The title of this year's Venice Biennale might be In Minor Keys but there is nothing minor about the constant wave of controversy threatening to overshadow it.

With two months to go before it opens, there is no shortage of scandal. From Serbia, where hundreds of people signed a petition protesting the selection of Predrag Dakovic as the country's representative, to South Africa where the choice of Gabrielle Goliath ended up in court as she was summarily deselected by culture minister Gayton McKenzie.

Just today it was reported Luxembourg's culture minister Eric Thill has been criticized by opposition politicians over the $626,518 budget for his country's pavilion which includes a film by Aline Bouvy called Merde featuring an anthropomorphic excrement figure.

But the biggest cloud on the horizon lies with the Russian entry which marks the country's return to the event for first time since the invasion of Ukraine.

It prompted a very undiplomatic statement from the European Union which threatened to withdraw its funding for the biennale foundation over the decision.

It said Russian participation was "not compatible with the EU’s collective response to Russia’s brutal aggression" and further action could include "the suspension or termination of ongoing EU funding" to the event.

Italy's culture minister Alessandro Giuli said the government disagreed with the biennale's decision but said it was "entirely autonomous".

Its organizers have yet to respond directly, though its president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco said it should be "a space of coexistence for the whole planet".

The number of glass squares in Gerhard Richter's Cologne Cathedral Window. The artist, who created the work in 2007, recently came out in support of plans to charge an entry fee to the landmark building which is struggling with its budget despite attracting six million visitors a year.

K-pop singer RM has put his money where his mouth is and donated $68,000 to pay for the publication of a brochure of Korean art held in museums and galleries abroad.

It is the second time the singer from pop group BTS has funded the work by the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation.

The resulting publication, called It's___Here: Korean Paintings Shining Abroad, details the locations of 24 works held abroad including the 16th-century Snowscape with Figures by Kim Si in the Cleveland Museum of Art as well as an anonymous 19th-century landscape called the Welcoming Banquet of the Governor of Pyeongan in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

The foundation's secretary general Kwak Chang-yong said the featured works were "a cultural bridge between Korea and the world".

He said: "Its publication is made even more notable by the generous support of RM, whose deep interest in and great respect for Korean culture adds greater meaning to the occasion."

The singer is a well-known devotee of Korean art with a show of 200 works from his collection due to open at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in October.

Thomas J Price has unveiled his tallest sculpture yet outside London's new V&A East Museum.

The 18ft-tall bronze, A Place Beyond, will greet visitors to the building which opens on April 18.

Price made headlines last year when his monumental work Grounded in the Stars was exhibited in New York's Times Square.

The museum also announced a series of New Work commissions with artists including Es Devlin, Lawrence Lek and Carrie Mae Weems invited to submit pieces inspired by east London's history and future.

A controversial Richard Prince work that sparked a lengthy court battle will be included in a show curated by Nancy Spector.

The former artistic director of the Guggenheim museum in New York is combining work by Prince with pieces by Arthur Jafa at Venice's Prada Foundation.

She said the show, titled Helter Skelter after Paul McCartney's Beatles song that was appropriated by murderous cult leader Charles Manson in the 1960s, would reveal both men to be "image scavengers" who converted "the overflowing reservoir of visual culture" into art "by choice alone".

Spector announced the show on Instagram and pointedly used Prince's work Graduation which uses an image from Patrick Cariou's book of photographs of Jamaican Rastafarians.

Cariou sued over its use and initially a court ruled all Prince's work should be destroyed but that was overturned and the two men eventually settled the case after five years of legal wrangling.

The version of the work in the show is from the personal collection of gallery owner Larry Gagosian who represents Prince.

The show will run from May 9 to November 23 alongside the Venice biennale.

1 - The Italian government has continued its spending spree - paying $34.8 million for Caravaggio’s Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini. It comes after it bought Antonello da Messina's Ecce Homo for $14.9 million from Sotheby's last month.

2 - An exhibition of rare color photographs by French photographer and painter Jacques Henri Lartigue will open on June 20. The show at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, southern England, will run to October 4 and show another side of the man best known for his black-and-white images of Paris high society.

3 - A 43-ft-tall mural reinterpretation of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa made from 100, 000 bottle tops has been unveiled on the side of a wall in San Salvador, El Salvador. It is the work of Oscar Olivares who uses recycled materials to make his art.

4 - Perrotin Gallery announced it now represents US sculptor Alma Allen. Allen, who was regarded as a left-field choice when he was announced as the US representative at the Venice Biennale, parted ways with his previous galleries after his commission was confirmed. He will have a solo show at Perrotin in Paris in October.