– Tracey Emin Spends Valentine's Day in Times Square: For three minutes before midnight every evening next month, Tracey Emin's neon romantic messages will appear on 40 video screens in the heart of Times Square. The lovelorn phrases — including "Love is what you want" and "I can't believe how much I loved you" — will spell themselves out as if written by an unseen hand. The monthlong arrangement is part of a deal with the Times Square Advertising Coalition, which operates the screens and agreed to lend the Times Square Alliance three minutes a day to organize fleeting public art projects. "I wonder if people will stand underneath them and kiss and have their photos taken," Emin said of the lights. [ARTnews, Times Square Alliance]

– Musée d'Orsay's Olfactory Offense: France's culture minister Aurelie Filippetti is demanding an explanation from the director of the Musée d'Orsay after museum staff asked a family visiting under the auspices of the anti-poverty group ATD-Quart Monde to leave when fellow visitors complained that they smelled bad. The family — a couple and their 12-year-old child — first left a room filled with Vincent van Gogh paintings for a less crowded gallery, only to be surrounded by four security guards and escorted from the museum. "It shows what the poorest people have to put up with on a daily basis," said ATD-Quart Monde spokeswoman Typhaine Cornacchiari. "When poverty is written on your face you do not get treated the same way." [AFP]

– The Biennale Goes Online: Claiming to be the world's first online biennial exhibition, BiennaleOnline launches April 26 under the direction of Jan Hoet, artistic director of Germany's MARTa Herford and curator of Documenta IX (1992). Hoet asked more than two dozen curators worldwide, including Nancy Spector of the Guggenheim and Brazil's Adriano Pedrosa, to select five artists each. Their work will be displayed in a digital gallery. Visitors must pay $80 to view the show during its first week; after July 15, access is free. [AiA]

– Woodcut Rhino Smashes Dürer Record: Last night, during a sale of 62 works by Albrecht Dürer from the holdings of Swiss collector Samuel Josefowitz at Christie's New York, the 1515 woodcut "The Rhinoceros" set a new record for the artist. It sold for $866,500, surpassing 2011's $653,366 sale of his iconic engraving "Adam and Eve." Another of the night's top lots, Dürer's famous "Melancholia I" from 1514, sold for $530,500 to dealer Richard Feigen, who was buying on behalf of an unspecified, non-U.S. museum. [Bloomberg]

– Dealer Sues Over Alleged Romero Britto Forgies: Dealer Ryan Mack, owner of Minnesota's Griffin Gallery, is suing eight galleries and individuals in federal court for allegedly selling him dozens of forgeries attributed to the Brazilian-American Pop artist Romero Britto. Mack claims the artist was in on the scheme, which involved submitting false e-mails, supplying fake certificates of authenticity, and even impersonating individuals in order to sell him over 20 works of fraudulent art. [Courthouse News] 

– Soderbergh Gets Down to Paint Business: Steven Soderbergh, the director who has been trumpeting his retirement from Hollywood moviemaking for well over a year now and yet somehow continues to release movies, is getting serious about his painting career. "It’s the same process as anything: identifying who your heroes are, figuring out what they did, and then just going and doing it," he said. "I’m always curious to hear how something was made — though I have no interest in why an artist did something.... Like with Jackson Pollock: I’m always interested in what kind of paint and canvas he used, I just don’t want to know what he meant. You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind." [NYM]

– Women Protesters Storm the Tate: For her new project at Tate Modern this week, "Silver Action," Suzanne Lacy will gather some 400 women over the age of 60 who have participated in protests throughout the past century for an improvised performance on activism, aging, and ageism in the museum's new Tanks space. "There's a very large public conversation now about resources," Lacy says, "and what to do with an aging population. Because women live longer, that will impact them more than men. I'm trying to shift the discourse away from one of isolation and increasing frailty: we should see older women as an amazing resource — not just talk about them taking resources." [Guardian]

– Miami Gallery Gets Free Police Protection: The Gary Nader Fine Art Gallery in Miami's gritty Wynwood district is currently hosting some 110 works owned by Portuguese collector Jose Berardo, an exhibition appraised at between $500 million and $700 million. The sum was sufficiently large to earn the gallery complimentary 24-hour surveillance courtesy Miami mayor Tomás Regalado and police chief Manuel Orosca until the show closes in mid-April. "If something happens to that art collection, it’s going to be, 'Where were the police?'" Orosa said. "It’s a [$500] million art collection, never before seen in the Western Hemisphere, and I provided security, one person, off and on, to that particular art gallery, as part of a free exhibit of a museum-quality art collection." [Miami Herald]

– Prado Museum Lands Major Private Donation: Madrid's Prado Museum has received its largest private donation in decades: 12 medieval and Renaissance works by Spanish artists. The masterpieces come from the collection of Barcelona-based businessman and engineer Jose Luis Varez, whose name will adorn a room at the Prado in recognition of his generosity. "The Prado is the memory of an ambitious nation that has never been stopped by hardship," Spain's prime minister Mariano Rajoy said at a ceremony yesterday. "This donation enriches in an extraordinary way a museum... which is an indispensable element of our image as a country." [Reuters]

– Lara Almarcegui to Rep Spain in Venice: Spanish-born, Rotterdam-based artist Lara Almarcegui has been selected to represent her native country at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Almarcegui specializes in expansive installations made with simple materials like dirt and cement blocks. "Since the 1990s, she has been researching and studying the transitional spaces where the urban and the natural orders meet," said Octavio Zaya, curator of the Spanish Pavilion. [Artforum]  

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Suzanne Lacy interviewed by the Tate 

ALSO ON ARTINFO:

Psychoanalyzing Bruce Nauman: Curator Philip Larratt-Smith on "Mindf*ck"

Cyprien Gaillard's "Crystal Worlds" at MoMA PS1 Trace the Fragility of Empire

10 Art Institutions to Pique Your Interest in Pinterest, From SFMOMA to Pace

Louis Vuitton Taps the Brazilian Duo Os Gêmeos To Design a Print

5 Home Decoration Bargains From the Public Art Fund’s “Discovering Columbus” Sale

SHOWS THAT MATTER: Chinese Artist Song Dong's History of "Doing Nothing" at Pace

For more breaking art news throughout the day,
check ARTINFO's In the Air blog.