A new Ai Weiwei collaboration was unveiled at last week’s Art Stage Singapore: a series of round sculptural likenesses of the artist created by Hong Kong-based toy designer Eric So. The title: Aibudao, which translates to “unlovable” in Chinese.

Alec Soth, whose Walker show From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America is on view at the Cranbrook Museum of Art, discusses photographing the “crazy carnival” of North Dakota’s oil boom for this week’s New York Times Magazine cover in an audio slideshow.

An Orlando family may face a $500/day fine for planting veggies in their front yard. At the crux of such battles, says artist Fritz Haeg, who’ll be doing the same in the Twin Cities this year, is a rethinking of “our basic value systems and ideas of beauty.”

For Sunday’s Silver Action event at the Tanks at Tate Modern, artist Suzanne Lacy brings together 400 women over age 60. The hook: titans of 20th century political protest, they’ll gather for “a live, unscripted performance about ageing and activism.”

Mexico City–based artist Francis Alÿs is skeptical whether democracy—like faith—can be “exported” around the world. It’s one of the themes of his project When Faith Moves Mountains (2002-2003), which is part of the Walker’s permanent collection.

Art “is a universal language in our search for common ground, an expression of our shared humanity,” writes Hillary Clinton in announcing winners of the new State Department Medal of Arts: Cai Guo-Qiang, Jeff Koons, Shahzia Sikander, Kiki Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems.

Agreeing that libraries shouldn’t hide controversial issues, Newark library officials have removed a shroud hiding a Kara Walker drawing that includes a depiction of a slave having sex with a white man. The library has invited the artist to speak about the piece.

Minneapolis-based photographer JoAnn Verburg—who recently discussed her 9/11 photos for our series Lowercase P: Artists & Politics—says much of her art comes out of “the fact that we’re alone and we’re not alone.”

Some 300 drawings from the 1950s have been unearthed in the Warhol Foundation’s storage. To be published for the first time in a book next week, they show “a skilled and sensitive draughtsman producing images that are more Egon Schiele than pop art.”