Roundup: NFL’s traffic-y urbanism, battles over Zaha Tokyo stadium and London Garden Bridge

Legal troubles with Tokyo’s Olympics stadium. urbanism troubles with L.A.’s NFL stadium and financial issues with London’s Garden Bridge. There’s a whole lotta turmoil roiling the planet’s mega-projects. Plus: David Bowie’s art interests, a photo project goes inside a youth prison and the Guerrilla Girls on late-night TV. Here’s the Roundup:

— Zaha Hadid may be out as the architect of Japan’s Olympic stadium, but the troubles are hardly over. Before they’ll pay her for her work on the project, the organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games are reportedly demanding that she hand over the copyright to her designs.

Designs for Tokyo’s Olympics stadium by Kengo Kuma, top, and Zaha Hadid. Hadid, whose proposal was scrapped, claims that elements of Kengo’s design resemble hers.

(The Japan Sports Council / AP)

Hadid says the stadium’s new design, by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, bears similarities in “structure, layout and numerous elements” to her proposal. Kuma tells the Architect’s Journal that is due to regulations on the site.

— And since we’re on the subject of stadiums: the NFL is determined to plunk a new stadium somewhere in Los Angeles with urbanistic values straight out of the 1950s: The designs on the table offer no easy access to train lines. And what’s with all the water in the renderings?

— Speaking of problematic architecture: London’s proposed Garden Bridge, designed by architect Thomas Heatherwick, is now at the center of an audit that shows that public money may have been allotted to the project in ways that circumvented typical channels.

Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel, the head of the task force investigating the Nazi-era art hoard of Cornelius Gurlitt, at a press conference in Berlin on Thursday.

(Tobias Schwarz / AFP/Getty Images)

— The German task force charged with investigating ownership of works in the Nazi-era art hoard of Cornelius Gurlitt has come under fire from the international community for its slow progress and lack of transparency. (Artnet)

— Demolition of L.A.’s 6th Street Viaduct has been delayed.

— A former art teacher left the Detroit Institute of Arts $1.7 million.

— And since we’re on the subject of money … Jen Graves asks a worthwhile question: Should art grants be awarded to artists who don’t need the money?

— Can’t find a Renaissance master to buy? There is always the chance of reattribution.

People look at the painting “Saint-Jean Baptiste” by Leonardo da Vinci in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The picture is about to be restored by lightening its layers of varnish.

(Patrick Kovarik / AFP/Getty Images)

— How do you clean one of 15 surviving canvases by Leonardo da Vinci? Very carefully — and with the help of an international committee of 10 experts to help oversee the work.

— Related: Photos of recent restoration work of the frescoes at the Theodelinda Chapel in Milan. Graceful and glittering.

— Modern Art Notes has a lengthy podcast interview with artist Frances Stark, whose solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum has drawn wide acclaim.

— In the wake of David Bowie’s death, the New York Times publishes an interview from 1998 in which the singer, who went to art school and painted, talked at length about his interest in art, which included figures from Frank Auerbach to Damien Hirst. (His defense of Hirst, I have to confess, is a little disappointing.)

— Art is beauty-poor, writes David Brooks, because … I don’t know why.

— One-minute sculptures.

— A photo workshop records life in a Mexican juvenile prison.

— Because I’m feeling spacey, a couple of stories about the sky: Recently rediscovered glass-plate photographs show the night sky more than a century ago and how a greater knowledge of clouds changed painting in the 19th century.

— How to lie about Canadian art. (Art F City)

— Art projects inspired by Wikipedia. (Art F City)

— And last but not least, artists on late-night TV: Guerrilla Girls appear on ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ (Read Coco Fusco for context.)

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