Roundup: Stealing a non-Banksy, the trials of Peter Doig, Beast Jesus opera, Detroit’s Heidelberg to close

The bizarre legal case of artist Peter Doig. What happens when you try to jack a copy of a Banksy. And a popular Detroit art project is coming to a close. Plus: An opera featuring Beast Jesus, the scoop about Sotheby’s and the perfect Zika outfit for the Miami art fairs. Here’s the Roundup:

— In Chicago, the surreal legal case of artist Peter Doig continues. The artist is being sued by a collector who insists he made a work while interned in a Canadian correctional facility. The problem? The artist says he was never interned in said facility, nor did he make the painting in question. Dushko Petrovich reports. Artnet

— Peak street art? Two men were arrested for trying to steal a fake Banksy in England. The Guardian

— A Milan museum has enlisted famous authors, including Orhan Pamuk and Ali Smith, to write its wall texts. Someone please do this in L.A. The Art Newspaper

— Museo del Barrio director Jorge Daniel Veneciano is leaving the New York institution, the latest in a series of challenges the museum has faced over the last half-dozen years. New York Times

— Detroit’s iconic Heidelberg Project, a series of houses bearing whimsical assemblages and installations, are to be dismantled over the next couple of years. The Detroit News

— Spain’s Beast Jesus (the church fresco that became famous after a botched restoration job) is about to be the center of a comic opera. Sign me up. Hyperallergic

— A juicy long read on the fall and rise of Sotheby’s. So much market. So much drama. So. Much. Money. ARTnews.

A technician adjusts “A Dutch Girl at Breakfast” by Jean-Etienne Liotard at Sotheby’s London in July.

(Ben A. Pruchnie / Getty Images for Sotheby’s )

— Speaking of juicy reads: Actor Alec Baldwin is having a major spat with art dealer Mary Boone over a painting by Ross Bleckner. (The line about Baldwin occupying a “central role” in New York cultural life, by the way, is totes LOL.) The New York Times

— The National Portrait Gallery recently hung a portrait of a freed Muslim American slave in its galleries — a man named Yarrow Mamout who died in Georgetown in 1827 — evidence that the Muslim presence in the U.S. goes back centuries. Artnet

— A pair of tourists stumble upon 400-year-old sandstone petroglyphs in Hawaii. Artnet

— With Zika plaguing Miami’s Wynwood Arts District (ground zero of the epidemic in the United States), one artist has devised a prototype Zika suit to stay safe while ogling the merch. I’ll take two. Art F City

— Things that make L.A. great: One woman’s years-long struggle to save a 23-foot fiberglass chicken. Vice

— “We must not concede to the actuarial ethos of the corporatized university that reduces all discussions of value to questions of profit and loss.” L.D. Burnett defends a humanities education in our skills-obsessed era. The Chronicle of Higher Education

— An illustrated guide to Guy De Bord’s “Society of the Spectacle.” This is rilly, rilly geekily good. (And mildly terrifying.) Hyperallergic

— Architecture critic Witold Rybczynski thinks LACMA should hold onto its William Pereira buildings, asking why Los Angeles, “which has little enough history,” wants to keep reinventing its surroundings. To answer his question: As I’ve reported in the past, SoCal is up to its armpits in Pereira and not all of it is all that. Zocalo Public Square

A view of the William Pereira-designed Ahmanson Building at LACMA.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times )

— The Sydney Opera House is about to get a much-needed makeover to provide its main hall with better acoustics. The Sydney Morning Herald

— That Whole Foods 365 in Silver Lake? Its design was partly inspired by the work of printmaker Corita Kent. Put that in your kombucha and drink it. Design and Architecture

— The Day in Art Dealer Profiles, David Maupin edition: “I go to the 7:30 SoulCycle class in Water Mill. I kind of hate it, but love it.” The New York Times

— Artist Carolee Schneeman on Cycladic art. I really dig this. The Met

— And last but not least, things that are better than the Whitney Biennial: A karaoke video of an Olympics dressage horse dancing to Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas’s “Smooth.” Gawker

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