For the next week, four New York Times art critics will be discussing shock value in art. “Can art still shock?,” asks Roberta Smith. “Of course. It can, it must and it inevitably will in ways both large and small, interesting and not, lasting and fleeting.”

At MoMA as at the Walker, dance “has become a high-profile fixture in museums, galleries and international exhibitions,” with artists like Sarah Michelson, Deborah Hay, and Jérôme Bel performing in spaces usually reserved for visual art.

Remy Charlip, a choreographer and founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, passed away Tuesday at age 83. Also a prolific author of children’s books, he won three Illustrated Book of the Year citations from the NY Times.

On Friday the Aperture Foundation launches the iPad app “Merce Cunningham: 65 Years.” Expanding on David Vaughan’s 50-year Cunningham book of ‘97, its creators see it as a model for how performing artists can use technology.

At Portland’s Time-Based Art Festival, “artists are often in the room and the audience is invited to be in concert with them.” Opening Sept. 6, this year’s edition features Miguel Gutierrez, a Buckminster Fuller film project featuring Yo La Tengo, and more.

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.