced solitude – all alone yet all together. But there are some far less reassuring images circulating on social media. Some people are saying we now all exist inside an Edward Hopper painting. It doesn’t seem to matter which one.

I assume this is because we are coldly distanced from each other, sitting at our lonely windows overlooking an eerily empty city, like the woman perched on her bed in Morning Sun, or the other looking out of a bay window in Cape Cod Morning.

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From underground aqueducts to tree-bridges and fish that love sewage, indigenous customs could save the planet – but are under threat. Landscape architect Julia Watson shares her ‘lo-TEK’ vision

On the eastern edge of Kolkata, near the smoking mountain of the city’s garbage dump, the 15 million-strong metropolis dissolves into a watery landscape of channels and lagoons, ribboned by highways. This patchwork of ponds might seem like an unlikely place to find inspiration for the future of sustainable cities, but that’s exactly what Julia Watson sees in the marshy muddle.

The network of pools, she explains, are bheris, shallow, flat-bottomed fish ponds that are fed by 700m litres of raw sewage every day – half the city’s output. The ponds produce 13,000 tonnes of fish each year. But the system, which has been operating for a century, doesn’t just produce a huge amount of fish – it treats the city’s wastewater, fertilises nearby rice fields, and employs 80,000 fishermen within a cooperative.

Watson, a landscape architect, says it saves around $22m (£18m) a year on the cost of a conventional wastewater treatment plant, while cutting down on transport, as the fish are sold in local markets. “It is the perfect symbiotic solution,” she says. “It operates entirely without chemicals, seeing fish, algae and bacteria working together to form a sustainable, ecologically balanced engine for the city.”

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THINGS HAVE SEEMED CALM in Tokyo during the pandemic. I am tempted to write ominously calm, but in all honesty, things do not feel ominous to me—and this absence of ominousness is what is so

The forest is a master of camouflage. It obliterates the traces of refugees. It hides bodies and bones. A criminologist might call it a silent witness—a subject who holds traces of the evidence and has

In quarantine in Italy, Filippo Venturi turned his camera on the people providing a vital lifeline outside his front door

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On a locked-down Saturday night, Filippo Venturi came down the stairs of his apartment block in Forlì, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, to collect his pizza delivery. But before the rider left, he asked something they probably weren’t expecting: “Can I take your picture?”

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In 2012, Chow Chun Fai unsuccessfully campaigned for one of seventy seats in the highest governing body in Hong Kong—the Legislative Council—under the slogan “Cultural Right.” Although he tends to

The Kunstmuseum in Basel agreed to pay the heirs of a Berlin collector for 200 works he sold as he fled German persecution of Jews.

In Ukraine, the railroad traffic controller profession still exists - and about 80% of workers are women. They spend long shifts in small dedicated buildings beside the tracks. Ukrainian photographer Sasha Maslov shot portraits of female workers of the Ukrainian railway company from all over the country, which are compiled in a photo book by Osnovy Publishing.

Ukrainian Railroad Ladies is more than 50 portraits of traffic controllers and safety officers at railroads of Ukraine. This project is also an exploration of why these professions still exist in the 21st century, given the almost entire automatisation of railroad crossings in the country.

• Ukrainian Railroad Ladie is available for pre-order

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Our writers are usually busy covering performances. Coronavirus changed that. Here are their suggestions for what to watch, read or listen to while we’re housebound.

After Art Dubai, a major revenue driver for galleries in the region, canceled its in-person events and moved the fair online, the United Arab Emirates went on a buying spree, purchasing more than $

In an attempt to contain the novel coronavirus in the United States—where the number of confirmed cases has surpassed those in China and Italy and was approaching 86,000 at the time of publication—federal

Inside the mind of a Renaissance genius, chats with Chris Ofili and the dramatic lives of great British sculptors – all in your weekly dispatch

The new Sculpting Lives podcast series explores and celebrates the dramatic lives of British female sculptors including Barbara Hepworth, Elisabeth Frink and Phyllida Barlow.

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Pop-up shops, student accommodation … ICUs. Two-bed prototype for a fraction of the cost of other options being built in coronavirus-hit Italy

Architects have turned to shipping containers to make everything from pop-up shops to co-working spaces, and even teetering towers of student housing. But now the humble corrugated steel box might have found one of its most useful reincarnations yet, in the hands of an international network of architects and engineers who have come together to convert them into two-bed intensive care units for the coronavirus pandemic.

“A group of us started talking a week ago, wondering how could contribute our skills to this emergency,” says Carlo Ratti, an Italian architect based in Boston, where he teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We all know there is a massive need for more intensive care units across the world, but there are problems with the two existing solutions – as an official report from the Chinese government found, based on their experience of the virus.”

One current solution, he says, is to take a convention centre and fill it with lots of beds, creating a field hospital overnight, as is now planned for the ExCel centre in east London. There is efficiency in the numbers, but Chinese authorities found that problems were caused by the intense concentration of contaminated air, with the result that many more of the medical staff became infected. The second solution is prefabricated hospitals, kitted out with the full mechanical ventilation and negative pressure systems needed for bio-containment, but which take several months to complete.

“We thought, is there any way that you can get the speed of convention centre or tent hospital, mounted in a few hours or a couple of days,” says Ratti, “but at the same time have something that is as safe as the prefab hospital?”

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Yes, it’s better to see this great flutter of planes, volumes and edges in person. But an online visit is the next best thing.

Just before physical distancing policies came into effect in Sydney last week a group of Mandaean faithful gathered at the Georges River for baptism rituals

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TEFAF Maastricht, the European Fine Art Fair, which takes place in the Netherlands every March, has come under fire for not rescheduling its thirty-third edition amid the coronavirus outbreak. The 2020

As museums shutter and theaters go dark, cultural institutions have been calling for federal and local government help. Congress’s aid package will provide some assistance.

I GOT SICK IN PARIS on Wednesday, March 11, before the French government ordered the confinement of the population, and when I got up on March 19, a bit more than a week later, the world had changed.

The 50th edition of the world’s biggest modern and contemporary fair joins a growing list of canceled and postponed art events.

“My paintings don’t depict anything. I'm trying to reach that kind of experience where you are on the edge. There and not there.” This declaration by Stephen Mueller, who died in 2011, offers a guide

The interior designer Alex P. White transformed two rooms with little natural light into a moody oasis.

Tarsila do Amaral’s drawings are among dozens of landscapes of Brazil you can view from home. Ditto with Guanyu Xu’s photo installations.

After days of tense negotiations and a surge of unemployment claims, the United States Senate unanimously passed a $2 trillion federal stimulus package on Wednesday that will provide millions of Americans

Munich art dealer Barbara Gross will permanently close her long-standing namesake gallery in May. Gross’s programming, which spanned over thirty years and nearly two hundred exhibitions, foregrounded

As the coronavirus pandemic worsens across the globe—as of Thursday, March 26, nearly half a million people have contracted COVID-19—Art Basel, one of the art world’s biggest and most anticipated

The Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil has become the latest art-world event to announce that it will no longer take place as planned. Organizers announced on Wednesday that in order to “protect the safety

The São Paulo Bienal in Brazil has become the latest art-world event to announce that it will no longer take place as planned. Organizers announced on Wednesday that, in order to “protect the safety of

Coronavirus cancellation leaves Utrecht exhibition offering a timely phone service

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For those seeking a miracle, it is option two on the menu. Forced by the coronavirus pandemic to shut up shop, the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht is offering a taste of its latest exhibition on miracles and their depiction in art through a phone line.

Option one for callers is to hear all about a miracle experienced by a staff member, Simone, who survived the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Option three is for callers to record their own description of a miraculous experience, potentially to be showcased in the exhibit.

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Over four decades the late German fashion photographer collaborated with many of the biggest names in the industry, from Kate Moss to Naomi Campbell

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Box office numbers for drive-in cinemas in Seoul, South Korea, are on the rise as people find a way to avoid crowds during the coronavirus outbreak

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Andrew Krivine has been collecting punk memorabilia since 1977. His book Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die contains over 650 posters, flyers, record sleeves and adverts, charting a DIY ethos that changed graphic design for ever

• The book is published on 2 April by Pavilion Books

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Exhibitions that have been closed because of coronavirus will also launch on the app

Stories behind art treasures such as Delacroix’s The Death of Sardanapalus in the Louvre and a 19th-century relief of Phaeton driving the Chariot of the Sun at the Royal Academy of Arts are to made free for the rest of the year by the world’s most downloaded museum app.

Smartify is often known as the “Shazam for art” app in that it allows people to identify works of art by simply scanning them on a smartphone. It has about 2m artworks from more than 120 venues.

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‘The driver was waiting for a couple to leave a love hotel. The open car door invites a story. It’s like a frame from a movie’

This is the photograph that threw me right in at the deep end. It was December 2015 and I was working in the video games industry as an art director. I had a graphic design background and so I definitely had an artistic eye and could compose an image – but all I knew about the camera was how to press the shutter button.

I was based in Canada but was on holiday in Tokyo. I was walking back to my hotel one night in the rain when I came across this taxi driver – he was waiting for a couple to leave a love hotel. The passenger door was open, causing the interior to light up. A lot of luck was involved. I had saved up for and bought a new camera, but at the time I didn’t really know how to use it. I took several pictures of this same scene and they were mostly blurry, but this shot came into focus.

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The Royal College of Art’s (RCA) student body is demanding that the London school suspend or postpone all courses as well as annual degree shows until it is safe for students to resume their education.

In a South African city emblematic of wealth and privilege, a program of radical art from the whole continent seeks to confront and heal.

The lizards go for a drive and discuss celebrity culture, but panic soon sets in.  Written, directed and edited by Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani  Music by COQUETA

After museums in Hong Kong tentatively started to reopen, they were forced to close again after a second wave of infections swept the region. According to http://artasiapacific.com/News/Covid19CausesMoreClosuresAndReClosures

The pandemic has not only shut down museums and galleries. It has canceled an entire way of life for contemporary artists — and forces a reconsideration of what all that flying was good for.

Bolstered by its continuous, hypnotic soundtrack, Rosana Antolí’s solo exhibition gesturally regresses to humanity’s primordial origins. Lining the exposed corridors of Madrid’s Cybele Palace, the

https://47canal.us/artists/ajay-kurian Ajay Kurian’s  work stages a deliberately incomplete account of the irreducible (but not inexplicable) entanglement of race, language, power, and desire. The

Companies the world over are directing their ingenuity at the fight against the coronavirus. Here are the front-runners, from sanitising robots to a 3D-printed hospital ward

Designers, engineers and programmers have heard the klaxon call. The last few weeks have seen a wave of ingenuity unleashed, with both garden-shed tinkerers and high-tech manufacturers scrambling to develop things that will combat the spread of Covid-19.

Many of their innovations raise as many questions as they answer, though. Could 3D printing now finally come into its own, with access to open-source, downloadable designs for medical parts? If so, will intellectual property infringements be waived, or will altruistic hacktivists still face costly lawsuits? Could mobile phone tracking map the spread of infection like never before, keeping people away from virus hotspots? If so, might governments use the pandemic as an excuse to ramp up surveillance measures post-crisis?

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In anticipation of a lengthy shutdown due to COVID-19, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles, is laying off all of its part-time staffers. The

David Rockwell, the architect and Tony-winning show designer, talks about the stories and history behind his favorite theaters.

The novel coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and causes the respiratory illness COVID-19 has disrupted the lives of billions of people around the world. As countries employ

The world’s great art museums have closed their doors – but you can travel within their walls virtually to see treasures up close

Two weeks ago, Andy Warhol opened at Tate Modern, then closed again. The artist barely got his 15 minutes. If you need an Andy fix, why not visit the website of the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which has the largest holdings of the artist’s work in the world? If you never got to see the National Gallery’s Titian exhibition (or even if you did), there are three Facebook Live conversations about the show are also available on the National Gallery’s YouTube channel along with many other videos about other works in the collection, and key ideas.

“There is no need for you to leave the house,” wrote Franz Kafka. “Stay at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can’t do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you.” I have to be careful with writhing, as my back is not what it was, and we are currently not allowed visitors, especially those who arrive unmasked. Nevertheless, a bit of rapture or ecstasy wouldn’t go amiss for any of us.

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