Claire Tabouret’s windows for Notre-Dame Cathedral are being made by master stained glass workers in Reims but a French heritage group is determined to stop their installation at the 11th hour.

The clock is ticking for Paris-based Sites & Monuments to prevent the removal of Eugene Viollet-le-Duc’s 19th-century windows to make way for the LA-based, French artist's new works.

Heritage expert Julien Lacaze, the president of Sites & Monuments, said: “We will urgently seek a court order to suspend the installation."

But former director of the Centre Pompidou Bernard Blistène, who is on the selection committee for Tabouret’s commission, sounded confident her new windows would be in place by the end of the year. He told ARTNews that Atelier Simon Marq is “ardently working in Reims to produce the windows”.

Tabouret’s designs were on show in the Grand Palais in Paris until earlier this month, a preview that received a mixed reception. While many admired her use of the medium, opponents argue removing the older windows, which were undamged in the 2019 fire, was “cultural vandalism”.

The number of decomissioned modern churches in the Ruhr where artists will show their work in Manifesta 16. The next edition of the nomadic biennial is due to open on June 12 in the cities of Bochum, Essen, Duisburg and Gelsenkirchen.

It took a gang of thieves only minutes to break into the Magnani-Rocca Foundation in Italy and get away with a late painting by Renoir, plus a Matisse and Cezanne.

Masked raiders reportedly targeted the Villa Magnani near Parma on the night of March 22-23 but news of the theft was only released on Sunday.

The missing works are Renoir's Les Poissons, Still-life with Cherries by Cezanne and Matisse's Odalisque on the Terrace.

The private museum of modern art and Old Master paintings founded by the art critic Luigi Magnani has so far not made a statement about the theft.

The British artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah's latest video installation, The Hour Of The Dog, goes on show in the Menil Collection in Houston in April.

The work, which was co-commissioned by the Baltimore Museum of Art where it had its premiere last year, uses news footage and archival film to celebrate the Civil Rights movement and its legacy but also explore its complexities.

Segregation took place across Texas as in the Deep South and access for Black American's to education, work and the ballot box was limited until successfully challenged in the US courts, through federal legislation and by grassroots activism.

The artist said in a statement: "Activism is not confined to what happens in the streets; it's bound up with who and how we remember, who and how we mourn, and how we dream forward."

The work, which is due to go on show from April 24, is co-curated by Michelle White, senior curator, The Menil Collection, and Cecilia Wichmann, curator and department head of contemporary art in Baltimore.

1 - The British Museum hopes to bid a final farewell to the shabby security tents that greet visitors with the news posted on social media by director Nicholas Cullinan that London's Camden Council has granted planning permission for the museum's new, architect-designed pavilions at the north and south entrances.

2 - The New York-based gallerist Cristopher Canizares is leaving Hauser & Wirth to launch a talent agency called the Artist Legacy Bureau with artists including the in-demand Rashid Johnson on its roster.

3 - More than 30 members of the European Parliament have signed a letter demanding the suspension of European Union funding to the Venice Biennale Foundation should Russia’s planned pavilion go ahead.

4 - Glen Baxter, the absurdist British artist, has died aged 82. His works married the mundane with the surreal, juxtaposing British eccentrics with highbrow literary allusions and pulp fiction references. Rene Magritte was an early inspiration.

5 - The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, has acquired Salvador Dalí's largest work. Décor de théâtre pour Bacchanale, which he completed in 1939, consists of 13 panels and four canvases.