A plan to offer armed police officers free entry to French museums in exchange for working as informal security guards has been thrown out by culture minister Catherine Pegard.

The idea, put forward by an opposition MP, did not make it into the minister's security plan which was published yesterday and includes a $34 million fund for security equipment for some of the country's most at-risk museums and monuments.

It was initially a response to the $102 million Louvre heist in Paris but publication was brought forward after thieves walked out of a museum in the east of the country in broad daylight with a solid-gold Celtic torc.

That theft, for which a suspect has been arrested, led to one French archaeologist telling Le Monde newspaper that museums should stop displaying authentic artifacts and only put replicas on show.

The annual attendance figure that bosses at New York's MoMA PS1 want to achieve by 2030. It recently launched a new marketing campaign to attract visitors to what is the city's largest free museum after a major donation by Sonya Yu.

It already has a vast international collection, dozens of staff and 11,600 square meters of gallery space, but even more importantly Guggenheim Abu Dhabi finally has an opening date.

The Frank Gehry-designed building will open its doors in the Saadiyat Cultural District on December 11 with work by the likes of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat going on show.

Guggenheim Foundation director Mariet Westermann said the building would be "a source of wonder, a hub of connection, and a place of curiosity and joy for people from the United Arab Emirates and the world”.

Tributes have been paid to Betye Saar who has died just four days short of her 100th birthday.

Her gallery, Roberts Projects, said she would be "remembered for a body of work that powerfully interrogated African American identity, spirituality and the intersections between diverse cultures".

Fellow artist Theaster Gates posted a photograph of the two of them together, writing: "We will miss you. Thank you for the dance."

Los Angeles-born Saar was best known for her assemblage works which used found objects such as her 1972 work The Liberation of Aunt Jemima which repurposed racist imagery.

Civil servants have been brought in to oversee Sydney's new Powerhouse Museum after it spent almost $49 million getting ready to open.

A finance expert from the New South Wales Treasury has been appointed acting chief operating officer after concerns were raised about spending.

An investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald found $18 million had been spent on exhibition design and fitting out galleries while an interior designer was paid $229,000 to decorate 30 in-house apartments which will be used by visiting researchers and artists.

That includes commissioning 40 designer rugs at $2,786 each and spending $1.3 million on customized wardrobes and beds.

The museum, led by chief executive Lisa Havilah, is due to open this year.

1 - Funkadelic frontman George Clinton has an exhibition of his paintings at Chicago's Mariane Ibrahim gallery until September 5. The musician, famed for his eccentric songwriting and sense of style, scored hits including One Nation Under a Groove.

2 - Low Kee Hong will be artistic director of the 26th Biennale of Sydney in 2028. Currently creative director of Factory International in Manchester, England, he was the founding director of the Singapore Biennale.

3 - Eva and Franco Mattes have won Italy's Michetti Prize for contemporary art this year. Their work, an AI-generated video called Art You Still There?, was described as an exploration of "power dynamics in the digital ecosystem".

4 - Lydia Yee, the former chief curator at London's Whitechapel Gallery, has been appointed artistic director of the Muara Arts gallery in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The nonprofit gallery is due to open on November 1 with plans for an accompanying theater to open in 2029.