Christian Curiel at Kevin Bruk Gallery in Miami. His show, Collapsing Inwards, is up through Nov. 11th. (Photo by C-M.)

• The Arts Action Fund has released their Congressional report card on the 110th Congress. “The Report Card,” the press release explains, “assigns each Member of Congress a letter grade and numerical score based on his or her voting record on specific arts and arts education policy issues.” Guess who got Fs? Ron Paul from Texas, Dana Rohrabacher from California and Tom Tancredo from Colorado — among many, many others. Maine tops the list for best state delegation, while my birth state of Wyoming and the much tittered-about state of Alaska both tie for dead last. Then again, who needs all that pesky art when you’ve got nature?
• I stand corrected: The art of engraved oil barrels plasma-cut gas cans.
• Bloomberg reports on the fate of the Lehman Bros. art collection, which is comprised of 3,500 pieces, including works by Takashi Murakami, Andreas Gursky and Jasper Johns.
• A profile of art collector Peter Brant, former friend of Warhol and owner of Interview magazine. Interesting sentence: “For years art-world gossips have speculated that Brant and the powerful art dealer Larry Gagosian are skillfully gaming the art market through auctions and brokered sales to boost the prices of artists in who they are heavily invested, such as Warhol, Prince and Koons.” Unfortunately, the writer provides no further explanation… (Via A.O.)
• Speaking of which, Gagosian is going all Ruski.
• Robert Hughes on the art market: “One of the things that sustains the art market is an irrational faith in a continuous rise in prices… There was a 17th-century Italian painter called Guido Reni. Not a lot of people have heard of him but in the late 18th century many connoisseurs thought that Italy’s two supreme artists were Michelangelo and Reni. But by 1950 you could buy a 10ft painting by Reni for £300.”
• The social consequences of a bad economy. The Daily Show‘s take here, complete with starchitect jokes.
• The Day in Computer Art: Mauritian Sunset by Sandy Smith.
• Harvard Law School to award Christo and Jeanne-Claude with its 2008 Great Negotiator Award. For reals.
• Gabriel Orozco on his whale skeleton sculpture, Mobile Matrix, 2006.
• “Wordless art criticism.“
• Interesting essay about contemporary Chinese art: Ellen Pearlman of the Brooklyn Rail takes on Jed Perl of the New Republic. (Via Hrag.)
• Hilarious: For the second time, Tracey Emin’s bronze sculpture of a sparrow is stolen and returned in Liverpool. (Via A.O.)
• Even more hilarious: A canvas by Hugo Chávez, painted during his stint in prison in 1992, has sold for $225,000 at auction. More here.
• Sign up for an October Surprise party, in the vicinity of NYC.
• That polar bear terrorizing D.C.? It was really artist Mark Jenkins in collaboration with Greenpeace.
• When architecture imitates Damien Hirst.
• A thorough three-part report on Renzo Piano’s redo of the California Academy of Sciences.
• Chocolate type faces.
• When Blackbook imitates C-Monster.
• Your moment of Tony Montana.