The Digest. 02.04.08.

Nothing/Everything. Photo by mdumlao98.

Tech update: After last week’s spectacular tech burp (special thanks to Yahoo, for losing four days worth of work), the blog is mostly up and running. In reloading some posts, I lost updates, as well as comments. At this point, that’s just the way it’s gonna have to be. Thanks for your patience. xox, C-M.

• What is art?
• Watch this! James Kalm has a fantastic video that shows why those no-photo policies at galleries and museums are the ultimate in douchebaggery.
• Unauthorized museum podcasts.
• Artist quote of the Day: Jasper Johns: “Self-description is calamity.”
• Is defacing graffiti also graffiti? The case of the Grey Ghost of New Orleans, who has taken it upon himself to buff the city clean with grey paint.
• Graff dose: Teurk in Paris.
• Murakami billboard defaced by Augor and Revok in L.A. is now reportedly part of the Japanese artist’s permanent collection.
• The spray paint lamp.
• Celebrating the anniversary of the Mooninite bomb scare in Boston.
• Photojournalist Eddie Adams shot one of the most memorable photos of the Vietnam War 40 years ago last week. (Includes audio of Adams discussing the event.)
• More pop psychology than you can shake a paint brush at: Experts analyze George W. Bush’s interpretation of his favorite painting.
• Let the Games begin! Countdown to the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA. Plus: The city of L.A.’s crap-ass urban planning on the roads surrounding the museum.
• Those U.S. museum raids: All roads lead back to unpaid taxes.
• ¡¡Art World Smackdown!! Deceptively Simple versus Art to Go on the subject of art critics with conflicts of interest. In related news: Walter10021 versus everyone else.
• Second Life gets an art gallery.
• Photo of the Day: Daniel Sannwald.
• Just what the art industry needs: Another reality show about art. (Via Looking Around.)
• The Museum of American Finance: A museum that is nakedly about money, as opposed to most others, which pretend to be about culture.
• Martin Sullivan named director of the National Portrait Gallery in D.C.
• From the Department of There’s No Such Thing as Bad PR: Danish museum plans to buy cartoons of Muhammad that caused global riots.
• I heart North Korean architecture.
• Delta Shelter. (Via Monoscope.)
• The Day in Bad Architectural Ideas: Developer wants to change the design on the balconies of Morris Lapidus’s Eden Roc Hotel, one of Miami’s most iconic MiMo buildings.
• In related news: Planned visitor center will wreck Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial, reports Bloomberg.
• Where architecture and bad acid flashbacks intersect.
• Todays’ If-A-Tree-Falls-in-a-Forest Question: Can a Jedi lightsaber cut through Superman?
• Magnum’s photo of the week.
• Your (other) moment of David Lynch.