The Menil’s new show pairs objects from the Byzantine era with modern works by Flavin, Picasso, and Rothko, among others. Noting the “peculiar animism” of the Byzantine era, curator Glenn Peers says his aim was “to give these objects back some of their strangeness.”

This summer the multi-gallery show Jew York highlights works by Jewish contemporary artists working in the Big Apple. Opening June 20, the show will include pieces by Roy Lichtenstein, Joel Shapiro, Leon Golub, Hannah Wilke, and others.

A public art revolution is brewing in St. Paul, where the city has brought in privately funded “city artists” to work alongside public servants. Public Art Review chronicles how these artists explore creative forms of “placemaking” and civic engagement.

Armored police forcibly evicted protesters occupying Tadashi Kawamata and Christophe Scheidegger’s Art Favela at Art Basel Friday. About 100 people were protesting the “decadence of including a slum setting as part of one the world’s biggest art fairs.”

Latitudes reviews the ubiquitous totes of the Venice Biennale, from the Tucano-designed official bag (“its uncompromising blackness” has a “vital rather than dour spirit”) to the bag for Jesper Just’s Danish Pavilion (“Charismatic artist. Woeful tote”).

“Growing up Quaker, [James Turrell] was always being told to nurture ‘the light within,’” writes Wil S. Hylton just as a three-museum survey of the artist’s career is set to launch. “At 70, he seems more interested in the light without.”

“The Now is the only reality we will ever have,” whispers Marina Abramović as she discusses her next piece. Requesting six hours of time upon entering, visitors are contractually bound by Abramović to enter a sensory, energy-exchanging experience.