The board of cash-strapped LA MOCA voted Friday to reject a merger offer from LACMA. “The Board is in agreement that the best future for MOCA would be as an independent institution,” said a museum statement released Tuesday.

Billed as the world’s largest indoor art installation, Christo’s first project since the 2009 death of wife Jeanne-Claude is Big Air Package, an inflated fabric dome measuring 70 meters high and 50 meters wide installed in Germany’s Gasometer Oberhausen.

The work of the art conservator has changed since the heyday of frescoes and oils. Now the art fixer’s tools can range from specially sourced elephant dung (to repair an Ofili) to out-of-production fluorescent bulbs (to remedy a burnt-out Flavin).

Los Angeles–based artist Dianna Molzan presents a visual diary of the making of her painting Untitled (2010-2013).

“When an object is discarded by a person, it’s valueless,” says Abraham Cruzvillegas. “For autoconstrucción, it could be seen as prime matter.” The Mexico City-based artist gives such “dead” objects a new use by “revealing instead of hiding their nature.” Here Cruzvillegas discusses how this idea of “self-construction” underpins his artistic practice and offers a metaphor for the creation of his own identity.

Bad at Sports’ Eric Asboe’s visits to the Twin Cities included looks at two exhibitions that represent “spare, quiet returns to formalism,” the Walker’s Painter Painter and the Soap Factory’s group show R.U.R.

Pope Francis’ stance on contemporary art? Not good, if his actions in 2004 are any indicator. As a cardinal in Argentina, Jorge Bergoglio dubbed an exhibition of works by León Ferrari “blasphemous” and successfully lobbied for its censorship.