Has Bayeux-mania finally peaked?

The British Museum opened its much-trailed Bayeux Tapestry exhibition today with the first of what is expected to be one million paying visitors getting their chance to see the historic embroidery in London.

Museum chief Nicholas Cullinan was on hand to cut the ribbon and formally declare it open - flanked by a crowd of extras dressed in 11th-century finery complete with swords, shields and axes.

The embroidery, which tells the story of William the Conqueror's 1066 invasion of England, is on loan from France until July 11 next year after French President Emmanuel Macron put his weight behind the deal.

As well as selling a million tickets, with the standard adult version going for $44, the museum is also poised to cash in with a bewildering range of merchandise from a $169 silk scarf illustrated with scenes from the embroidery to a $385 Battle of Hastings chess set.

But it is too late if you had your eye on a $74 steel miniature Norman helmet with chainmail. They have already sold out.

More details have been released about the permanent pavilion dedicated to Gerhard Richter being built outside Doha's Museum of Islamic Art.

The building, due to be unveiled on November 20, has been designed by Richter to house "a distinct body of his paintings and sculpture" and will include three of his large-scale strip paintings hanging inside, two floor-to-ceiling mirrors on the walls and a stone sculpture, titled Brunnen (Well), directly outside.

Richter, who worked with architect Annabelle Selldorf on the design, said the idea for the building was inspired by a 2013 trip to Doha which he described as "the right place and the only place for my pavilion”.

1 - Thomas Ruff's show, jpegs ny, opens at David Zwirner on 19th Street in New York tonight - the day before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks it commemorates. The German artist was in the city on that day but his photographs did not survive so he used images taken by other people found online and enlarged them to appear almost abstract.

2 - A 90-year-old jazz song is the inspiration behind Stanley Whitney's first solo show in Asia which opens tonight at Gagosian Hong Kong. Isn’t Love the Strangest Thing includes new paintings and takes its name from the 1936 Duke Ellington song and what the gallery describes as its "disorienting mixture of joy and sorrow".

3 - Rana Begum's first solo show in New York opens tonight at Lehmann Maupin. The exhibition, which features a large-scale installation made from chain-link fencing, comes after she made her US museum debut at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, last year.

1 - The recent David Hockney show at the Serpentine made history with almost 300,000 visitors setting a new attendance record for the central London galleries. Its opening hours were extended to meet demand for the show which opened shortly before the painter's death in June.

2 - Robert Stein has been appointed executive director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. He previously worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and suceeds Andrew J. Walker as the head of the Texan museum.

3 - London's William Morris Gallery will reopen on October 3 - the 130th anniversary of the artist and designer's death - after a major rehang of its collection. The gallery won the prestigious $135,000 UK Art Fund Museum of the Year award in 2013.

4 - Kathleen V Jameson has been named the new director of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. A former executive director of Pennsylvania’s James A. Michener Art Museum, she replaces Raphaela Platow who was in charge for four years.

5 - Tschabalala Self's Lady in Blue was unveiled on London's Fourth Plinth today. The New York artist was in London for the event which is the 16th commission since the public art program began.