With US troops officially out of Iraq, the nearly 9-year conflict spawned responses by artists including Thomas Hirschhorn, Richard Serra, Nina Berman, Michael Rakowitz, and others.

The Getty Research Institute has acquired dayplanners owned by Surrealist artist Man Ray. The datebooks, covering the 1920s through ‘50s, include notes from Parisian meetups with the likes of Picasso and Breton, as well as jotted thoughts on art and fashion.

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) introduced a bill today to help artists get a cut when their work is resold: 7% of selling prices on works worth $10K or more would be shared by the artist and nonprofit art museums.

“A lot of painters have had lousy mothers, but not many of them became De Kooning,” says Mark Stevens, who won a Pulitzer for the De Kooning biography he co-wrote, on details of the artist’s life. “You can really overplay the personal detail.”

Critic Charlie Finch puts Ai Weiwei, Occupy Wall Street (a new incarnation of Arte Povera), and the Debordian spectacle of Pacific Standard Time at the top of his year-end list.

Federal authorities visited Creative Time’s New York office Tuesday to fetch plates believed to be looted from Saddam Hussein’s palace. Purchased on eBay, the dishes were part of a “culinary-political performance piece” by artist Michael Rakowitz.

De Kooning and Diebenkorn retrospectives top Tyler Green’s list of top exhibitions of the year, a slate that hits institutions cross-country, but is light on contemporary art.

The Tate galleries may reconsider ending its 20-year sponsorship relationship with BP following prolonged protests by environmental groups like Platform and Liberate Tate. The museum enterprise’s contract with the energy giant expires next year.