No one can accuse English performance artist Zack Mennell of not suffering for art.

They recently waded into the River Thames dressed in a costume sewn together from 24 adult nappies for a protest piece inspired by the UK's polluted waterways and promptly caught Weil’s disease from rat urine in the water.

Mennell, who told the Guardian they wanted to play the part of a "parasite", is currently organizing a series of workshops and performances called Common Host which looks at issues including ecological decay.

The artist said they saw their performances as "a meeting point", adding: "You are creating a community, even if it’s a temporary one."

Common Host is at Peckham Safehouses in London this weekend.

Conceptual artist Ceal Floyer will be remembered with a show in Venice opening this May - six months after her death aged 57.

The show, called Unfinished, will run at the Palazzo Diedo in the city until November 22 coinciding with this year's biennale.

Among the works included are her sound piece ’Til I Get It Right which plays an edited snatch of a song by country singer Tammy Wynette on a loop and 1999's Bucket where a CD player plays the sound of a water drop falling every few seconds.

Floyer, who grew up in the UK and studied at London's Goldsmiths College, spent many years in Berlin where she lived and worked up until her death last December.

The amount of money retired lawyer Keith M. Krom told The New York Times he needs to build a permanent Watergate Museum in Washington D.C. He is currently running a pop-up version in the Watergate building which gave its name to the notorious political scandal that brought down US President Richard Nixon.

Ask any well-informed trivia fan who invented liquid paper correction fluid and they will tell you it was Texan secretary Bette Nesmith Graham whose other claim to fame was being the mother of Monkees guitarist and singer Mike Nesmith.

But now researchers at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, have uncovered evidence she was beaten to it by the ancient Egyptians more than 3,000 years ago.

The discovery came to light while they were preparing for their show Made in Ancient Egypt, which runs until April 12, and features a Book of the Dead made for a senior royal scribe.

It includes an image of a jackal that has been altered to appear thinner by the inclusion of a thick white border around it.

Curator Helen Strudwick said images seen through a 3D digital microscope show "these white lines were painted deliberately over parts of the black body and back legs, changing the way the jackal appears".

She said: "It’s as if someone saw the original way the jackal was painted and said 'it’s too fat; make it thinner', so the artist has made a kind of ancient Egyptian ‘tippex’ – also known as ‘Wite-out’ or ‘Liquid Paper’ – to fix it."

Self-taught sculptor Thaddeus Mosley has died in Pittsburgh aged 99.

His death was announced by his family online in a statement describing him as "an inimitable creative force who embodied the hard-working ethos of his blue-collar Western Pennsylvanian roots".

Mosley, who was best known for his carvings made from salvaged wood, spent four decades working for the US Postal Service but lived to see his work in institutions from the Brooklyn Museum to the Guggenheim and the the Baltimore Museum of Art.

His family said his work had taken "this coal miner’s son to world renown" and announced plans to launch a memorial fund in his name.

1 - Anything you can do, I can do better sums up the mood at the top end of the art market after rivals Christie's and Sotheby's both unveiled major single collection sales. On Friday it was reported Christie's will sell $450 million worth of work including paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock from the collection of media heir S.I. Newhouse. That was swiftly followed by an announcement from Sotheby's that it would offer $130 million of art from the collection of investment banker-turned art dealer Robert Mnuchin including a Mark Rothko expected to fetch $100 million.

2 - The Obama Presidential Center begins its opening celebrations on June 18 before opening to the public the next day on Juneteenth - a public holiday in the US commemorating the end of slavery. The building on Chicago's Southside is home to a public art program that includes works by Jay Heikes and Carrie Mae Weems.

3 - The Philadelphia Museum of Art has appointed former investment banker Mitch Wein as its executive vice president. It is the latest change at the top of the museum, led by Daniel Weiss, since former director Sasha Suda lost her job last year after a controversial rebranding.

4 - New sculptures and photographs by Rachel Whiteread are going on show at Gagosian's Davies Street gallery in London later this month. The show, which opens on March 26, includes work made from papier-mache as well as fiberglass which she used to make casts of objects found on beach walks.