The Vienna Actionism Museum is closing its doors in January after its Otto Muehl show sparked street protests.

Muehl, who died in 2013, was a prominent figure in a series of communes in the 1970s and in 1991 was sentenced to seven years in prison for offenses including rape and sexual crimes against minors.

The private museum will close on January 10 when the show ends and become a research institution.

Director Klaus Albrecht Schroder, who previously led the Albertina Museum in the city, said Muehl's crimes would overshadow any other planned exhibitions.

He told journalists: "It’s as if you’re putting on an exhibition, the door is open, but the field in front of it, which you have to cross to reach the door, is completely mined."

The number of new US museums receiving loans from the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC funded by a $116 million gift from the Mitchell P. Rales Family Foundation. Among them are museums in Sacramento, El Paso and Mobile with the loans including works by Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko and Donald Judd.

Visitors to the new Peter Blake show will have seen the inside of his studio more recently than the man himself.

The show at London's Pitzhanger Manor boasts "an immersive recreation of Blake’s studio, allowing visitors to step into the world of the artist’s imagination" but the painter says he has not been inside the place for two years.

The 94-year-old told The Times he is too "infirm" and said it "just physically isn’t possible" to leave home apart from hospital appointments.

Blake, who famously created the cover of The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with this then-wife Jann Haworth, said he was "in the middle of solving" what to do with his west London studio after his death.

He said: "I’d love to set it up as a little museum but who would go and would it work?"

Peter Blake: In the Studio is at Pitzhanger Manor from November 25 to April 18.

Scientists testing Rembrandt’s The Night Watch for microorganisms have uncovered a mystery after taking samples from the canvas.

A team from Amsterdam's ARTIS-Micropia museum found traces of soil and skin bacteria, as well as a microbe first identified at a sugar refinery in Japan.

Microbiologist Eline van Bloois told journalists they had no idea how it had got on the painting which hangs in the city's Rijksmuseum, saying: "This is how it often goes with science, you start off with one question. You leave with a hundred."

A full-size reproduction of the painting is at the science museum until May and is being constantly updated as the team finds new signs of life from their tests.

Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbits said the work was a sign of a "broadening" in art research, saying: “Thirty or forty years ago, nobody could have imagined you’d be talking to a chemist or biologist about The Night Watch."

The descendants of enslaved artist David Drake have taken possession of another of his works before selling it back to the museum where it was held.

Drake, also known as Dave the Potter, often signed his works or inscribed them with poetry in defiance of strict anti-literacy laws in the 19th century.

Newark Museum of Art in New Jersey said it gave an 1852 jug to the family with the "full support of the board of trustees" and had subsequently bought it back from them to ensure it stays on show.

Museum director Lisa Funderbunke thanked "David Drake’s descendants for their trust and partnership" and said the deal was "an important act of justice".

Similar measures have been taken by other institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

1 - Works by Nan Goldin, Frank Bowling and Arthur Jafa will go on show at the SITE Santa Fe biennial in New Mexico from next year. The event, curated by Ekow Eshun, runs from June 11 to January 10, 2028.

2 - New York's Museum of Modern Art has given the first Ambasz–MoMA Annual Prize for Nature–Reconciled Architecture to Dhaka-based architects Kashef Chowdhury/URBANA . The $200,000 prize is divided between the architect and a not-for profit that will use it to fund a tree planting project.

3 - New works by Theaster Gates are going on show at Gagosian gallery in Hong Kong next Thursday. The show includes a trio of Tar Paintings made from panels of industrial roofing similar to those in his 2022 installation at London’s Serpentine Galleries.

4 - Shanghai Art Week runs until Sunday with two flagship fairs expected to draw thousands of visitors to see work from 246 galleries. Here is our pick of six solo shows to see in the city now.