The Digest. 03.27.08.

Austin Convention Center. Photo by hebig.

• Wheke, the giant calamari.
• Curbed.LA is reporting that Skullphone bought time on those L.A. digital billboards; he didn’t hack into them as previously reported (via Lurker). And Marshall Astor isn’t having it: “I like my graffiti traditional, with some crime involved. Graffiti without the crime, to me, is like kissing your sister.”
• Today’s Street Art Think Piece: Is street art’s popularity gonna kill it? Or is it already dead? (Via AJ.)
• Style Wars, online. That opener gets me every time…
• Graff of the Day: Biok248 in Slovakia. More here.
• The art of Katharina Wahl.
• Determining Robert Smithson’s intent about oil drilling near Spiral Jetty: Was he partial to despoiled environments? Or would it alter Jetty’s physical experience?
• Why aren’t arts organizations working to bring art back into the schools? (Via MAN.)
• Whip out the plastic: A Francis Bacon triptych is headed for the auction block in May—and it’s estimated to go for $70 million. More here.
• Kara Walker, film critic.
• Hillary nekkid. Kinda reminds me of this little number by John Currin.
• Blah blah blah: Five cultural leaders discuss L.A.’s future as a cultural center.
• Q&A with Nicholas Penney, new director of London’s National Gallery: “The message we’ve received is that there is going to be less measurement and more judgment. I hope that is the case because there is nothing more exhausting or ultimately trivialising than box-ticking.” More here. In related news: Looking Around isn’t wild about the 1900 cut-off date.
• Repatriating antiquities, Africa edition.
• The Armory Show, in desperate need of a taco truck.
• Brandon Nastanski at Pulse.
• 4,000 visitors pour in for the invite-only preview of ArtAméricas in Miami.
• Building Canada’s most important photo collection in Toronto. (Via PDN Pulse.)
• Colt 45, refreshing and delicious.
• NYC’s plan for a crap-ass megadevelopment at the Westside Railyards: Not dead yet. In a passionate plea to kill the plan, Nicolai Ourossoff at the NYT says the project resembles “a throwback to the days when corporate Modernism was taking its dying breaths.”
• Photo Essay: Architecture in the paintings of Edward Hopper.
• The half-kilometer Red Ribbon bench at Tagnhe River Park in China.
• Stair porn.
• The Eiffel Tower’s construction process. See schematics of the temporary addition planned by SERERO architects.
• Create an online mixtape.
• Your moment of Eddie Izzard’s Star Wars canteen routine in Legos. (Via Coudal.)