In December, RECORD explores spaces for the arts in the context of shifting conceptions of culture, including a globular Las Vegas entertainment venue engineered for Sin City-style spectacle and a pyramidic monument-museum in Tirana, Albania, erected for a fallen Communist dictator that’s emerged from a dramatic–and notably stair-intensive–refresh. Also in this issue, we visit a landmark new cultural hub along the River Irwell in the booming English metropolis of Manchester; a wholly redesigned national maritime museum within Paris’s grand Palais de Chaillot; a generously shaded public plaza in downtown Houston designed to bring the performing arts outdoors; a Washington, D.C., museum dedicated to women in the arts that’s undergone a top-to-bottom restoration; and a permanent new home for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program housed within the former home and studio of Pop art great Roy Lichtenstein.