The Digest. 11.29.07.

Titi Freak and Ramon Martins in Brazil. Photo by Ramon Martins.

• Hug It Out Bitches: The best by-product to surface from the writer’s strike.
• Those Pollocks? Not really Pollocks, says a scientific researcher.
• Art or Crap? Mat Gleason of Coagula Art Journal gives us his take on Shepard Fairey, Chris Galligan and Don Ed Hardy, among others. He also reveals that it is possible to open a gallery in L.A. simply by maxing out your credit cards. (Thanks, Jason Lujan, for the link.)
• When art and advertising blend into an indistinguishable mess mass: Calvin Klein shills for the New Museum in an ad that’s visually indebted to The Splasher.
• The Week in Not-So-Exact Science: Scientists are studying more than 500 paintings of sunsets in hopes of gaining insights about climate change.
• “Poo is funny.” A Q&A with street artist Abe Lincoln Jr.
• The U.N. building to get a makeover. No word on whether geo-political relevancy will follow.
• Looted pieces slowly make their way back to Iraq’s National Museum. (Via ArtsJournal.)
• Latin American art market on the rise.
• Bring on the dancing monkeys.
• In L.A.: Ann Summa’s punk pictures at Track 16. (Real punk. Not K-Mart toddler punk.)
• In NYC: The Streets of Europe at Jonathan Levine and Tara Donovan at The Met.
• In Chicago: Two war-related shows: Consuming War at the Hyde Park Art Center and Meanwhile in Baghdad at the Renaissance Society.
• In Bartlesville, Okla.: Build a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house out of gingerbread.
• In Seattle: Insubstantial Pageant Faded at Western Bridge.
• Your moment of everyday normalness.