In advance of Black Friday strikes and protests at Walmart stores, an email hoax has targeted the Arkansas museum founded by Sam Walton’s heir. The email falsely said Crystal Bridges would be closed Friday in solidarity with striking workers.

A Mark Rothko painting vandalized at Tate Modern in October could take 18 months to repair. “The ink from the pen [of Wlodzimierz Umaniec] has bled all the way through the canvas causing a deep wound, not a superficial graze,” says the BBC’s Will Gompertz.

This “unexpected double history of banking and the art world” starts with Hirst: Made from $23.6M in stones, the full $100M value of his famed skull comes in the making. It “applies the technique of a leveraged buyout not only to a work of art but as a work of art.”

Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures heads into space Tuesday aboard the Echostar XVI satellite. His project—discussed in our series Lowercase P: Artists & Politics—includes 100 photos of our culture. Watch the launch live at 1:15 pm EST/12:15 CST.

Bidouin editor Negar Azimi recounts her trip two weeks ago to Ramallah to jury part of the Qalandiya International. The renewed conflict between Israel and Palestine, she writes, “underscores the importance of these fragile but enduring cultural institutions.”

Felix Salmon sees stirrings for a “more supportive and democratic art world, taken seriously by respected gatekeepers, which increasingly views the twice-yearly shenanigans at Sotheby’s and Christie’s as an obscene sideshow rather than as a true gauge of value.”

Inspired by the art of Alfredo Jaar and Yoko Ono, British war artist Derek Eland worked with troops and civilians in Afghanistan to create “Diary Rooms,” spaces covered with text-covered postcards about their sometimes mundane, often stunning experiences with war.

Artist Dinos Chapman likens the sound of his first electronic music album to “a naked mole-rat plucked untimely from its snuggly basement-burrow, on its back, all squirmy, exposed to the sun’s dissecting rays.” Luftbobler will be released Feb. 25, 2013.

In a new Park Pictures short, Ed Ruscha discusses his move to LA, his collection of tags for “trees that didn’t make it,” his dog Woody, and his love of words. “I look upon them as though they’re flowers,” he said. “I’m guilty of linguistic kleptomania.”