Matthew Brandt, Big Bear Lake, CA A1, 2012, from his “Lakes and Reservoirs” series©MATTHEW BRANDT/COURTESY YOSSI MILO GALLERY, NEW YORK

Expired Photo Materials Find New Life in Contemporary Photography ()

“I woke up one day and thought, ‘I should have been a conservator,’” says photographer Alison Rossiter. “I thought, ‘Things are disappearing, and I want to know about them.’”

That was in 2003, and the silver gelatin photo materials Rossiter had used since the 1970s were beginning to disappear. Rather than changing careers, Rossiter volunteered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s photo conservation lab, where she learned everything she could about the history and composition of light-sensitive paper and film. In her own work, she began making photograms with old sheet film that she bought on eBay.

Botero in the Big Top ()

In 2006, “I found myself in a small town on the Pacific Coast in Mexico, when a small circus arrived,” Colombian artist Fernando Botero tells ARTnews. “I was excited, and I went that night and again the next day. They let me in—I saw how these nomadic people lived in trailers, doing their laundry outdoors and then performing before the audience.” Fascinated by what he’d witnessed, Botero spent the next two years sketching and painting the circus “nonstop,” he says. “Every aspect was an exciting subject matter, and I wondered how I had not thought before of the poetic possibilities of the circus.”

Baftas 2014: 12 Years a Slave wins best film award ()

12 Years a Slave has won the top prize of best film at the Baftas, seeing off competition from American Hustle and Gravity. It adds to its award for Chiwetel Ejiofor in the best actor category, and mirrors the Golden Globes in winning best film but losing the prize for best director.

Banksy’s Kissing Coppers – taken from a pub wall in Brighton – sells for $575,000 in US ()

One of Banksy’s most famous murals has been sold at auction in the US after being removed from the wall of a Brighton pub. Kissing Coppers, a life-size black-and-white graffiti work of two policemen kissing, was sold to an anonymous buyer in Miami for for $575,000 (£345,000).

Anselm Reyle shuts up shop ()

The 43-year-old artist Anselm Reyle announced last month that he is retiring from the art world and closing his costly studio. The German artist–who at one point employed 50 assistants in his studio and was paying up to €800,000 a month on production–said that his rising costs caused his creativity to diminish.

Hunt continues for the “real” Mona Lisa ()

Italy is unlikely to retrieve the Louvre’s most famous painting any time soon—but it might have a chance with the “real” Mona Lisa. A self-styled art detective, Silvano Vinceti, has told the Italian media about the latest red herring in his quest to unearth the remains of Lisa Gherardini, the woman widely identified as Leonardo’s enigmatic sitter.

London artists start New York-style gallery hopping ()

The leading UK artist Mark Wallinger has left his London gallery Anthony Reynolds after 29 years, and is now represented by Hauser & Wirth. A spokeswoman for Hauser & Wirth, which has galleries in London, Zurich and New York, says: “Wallinger will continue working with Carlier Gebauer in Germany and Galerie Krinzinger in Austria, but is represented by Hauser & Wirth elsewhere.”