Construction season is inconvenient, it interrupts our regularly scheduled lives, and all those orange barrels are unsightly additions to city landscapes. But Salt Lake City is treating the extensive renovation of its downtown as a “learning opportunity” with the establishment of the Temporary Museum of Permanent Change. With the city’s downtown rendered inaccessible to vehicles, storefronts and construction sites across the city are serving as temporary museum exhibits that “will help people understand the different ways cities change over time, and how the community’s inextricable relationship with the city influences its evolution,” museum creator Stephen Goldsmith tells Planetizen.

On the museum website, sections with titles like “museum restaurants” and “museum shops” bring attention to lesser-known services throughout the downtown by giving shout-outs to local businesses. Delving into community involvement and evoking elements of guerilla art, the Temporary Museum of Permanent Change is truly a beautiful concept. —Anna Cynar

It’s often a delicate dance when government gets involved in the arts, and a new U.S.-backed program appears to be off to a stumbly start. The American Prospect reports that the program, called Museums and Community Collaborations Abroad, is intended to fund artists to create works for overseas museums. To that end, the State Department and the American Association of Museums are handing out $700,000 in grant money to lucky artists.

There are a couple of hitches, though. “For one thing,” the Prospect writes, “the State Department requires that each proposal explain ‘how this project promotes U.S. foreign policy.’ For another, it turns out that U.S. embassies and consulates are allowed—or, one might guess, encouraged—to preselect foreign museums for participation.”

Given these criteria, what would a winning entry look like? Perhaps something like this. —Keith Goetzman