Some art historians believe there’s a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece underneath a fresco by Giorgio Vasari in Rome’s Palazzo Vecchio. But 300 scholars are opposed to efforts, including boring tiny holes in the piece, to find out.

A 75-foot-wide $100,000 bill is the latest artwork to grace the environs of New York’s High Line. Created by John Baldessari, the work features the largest denomination ever issued by the U.S. Mint. A comment on the current financial crisis?

British artist Martin Boyce has won the 2011 Turner prize. Judges credited the 44-year old sculptor with the “opening up of a new sense of poetry.”

“Even a show-off like me finds this new, super-rich art-buying crowd vulgar and depressingly shallow,” writes ultra-wealthy art collector Charles Saatchi.

Citing Cärsten Holler’s giant slide at the New Museum, among others, Jerry Saltz writes that relational aesthetics has “entered its decadent phase.”

“A lot of language-based work is cropping up in all contexts: in museums, at biennales and at art fairs,” says Hans Ulrich Obrist, the co-director of the Serpentine Gallery.

With so much troubling news continuing to surround Ai Weiwei—most recently the detention and questioning of his wife, Li Qing, this week—perhaps it’s time for a brief break… to view photos of the famed Chinese artist with his favorite cats.