MOSCOW — The general director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kiev, the largest art institution in Ukraine, has been accused of censorship and catering to church and state after she painted over in black a mural she had commissioned from the contemporary artist Volodymyr Kuznetsov.

In an appeal posted on Thursday a Kiev-based group called the Art Workers’ Self-Defense Initiative called for a boycott of Mystetskyi Arsenal and said that the general director, Natalia Zabolotna, had used “Great and Grand,” the exhibition from which she banned Mr. Kuznetsov, as a vehicle for “presenting culture as an attractive object working for the fusion of state and church, which in this instance is encroaching even on artistic space.”

The exhibition, which presents 1,000 pieces, including icons, opened on July 26 as part of celebrations marking the 1,025th anniversary of events that brought Christianity to Ukraine and Russia. Politicians and clergymen attended the opening. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Kirill I, were in Kiev together on Saturday to mark the anniversary with the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Mystetskyi Arsenal, or Art Arsenal, is housed in a former tsarist-era weapons arsenal just opposite the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, one of the centers of Orthodoxy.

Mr. Kuznetsov wrote on his Facebook page on July 25 that he had arrived at the arsenal to find that he was was not being allowed to complete the mural, “Koliivschina: Judgment Day.” Then he learned that it had been painted over. In the work he depicts corrupt clergymen and bureaucrats burning in hell.

Ms. Zabolotna told Levy Bereg, or Left Bank, a popular Ukrainian news Web site, that Mr. Kuznetsov had violated the terms of his commission which, she said, was supposed to be devoted to events in the town of Vradievka, where policemen were accused of raping and brutally beating a young woman. She described his mural as “a slap personally in my face” and “a provocation against visitors to the exhibition” and said that Mr. Kuznetsov had apparently been influenced by plans to hold a protest near the arsenal. About 10 protesters were arrested in front of the art space when they demonstrated on July 26 against the “clericalization of Ukraine.”

“You can call this my own performance,” she said of painting over the work. “I don’t regret what I did.” She added that she was “speaking out against the impudence of certain artists.”

Oleksandr Soloviev, a respected Ukrainian curator and deputy director of Mystetskyi Arsenal, quit after the incident. Ms. Zabolotna did say that Mr. Kuznetsov would still be paid for his work. In a blog post on the Left Bank site the artist described her actions as “an act of vandalism and bureaucratic grovelling.”

In 2012, Ms. Zabolotna organized Kiev’s first international contemporary art biennale at the arsenal, and she plans to open a museum of Ukrainian art in 2014.

How does a museum decide to dissolve?

Copyright Yale UniversityA color plate from Josef Albers’s “Interaction of Color.”

“Interaction of Color,” the landmark 1963 book by Josef Albers — the German-born artist and educator who taught at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale University over the course of his storied career — isn’t just for aspiring artists. Its mesmerizing illustrations are a revelation for anyone interested in color theory and human perception. On Thursday, to mark the book’s 50th anniversary, Yale University Press, the publisher of the original edition, will offer a fresh way to engage with Albers’s lessons by releasing the “Interaction of Color” App for the iPad. The $9.99 app bundles the book’s full text and more than 125 of its original color studies with more than 60 new interactive plates that allow users to perform their own experiments with color, along with a new color palette tool and video commentary that explains Albers’s principles. There are also interviews with the graphic designer Peter Mendelsund; the artists Brice Marden and Anoka Faruquee; the architect Annabelle Selldorf; the textile designers Denyse Schmidt and Christopher Farr; and the director of sourcing and product development of Fab.com, Brian Mullan, all of whom talk about the use of color in their professional practices; as well as Nicholas Fox Weber, the director of the Albers Foundation. In addition to the app, a 50th anniversary edition of the book is available in paperback for $18.

In the video below, the designers involved in the project talk about the importance of color and the influence of Albers.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 24, 2013

Jeffrey Deitch is expected to resign as director of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art imminently, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The prices have been record breaking, and startling.

More than $70 million for Rothko’s “White Center” in 2007, a high-water mark for that artist.

More than $20 million later that year for a Damien Hirst pill cabinet, then a record for a living artist.

And $250 million for Cézanne’s “Card Players” in 2011, the highest known price ever paid for a painting.

Given the secrecy of the art market, few knew at the time who had laid out such unprecedented sums.

But it has become increasingly clear that those masterpieces and many more have been purchased by Qatar, a tiny Persian Gulf country with enormous wealth and cultural ambitions to match: it is buying art at a level never seen before.

“They’re the most important buyers of art in the market today,” said Patricia G. Hambrecht, the chief business development officer for Phillips auction house. “The amount of money being spent is mind-boggling.”

The purchasing is directed through intermediaries by Sheika al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, chairwoman of the Qatar Museums Authority and a sister to Qatar’s new emir. At age 30 she has become one of the most influential players in the art world.

No one knows exactly how much Sheika al Mayassa has spent on behalf of her family or the museum authority since she was named chairwoman by her father, the former emir, in 2006. But experts estimate the acquisition budget reaches $1 billion a year and say the Qataris have used it to secure a host of undisputed modern and contemporary masterpieces by Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons.

Where all this art will eventually end up remains something of a mystery. But it seems clear that, just as Qatar has used its oil riches to boost its influence in the Middle East with ventures like arming Syrian rebels, its wealth is also being deployed to help the country become a force in the world of culture.

This effort to create a first-class contemporary art collection, essentially from scratch, has buoyed the international art market, experts say, and contributed to some of the escalation in prices.

Until Qatar’s 2007 purchase, for example, the most expensive Rothko ever sold at auction (“Homage to Matisse”) had drawn $22 million in 2005, less than one-third of the price Qatar paid. In 2011 the $250 million spent for “Card Players” was four times the highest public price ever paid for a work by that artist.

“When they finish their buying program and withdraw from the market,” said David Nash, a New York dealer who spent 35 years as a top executive with Sotheby’s, “they will leave a big hole which I don’t see anyone else ready to fill at their level.”

In recent years the Qatar Museums Authority has created three high-profile museums in the capital, Doha, by the architects Jean Nouvel, I. M. Pei and Jean-François Bodin. But each of these projects — a new home for the National Museum of Qatar now under construction; the Museum of Islamic Art; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art — is focused on regional art and artists. So experts expect that a good portion of the Western collection being amassed will become part of a new contemporary art institution in the country, though officials have yet to announce that.

The annual acquisition budgets of major museums typically amount to just a small fraction of what Qatar is spending. The Museum of Modern Art, for example, spent $32 million to acquire art for the fiscal year that ended in June 2012; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, $39 million.

While other gulf states like Abu Dhabi and Dubai are also trying to become cultural capitals, those two members of the United Arab Emirates have teamed up with existing institutions — namely the Louvre and the Guggenheim — to establish themselves. Qatar, meanwhile, is going it alone.

“They see themselves as an international center for many cultures,” said Allen L. Keiswetter, a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “It establishes them as another reason to be a destination for travel, for business. If you want to attract people, you need to have a reason to go there.”

Sheika al Mayassa declined to be interviewed for this article, but she has made limited remarks about the role art will play in Qatar’s future.

“We are revising ourselves through our cultural institutions and cultural development,” she said in a 2010 TED Talk. “Art becomes a very important part of our national identity.”

In an interview that year with The New York Times, the sheika suggested that establishing art institutions might challenge Western preconceptions about Muslim societies.

“My father often says, in order to have peace, we need to first respect each other’s cultures,” she said. “And people in the West don’t understand the Middle East. They come with Bin Laden in their heads.”

Sheika al Mayassa appears to combine Western and Muslim influences. Sometimes she dresses like a stylish business executive; sometimes she wears a traditional black abaya, which covers everything but her round face. She speaks French and English as well as Arabic.

The sheika does not have a formal background in art history, having studied political science and literature at Duke University in North Carolina. Both she and her husband, Sheik Jassim bin Abdulaziz al-Thani, also did postgraduate work at Columbia University before returning to Qatar.

“The sheika has a very grand vision and is a very educated woman,” said Leila Heller, a New York dealer with many Middle Eastern artists. “She wants to make Doha a hub for art in the region, where people don’t necessarily have to fly to New York and to Paris and to L.A. to see great shows. Doha has an ambitious plan of opening close to 20 museums of different kinds.”

As to the guiding principle behind the buying, art experts say the sheika is simply trying to amass the best of the best, whatever the price. The pace of her purchasing during the past three or four years has vaulted her, many say, to a place among the art world’s most powerful figures. She has been written about by publications like Forbes and Vanity Fair; The Economist recently pronounced her “the art world’s most powerful woman.”

And yet her profile within the places where art is bought and sold is all but nonexistent. The sheika does not visit art galleries. She won’t be found in the auction room on sale nights among the other major collectors for whom the business is something of a high-society fraternity.

Auction houses and galleries will often wine and dine these collectors before a big sale. Significant works will be flown to their homes. The Qataris don’t take part in this. They delegate their purchasing to a handful of experienced art advisers who do it for them — initially the dealers Philippe Ségalot and Franck Giraud and now Guy Bennett.

Mr. Bennett, a former co-head of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern art department worldwide, is known as a master dealmaker. He is just one of a number of Christie’s alumni who have taken on roles with Qatar. In June 2011 Edward Dolman, the auction house’s former chairman, was named executive director of the Qatar Museums Authority. Jean-Paul Engelen, the director of public art programs for the authority, is also a Christie’s veteran.

The Qatar team typically buys from dealers, though some of its most major purchases have been at auction. Experts said that another intermediary may act on Mr. Bennett’s behalf so that the sales cannot be traced to the Qataris, who want to keep their buying private to prevent driving up the market and fueling speculation about their plans.

“They are very secretive about their purchases and activities in the art market and I am not quite sure why,” Mr. Nash said.

American art institutions could be expected to be frustrated to see so many important pieces leaving the United States. But some museum executives say that’s just how it goes.

“Sure, there are lots of works of art that we have absolutely wanted,” said Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art. “But if Rothko and de Kooning and Kline, among others, end up circulating in Moscow, Qatar and Shanghai, that’s not so bad — it’s a projection of American culture and importance that is meaningful.”

With a small army of workers painting gallery walls and installing lighting fixtures this month, the new Pérez Art Museum Miami is getting ready to welcome thousands of visitors into its 200,000 square feet of bayfront space when it opens in December, in time for Art Basel.

And now, the museum has tapped a chef to feed all those hungry art aficionados:

Stephen Starr, the Philadelphia-based restaurateur whose empire includes 31 dining destinations and exclusive catering contracts at seven cultural institutions, will lead the still-unnamed restaurant at Pérez Art Museum. The catering arm of Starr’s organization also will handle food and drinks for all of the museum’s banquets and private events. Starr's contract with the museum runs for seven years.

“Stephen really appealed to us because of his experience at other institutions as well as with his restaurants,” said Hollie Altman, the museum’s director of special events and sales. “We met with a lot of groups who were either very good at catering or had successful restaurants. But Stephen really has this young, dynamic team that’s able to come to Miami and bring its culinary experiences from both aspects.”

Starr’s restaurant in the new Herzon & de Meuron-designed museum will be open during museum hours, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, in addition to extended evening hours, until 10 p.m., on Thursday. It will seat about 70 people inside, under a slanted ceiling, and about 30 outside; both dining areas feature views of Biscayne Bay.

The restaurant’s aim is to “lengthen the stay of museum guests, but also of course to raise their overall satisfaction,” said Simon Powles, president of Starr Restaurants Catering Group.

“We hope to provide everything visitors could want during regular museum hours, which primarily will focus on a lot of great lunch dishes and snack items,” Powles said. “We’ll also be open one night a week, and we’d love to take advantage of that by offering beer dinners, wine dinners, cooking demos. And I really hope we can make Sunday brunch a destination opportunity: Come have brunch down by the waterfront; spend the morning with us.”

The restaurant’s menu, like its name, is still a work in progress – Powles said his team has a team trip planned to Miami in early August to hammer out those details – but expect at least some influence from Starr’s flagship restaurants, Buddakan and Morimoto.

“We’ll definitely incorporate some signature Starr dishes, like dim sum from Buddakan and sushi from the Morimoto and Makoto menus,” Powles said, adding that the fare and price points will be family friendly.

In addition to serving the restaurant, Starr’s kitchen will have the capability to handle on-site banquets of up to 400 people at the museum.

“We pride ourselves on delivering restaurant-level cuisine at all of our private functions,” Powles said. “The best feedback we get from clients is when they tell us their food didn’t taste like a mass-produced, catered dinner.”

Museum leaders also have talked with Starr about rotating in seasonal dishes based on the background of exhibiting artists. Starr and his Asian-leaning cuisine should have no problem finding food to fit with the works of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who will be featured at the museum from December through March. But what about when the spring-summer “Caribbean: Crossworlds of the World” installation comes to town? Does he have recipes in his repertoire to complement Brazilian painter Beatriz Milhazes’ fall exhibit?

Leann Standish, the museum’s deputy director of external affairs, smiled.

“Something we love about Stephen was how creative he is,” Standish said. “He’s very flexible and able to respond to what Miami wants.”

The three-level Pérez Art Museum is located in downtown Miami’s Museum Park, the new name for Bicentennial Park. The space is about three times larger than the Miami Art Museum’s former Flagler Street home and will face the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, set to open in 2015.

The $220 million museum project is being paid for with about $100 million in public money, which Miami-Dade voters approved with a 2004 general obligation bond, and about $120 million in private donations (including $40 million in cash and art from developer Jorge Pérez, the naming donor, and $1 million from Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross).

Starr’s restaurant at Pérez Art Museum will be his third in South Florida; he opened Steak 954 at the W Hotel in Fort Lauderdale in 2009 and Makoto at the Bal Harbour Shops in 2011. Having been named Bon Appétit magazine’s 2005 Restaurateur of the Year, Starr’s reach includes 20 restaurants in Philadelphia as well as others in New York, Atlantic City and Washington, D.C. His permanent catering gigs include New York Botanical Gardens, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Pérez Art Museum restaurant will be Starr’s first partnership with a Florida cultural institution – bringing his number of exclusive contracts nationwide to eight – and will mark his foray into the region’s catering and special-events market.

Powles said the catering group is looking at two or three potential spaces for a commissary kitchen in Miami to prepare food for non-museum jobs. Starr will have a staff of seven managers at the museum, plus another team for off-site catering.

Bonnie Clearwater, the art world powerhouse credited with raising the profile of North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art, announced Wednesday that she is leaving the institution to head the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale.

The 75,000-square-foot facility at 1 E. Las Olas Blvd., which is owned by the private Nova Southeastern University, has been searching for a new executive director since Irvin Lippman retired last year.

Though Clearwater said the Fort Lauderdale museum had approached her repeatedly over the years, she wasn’t ready to make the move until now.

“The bones are there, the support is there and what they really need is exactly what I can bring them,” she said, describing her role as “defining its purpose, its vision and taking it to beyond not even the next level but he next level beyond that.”

Clearwater said leaving MOCA, where she has worked since 1993, was a “very, very” difficult decision. But she said she is leaving the museum in good hands, with an enthusiastic board, able staff and well-regarded young new curator in place, Alex Gartenfeld.

“I feel very confident in the museum’s future,” she said. “It’s really [because of] the fact that there is such a strong and educated board and a creative, smart, resourceful staff that I feel confident that this is a good time for me to take this opportunity.”

She will start in her new position as director and chief curator on Sept. 3, but said she would still curate the Tracey Emin: Angel Without You exhibition at MOCA in December.

George L. Hanbury II, president and CEO of Nova Southeastern University in Davie, said the university has not been able to fully integrate the museum since acquiring it in 2008. He said Clearwater will be tasked with making the museum an academic asset for students at the university and at the K-12 University School.

Clearwater stood out, he said, because of her knowledge of South Florida and connections with art supporters in the region.

“We have been an underappreciated museum, I believe, for many years,” said David Horvitz, chair of the Fort Lauderdale museum’s board of governors and a friend of Clearwater. He cited the museum’s large size, its three permanent collections and its architecture as assets that often go unnoticed.

“Couple that with now being a part of Nova and their real desire to build an academic portion of this museum to integrate everything the museum does to the student life and the academic experiences of Nova,” he said.