– Coming Home?: A possible Michelangelo painting that hung for years in a family's living room in Buffalo, New York is being displayed at the Rome Foundationin Italy as part of an exhibit on Renaissance art. "It's a major milestone for the painting to be included in an exhibit of this caliber and hang beside generally acknowledged works by Michelangelo," said Martin Kober,the owner of the painting. For now, however, "La Pieta With Two Angels," which was the subject of the book "The Lost Pieta," is still simply being described as "Michelangelesque." [AP]

– Radical Pottery: "I have a pot called Boring Cool People," Grayson Perrytold the BBC. "It's decorated with pictures of the sort of people who go to contemporary art galleries." The art world, he continues, has no connection "with the real world," and there is "no left wing to it." Perry, meanwhile, maintains his inspiration comes from more populist sources, such as "sitting in front of the telly with a beer, watching 'XFactor.'" [BBC] 

– Street Art, Not Ads: The Los Angeles City Council has agreed to draft a new ordinance to legalize some of the city's murals, responding to protests of artists as well as mural-loving celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Travis Barker. Some of the most famous L.A. murals have been destroyed since the city eliminated the legal distinction between commercial signs and art in 2002. "We want to define murals as something other than signs and create a process for permitting murals," city councilman Bill Rosendahl said of the ordinance. "There is a difference between a sign and a mural. One is marketing and one is art." [LAT] 

– French Prizes: In the wake of FIAC, three contemporary art prizes have been awarded in Paris. The biggest one, the Prix Marcel Duchamp — France's answer to the Turner Prize — went to Romanian artist Mircea Cantor, giving still more attention to the so-called Cluj School, of which she is a representative. Adrien Missika took the 13th Prix Foundation d'enterprise Ricard, focused on more emerging artists, and Brit Helen Marten was awarded the Prix Lafayette. [Connaissance des Arts] 

– Hobbit Art: More than a hundred drawings and sketches by "The Hobbit" author JRR Tolkien have been found in Oxford's Bodleian Library. The artworks will be published in a new book, "The Art of The Hobbit," to be released on Thursday. [BBC]

Groggy Mark Grotjahn Passes Out on Lawn: It's never a good idea to get too drunk at one's own party, particularly in the age of cell phone pictures. But painter Mark Grotjan, who was being honored at last weekend's Two by Two for AIDS and Art gala in Dallas, reportedly wandered out of the event and lay face down in the ground cover outside, "shouting obscenities at the hapless female assistant charged with protecting him from himself." Meanwhile, inside, his painting was setting a record for the most expensive work eve sold at the benefit. [Dallas News]

– New Photography Gallery at the V&A: London's Victoria & Albert Museum has unveiled its new gallery dedicated to the display of its photography archive, among the largest in the world. The program was kick-started by two exhibitions, one of Victorian portraitist Julia Margaret Cameron and another of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Starting in 1856, the V&A was the first museum to collect photographs, and the first to show them in 1858. [Telegraph]

– Better Than Expected?: In a review of Crystal Bridges, the excellent architecture critic James Russell trumpets the museum as a "tour de force" and contests the perception that founder Alice Walton "is a rube using bucks ill-gotten by dad's retail rapacity to haul the nation's patrimony to this remote Xanadu, where the rednecks won't appreciate it." [Bloomberg]

– ICA Philadelphia Names New Curator: The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania has appointed Performa associate producer Anthony Elms its new associate curator. The director position at the ICA remains vacant following previous director Claudia Gould's departure for New York's Jewish Museum. [Press Release]

Success for Charity Auction for Women: The auction, which took place last Saturday at London's Christie's, raised over £664,000 ($1,046,464) which will go towards supporting women in conflict zones. The project was organized by artist Jenny Saville and film producer Nadja Romain. The pair invited artists, including Tracey Emin, Bridget Riley, and Richard Serra, to produce new lots. [Art Daily]

– Indianapolis Museum Acquires Work by Allora & Calzadilla: The IMA (whose director recently decamped for the Dallas Museum of Art) has acquired several works by Allora & Calzadilla, the artist duo it commissioned for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. "Body in Flight (Delta)" and "Half Mast/Full Mast" were among six commissioned works on view at this year's Biennale, and are now to be exhibited at the IMA in 2012. [Press Release]

– Frick Acquisitions: The Frick in New York will acquire a rare porcelain vase from the Royal Manufactory of Sèvres and an important Renaissance drawing by the Sienese artist Domenico Beccafumi. [Press Release] 

– Ai Weiwei is Absent: The Tapei Fine Arts Museum has invited Ai Weiwei to create its annual exhibition by an important Chinese artist. Due to the conditions of his bail, however, the previously detained artist may not be able to attend the opening. The exhibition is provocatively titled "Ai Weiwei is Absent." [ITA] 

– RIP Brooklyn Artist Mathieu Lefevre: Mathieu Lefevre, a 30-year-old Canadian artist living in Brooklyn, was killed in a bicycle accident on Morgan Avenue last week. He was a member of the local art collective Third Ward, and his work has been described by critic Fabien Loszach as playing "liberally on language, particularly the language of art, to create its amusing effects." [Gothamist]