The Digest. 03.29.10.

Hyena, by Ping Zhu. (Image courtesy of Ping Zhu.)
- Werner Herzog as a plastic bag. (Kottke.)
- Speaking of bags, Morrissey would like to keep Damien Hirst’s head inside of one.
- Truthout.org needs your help.
- Craziest Video Ever: Kool-Aid Man in Second Life. (Don’t miss the part where he goes to the sex club. You’ll never be the same again.)
- Museum I gotta get to: The Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health. Am fascinated by this delightfully sinister menstrual propaganda from the ’40s. Bet @museumnerd hasn’t covered that one. Yet.
- Word on the street is that L.A. MoCA could kick off the Deitch regime with a Dennis Hopper show. Not Edward. Dennis.
- The New Museum’s Richard Flood equated bloggers with “prairie dogs” and that “truth means nothing to them” during a speech at the Portland Art Museum, according to a report by Lisa Radon on Hyperallergic. He also said he just learned about blogs a few months ago, “the internet is still a ghetto” and that Jerry Saltz’s Facebook page is “frightening.” All this from a guy who is curator at an institution whose clearly-stated mission on its website and on its 990 tax forms is: “New Art, New Ideas.”
- In light of this…Let’s Dump on Skin Fruit Day: Christian Viveros-Faune says, “The wrong show for our times in just about every possible way.” And even the usually relentlessly-positive Saltz-master opines, “this much beloved yet deeply frustrating institution has crossed some invisible line, its already-thin credibility stretched to the breaking point.”
- John Perrault has been testing out the Is This Art? iPhone app.
- Slideshow: Painting, not dead yet, writes Roberta Smith.
- California, through the eyes of Henry Wessel.
- Lady Painters Round-Up: Awesome video bit with Susan Rothenberg (about painting a dog she’d had to put down) and Ida Applebroog (talking vagina).
- Tino Sehgal Flashback: What is progress? “An angel being blown back through time.” Good answer. (The kids interviewed for this segment are awesome.)
- Art on the pooper: The White Cube Toilet Gallery. (@ARTnewsmag.)
- The Day in Art Merch: Andy Warhol Ferragamos. Effing hilarious.
- RIP Jim Marshall, rock photographer. See a NYT slideshow here.
- Woot woot! Thanks, Flavorpill, for the props.
- Shepard Fairey is asking for permission.
- Today’s Street Art: The Gualicho car, in Argentina.
- SANAA, designers of the New Museum, take the Pritzker. See additional coverage at Cityscapes, NPR, Fast Company, and NY Times. Plus: Cityscapes on how to win the Pritzker: practice, practice, practice.
- The High Line, before and after.
- Stair Porn. (Thank you, Howie.)
- Orson Welles reads Moby Dick.

Kool-Aid Man in Second Life was part of a Fotofest exhibition called “Poke!” in Houston last year. There was an exhibition event at a local bar, and Jon Rafman gave us a live tour through Second Life. I don’t think I had near enough beer in me when he took us into into the sex clubs. Disturbing and fascinating.
I heard about the Museum of Menstruation years ago from my friend Teresa Riordan. She discovered it while researching her book, “Inventing Beauty (A History of the Innovations that Have Made Us Beautiful!)”. It’s a good read – covers everything from eyes to derrieres. My favorite is the vibrators in the 1918 Sears Roebuck catalog, shown along with other appliances – egg beaters and radiators!
http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Beauty-History-Innovations-Beautiful/dp/0767914511/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269882744&sr=1-1
Dennis Hopper show at MOCA would be a step in the right direction. There were a number of Dennis Hopper photos used for the Allan Kaprow retrospective, and I’d love to see more in the museum. I just hope they can preserve the intimacy of the scale of the images.