BMW Guggenheim Lab cancelled its planned appearance in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood after reportedly receiving threats. But now the project’s back, with a planned residency in June and July in Prenzlauer Berg.

U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) couldn’t attend Arts Advocacy Day in St. Paul last month, but he did cut a video greeting, in which he discussed his plan for an “overhaul” of No Child Left Behind that’d include a focus on the arts.

Botticelli’s Venus slimmed down through photo-imaging “makes you realise how remote in attitudes to the body the great nudes of art are from contemporary ideals of beauty, and how bizarre and limiting our own perspective has become.”

Is Henry Markram’s Human Brain Project — an initiative to build a supercomputer simulation that integrates everything known about the human brain — genius or, as some neuroscientists claim, “crap”? “Simulation-based research is an inevitability,” he contends.

Occupy is alive and well in the realm of comics. The July issue of Archie will address the global protest movement, according to leaked artwork that shows banners that read “Occupy Riverdale” and “We are the 99%.”

“If all you want to do is sing and dance and paint, that won’t be good enough,” Rep. Keith Ellison told artists Monday. “You’ve got to be part of a political movement that would make sure that we do have public support for the arts.”

New York artists who perform “creative services” can earn credits toward health procedures as part of the new Lincoln Art Exchange, which understands artist tend to be low- or middle-income workers who don’t qualify for public health programs.