1) Artists Create A Synthetic Beach Inside a Museum

An installation by Brooklyn design firm Snarkitechture, titled THE BEACH, is turning over 10,000 square feet of the National Building Museum in Washington DC into a fake, ultra-modern beach. Guests to the museum are encouraged to lounge around and interact with the multifaceted art piece which includes lawn chairs, a snack bar and a ball-pit “ocean.” 

2) Norway Mural is World's Largest

A 21,000 square-meter mural in Norway has become the world’s largest figurative mural to date. Created for the NuArt street art festival in Klepp, the mural depicts a girl wearing shorts and a tank top, dropping a brightly coloured figure of a king from her hand. This is intended as a tongue-in-cheek gesture at the nearby birthplace of King Olaf I of Norway.  

3) Reality TV Takes The Art World

A new art-based reality show is set to air on Sunday October 4th. The show, with the cringe-worthy title Art Breaker$, follows two female graduates of the Sotheby’s Institute as they do their jobs as art advisors and give audiences a glimpse into the “seemingly impenetrable” art world. Predictably, art news outlets and critics are already panning the show.

4) PC Game Puts Players In Charge of Italian Renaissance Artists

Now for sale on Steam, Painters Guild, a videogame that simulates the experience of being an artist during the renaissance. The game is akin to the Sims, in that it essentially allows you to play god, selecting artists for your guild, assigning them to commissions, and doing your best to keep them healthy and focused on their art. At the moment the game is available only for Windows users.

5) Instagram Thinks Outside the Square

If you haven’t yet heard, Instagram is finally allowing users to select between portrait or landscape orientation for their photo posts, rather than being forced to fit everything into a perfect square. This comes on the heels of the app’s recent announcement that users will now be able to schedule their posts via Hootsuite. All this seems like Instagram might be gearing up to capitalize on Hollywood’s growing adoption of it and other image-sharing platforms.