museums

Don't be fooled by museums' strong attendance numbers, says professor Michael Lewis. He argues today's art world is a Potemkin village, whose gleaming facades mask an indifference for the art itself.

A New Orleans attorney has turned an antebellum plantation into a new museum. You won't find hoop skirts and mint juleps but stark relics at a site devoted entirely to a realistic look at slavery.

The Bronx Museum of the Arts and Cuba's National Museum of Fine Arts are exchanging works from their collections. It's the largest art exchange between the two countries in more than 50 years.

It's now possible to create an impressive copy of Michelangelo's David or Rodin's The Thinker with a 3-D printer. Rather than object, some museum curators see this high-tech replication as a way to bring near-real versions of classic works to the masses.

China has been building museums with abandon, opening about 100 annually in recent years. Two of the biggest opened on the same day last fall on opposite banks of Shanghai's Huangpu River. But filling these museums — with both art and visitors — is proving more challenging.