The Digest. 10.30.08.

An installation by Michael De Feo, at the old state penitentiary in Jefferson City, Missouri, a prison that at one point or another housed inmates such as Pretty Boy Floyd, boxer Sonny Liston and James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. (Image courtesy of Michael De Feo.)

• The art of soap.
• The micro-industry of Obamart.
• “Bremer Walls.” (Tomorrow Museum.)
• Alaska’s Sen. Ted Stevens is gonna go to the pokey after being convicted of failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts. Among them: a fugly fish sculpture.
• The Smithsonian’s former Indian museum director to reimburse the museum almost $10,000 for payments he shouldn’t have received. (Is it me, or is W. Richard West a highly nucular shade of orange?)
• Rowdy MBAs from Northwestern’s Kellogg School got plastered and hurled inside Chicago’s Field Museum.
• Damien Hirst returns to the Emmanuel Perrotin gallery after 19 years.
• Jenny Holzer’s Twitter page: apparently, not for reals.
• Paddy Johnson on Gilbert & George.
• Some museums are embracing the great big Internets. More here.
• The art industrial average is sucking the big one. More here. (Arts Journal.)
• In Paris: Tom Sachs gets Kitty with it.
• Holy Bat-Manga!
• Robert Irwin’s work to get deconstructed by the likes of Vija Celmins, Michael Govan, Joel Meyerowitz and others, at the Chicago Humanities Festival on Nov. 9th.
• The Netherlands’ National Archive has begun posting its images on Flickr. (Coudal.)
• Stuff Journalists Like. (Fimoculous.)
• Today’s Graff: Bo130 in Italy. More here.
• 40 pixadores vandalized the 28th São Paulo Biennial on its opening day, reportedly as a protest against the commercialization of culture. Read a story (in Portuguese) here, complete with video. This comes a little more than a month after a group of pixadores did a similar thing at the opening of a gallery show, also in São Paulo.
• “Photographing graffiti: sampling or stealing?”
• Israeli court OKs controversial Frank Gehry-designed museum.
• Baconnaise. (Thank you for the sublime ridiculosity, ackackack.)
• Your moment of the weirdest drug song ever, courtesy of Mlle. Connasse.