President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he’ll be nominating Ranee Ramaswamy as a member of the National Council on the Arts. Ramaswamy’s Minneapolis-based Ragamala Dance has performed at the Walker many times, including the 2004 Walker commission, Sethu.

France’s unique unemployment benefits for workers in the arts has been deemed financially unsustainable. The system could come to an end in 2013—which, if it does, is expected to spark industry strikes similar to when the bill came under review in 2003.

From 1912 to 1948, the Olympics had an art competition and awarded medals for architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, and music. Among several interesting rules, officials required submissions “to bear a definite relationship to the Olympic concept.”

Elizabeth Streb’s “extreme dancers” performed aerial choreography on London’s Millennium Bridge and City Hall Sunday. The “surprise” works were commissioned by the London 2012 Festival, which is hosting cultural events leading up to the Olympics.

Elizabeth Streb, whose company was commissioned by the Walker in 1997 to do aerial choreography in the Metrodome and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, has a few surprises in store for London—Olympic-sized aerial spectacles at the city’s best-known landmarks.

Before bringing his dance exploration of gender and hip hop to the Walker next March, Kyle Abraham will be picking up the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award. Past winners of the prestigious $25,000 prize include Bill T. Jones, Merce Cunningham, and Alonzo King.

The Walker’s just-announced 2012-13 Performing Arts Season is “like the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book,” writes Pamela Espeland. “You turn the pages, you see a lot of things you want and a few eyebrow-raisers.”

Via Gallerist NY we learn that NASA has named 23 of Mercury’s “impact craters” after art figures. In addition to Nureyev, Nabakov and Alvin Ailey, visual artists like Magritte and Warhol are also honored with namesake divots on the planet closest the sun.

The “quietude” in Tacita Dean’s film Five Americans—which includes meditative footage of artists including Claes Oldenburg, Merce Cunningham, and Julie Mehretu—”is hard-won, achieved with as much labor as any oil by Vermeer,” writes Blake Gopnik.