The future of a proposed Pompidou Center outpost in Busan, South Korea, is in doubt two years after plans for the $71 million project were first unveiled.

The French institution recently opened an outpost in Seoul and its president Laurent Le Bon told the Korea Herald it was "100 percent focused on Seoul" for now.

The plan was promoted by Busan's previous mayor keen to build on the success of the city's biennial, but his successor Chun Jae-soo said: "At a time when citizens are struggling, we need to ask whether spending more than 110 billion won on the project would truly benefit Busan's cultural ecosystem."

A memorandum of understanding signed by the city and the Paris-based center has been extended to the end of this year.

It comes four months after Jersey City confirmed it was abandoning plans for a Pompidou Center after years of discussion about opening what would have been its first North American base.

The Greek government has returned six terracotta statuettes to Egypt eight years after they were found dumped in an Athens skip.

Experts at the country's National Archaeological Museum believe they were illegally taken out of Egypt before they were found by a passerby individually wrapped and thrown away with the garbage.

They also discovered two of the artifacts were fakes but they have been returned along with the genuine antiquities in what Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni described as "an act of respect".

The handover came on the same day Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr. announced the return of two statues, valued at more than $2.5 million, to the government of Nepal.

They were recovered during an investigation into convicted antiquities trafficker Nancy Wiener and included one from the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

1 - As Europe struggles with record temperatures Madrid's Opera Gallery opens its perfectly-titled Summer Vibes IV show today. The exhibition, which runs to August 29, includes a collaboration between Pedro Almodovar and painter Jorge Galindo who produces oil paintings of the filmmaker's still-life photographs.

2 - New York's Sikkema Malloy Jenkins gallery on West 22nd Street is channeling Bacharach and David with its new show A House is Not a Home taking its title from one of the songwriting duo's biggest hits. The group show, which opens today and runs to August 7, features work by 10 artists including Josephine Halvorson, Arturo Herrera and Liliana Porter inspired by domestic life.

3 - Jane Birkin is the star of Matt Saunders's show opening today at Marian Goodman's New York Gallery. The London-born actress and singer, who became an icon in France, features in a series of prints inspired by her performance in the 1976 film Je t’aime moi non plus. The show runs to August 7.

1 - New York's Whitney Museum is offering free entry until the end of July to anyone who brings a completed version of a soccer World Cup poster by designer Rich Tu. The poster, which can be downloaded here, is part of the museum's response to the tournament which has included live match screenings.

2 - Courtenay Finn has been appointed chief curator at the Crystal Bridges museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. A former chief curator at the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) in California, she also worked at Aspen Art Museum and Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art.

3 - Pioneering Korean textile artist Song Burnsoo has died aged 83, according to Gallery Baton in Seoul. In a tribute online, it said his work "played a pivotal role in the emergence of Korean modernism and the formation of a distinctly Korean avant-garde".

4 - Three Brussels museums are coming together for Arts at Night in the Belgian capital next month. One ticket will gain entry to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Royal Library of Belgium and the Bozar arts center on July 3.

5 - The soccer World Cup could have a lasting cultural legacy after UNESCO were asked to recognize Scottish fans tradition of putting traffic cones on statues in its Living Heritage project. The custom, which dates back to the 1980s when a statue of the Duke of Wellington at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art was topped with a cone, has taken root in Boston where mayor Michelle Wu admitted doing it to a statue of basketball legend Bill Russell.