After months of closures due to Covid-19, museums in New York City have finally been given an official reopening date. In a speech on Friday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the city’s cultural institutions can open their doors beginning on August 24: “[They] have long provided comfort and creativity for generations of people,” he said, “and when Covid-19 began to threaten the city and this nation, it was especially heartbreaking to see them close their doors.”

In order to reopen, museums will need to follow strict social distancing guidelines. They’ll need to keep buildings at 25 percent occupancy and use a timed ticketing system, which allows staff members to carefully regulate how many people enter at once. (For context: the Whitney, which inhabits a 2015 Renzo Piano building in the Meatpacking District, can accommodate 500 people at 25 percent capacity.) Wearing face coverings is compulsory, and staffers must be stationed throughout to help manage the flow of traffic.

The announcement marks a major milestone in the city’s fight against the coronavirus. This past Saturday, Cuomo had announced that the positive rate for Covid-19 tests in the state had fallen below one percent for eight straight days, which helped prompt his decision to let museums reopen. For many, this milestone marks a silver lining in what has been a financially devastating season for the cultural sector—the Metropolitan Museum of Art recently laid off 79 staff members, and many other of the country’s museum workers have suffered a similar fate.

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After discovering postmodernism while studying industrial design at Virginia Tech, Sophie Collé learned how to make furniture imbued with a sense of humor. Though the objects that come from her young Brooklyn-based practice are consistently fun and personality-driven, Collé is serious about setting an example for the industry: Each purchase benefits a cause of the customer’s choosing, helping illustrate design’s power to effect positive change.

The cottage industry of fashion masks was an inevitable trend of Covid-19—stylish mouthwear has been a staple of Korean streetwear for more than a decade and the importance of masks in preventing Covid-19 is well-documented. The creative community has taken notice: The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art has partnered with some of art and design’s biggest names to release a collection of limited-edition masks to support the institution during quarantine and also bring some levity to precarious times.

The collaborators are familiar—Yoko Ono, Hank Willis Thomas, Virgil Abloh, Barbara Kruger, Alex Israel—but the cause is less so. L.A.’s MOCA, which is currently closed, facilitated the partnerships for a financial boost until visitors are able to come again. From Israel’s Sky Backdrop mask with detachable self-portrait and smiling avocado pins to Kruger’s red-hued design scrawled with “Better Safe Than Sorry” to Catherine Opie’s Bo from Being and Having, a reprint of a mustachioed Opie from her 1991 photography series, the message of the collection is clear: be safe and responsible, and have a little fun.

Filipa Ramos once described Solastalgia as the “unease we inflict on ourselves as we create a world we don’t want to inhabit, a world stripped of nature.” This emotional reaction to change—in particular, climate change—inspires “Eight Wild Tales,” a film series that examines personal and collective responses to new senses of strangeness in the world. Curated by Ramos, the series features works by the artists Kara Walker, Camille Henrot, and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané that narrate outlandish stories of joy, awe, ecstasy, and fear as different relationships are established with more-than-human worlds. Each film will stream on Art Basel’s website for one week.

For more than a year, the men’s label O.N.S Clothing planned to open a bricks-and-mortar flagship in New York City’s tony Nolita neighborhood. There’s perhaps no better home for the up-and-coming label, which has proven popular among city dwellers who demand versatile, well-tailored garments that feel relaxed yet don’t compromise on style. It’s likely because the brand’s founder, Brian Chung, grew up around textile manufacturing, and decided to launch O.N.S to offer comfortable, easy-to-wear basics for his friend group of transplants in cities around the world.

Chung enlisted the firms Collective and Tang Kawasaki Studio to design the boutique, which channels the relaxed downtown cool of O.N.S apparel while adding an array of unexpected touches. But two weeks before the grand opening, Covid-19 caused all non-essential businesses in New York to close, which threw a wrench in O.N.S’s plans. Opening a retail flagship in the midst of a global pandemic is an ambitious undertaking, but that didn’t stop Chung from keeping his eyes set firmly on the future.

Quite unexpectedly, Paris Hilton enjoys making and collecting pop art.

This spooky bat-shaped corkscrew by OTOTO appears ready to take flight.

The world’s first safely distanced music venue features “personal platforms.”

Some of Boeing’s jumbo jets still receive monthly updates from floppy disks.