It is not a Mexican standoff so much as a Marseille standoff threatening the future of the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations in the French city.

Staff have said they will walk out if their boss, Pierre-Olivier Costa, enters the building after he announced he was returning from suspension to take charge again.

The former chief of staff to France's First Lady Brigitte Macron was suspended after allegations of harassment which he denies and on Monday he wrote to staff saying he was "innocent" and intended to return to work.

That led to staff issuing a strike notice which they say will be carried out if he "sets foot on the site again."

They also want the publication of a report into Costa's behaviour by the General Inspectorate of Cultural Affairs which they claim calls for his dismissal.

The museum, which opened in 2013, gets around 2 million visitors a year making it one of the most popular in France outside Paris.

The length of time it took to complete the renovation of the Antonino Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum in Palermo, Sicily. The museum is marking the end of the work, which started in 2009, by offering free admission to all visitors tomorrow.

Visitors to Sydney's Powerhouse Parramatta will be able to see their own work on show after it opens on Saturday thanks to designer Es Devlin.

Her show at the $700 million museum includes a 24-metre long table holding a paper scroll which will become a collective portrait of its audience.

Every visitor is invited to take a seat opposite a stranger and is given 15 minutes to draw their face with the results on show for everyone who comes after them to see.

Devlin told The Sydney Morning Herald it "doesn't matter" if they can draw, adding: "It’s more: can you look into the eyes of a stranger for 15 minutes and leave a trace of that encounter? There aren’t many conditions currently in our society where you can safely look a stranger in the eye for that long."

1 - Nick Thomm's work at The Hole gallery on The Bowery in New York is described as using color "like a Jolly Rancher or a Lamborghini". The show, which opens tonight, is his second solo outing with the gallery and marks a return for the Australian artist to the city where he lived a decade ago.

2 - Work by artists including Georg Baselitz and Tacita Dean feature in a group show opening at David Zwirner in London tonight. All the works, which also include four new etchings by Nick Goss, were produced at the studio of Copenhagen publisher Borch Editions.

3 - Kim Yun Shin's show at Lehmann Maupin in Seoul is a homecoming of sorts - it is her first solo show with the gallery since moving back to South Korea after living abroad for four decades. It comes after debut shows in New York and London last year and this year's exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in the South Korean capital.

1 - Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler’s six-hour film River of Fundament is to be screened in New York 12 years after its world premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It will be shown at the Masonic Hall in Chelsea on November 14 and followed the next day by an artist talk.

2 - Daniel Sikkema, 56, has been sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder-for-hire of his husband, New York art dealer Brent Sikkema, according to the FBI. The 75-year-old, who co-owned Manhattan gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Company, was found stabbed to death at his home in Rio de Janeiro in 2024.

3 - Guillaume Cerutti, who spent a year as the head of the Pinault Collection, has been appointed president of the Chateau de Versailles near Paris. He replaces Christophe Leribault who was put in charge of the Louvre amid the fallout from the daylight heist of jewelry worth $102 million.

4 - Helen Sear will co-ordinate next year's Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. She said the show's theme will be "fascination" and it will explore new technology and the "images and invisible networks that hold us spellbound".

5 - Artist Claire Valdez is among the new wave of US politicians swept into power by this week's elections. The graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago will represent New York's 7th congressional district in Congress.