C-MONSTER.net

Sever Ozer in L.A.: No more migra. (Photo by Vidalia.)

• Nature break: Swimming elephants. (Via Personism.)
• R.I.P. Anne d’Harnoncourt, chief executive of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the first woman to lead a major museum. She will be difficult to replace, writes Inquirer art critic Edward Sozanski.
• Seattle Art Museum director Mimi Gates announces her retirement. (Via A.J.)
• Philippe de Montebello, outgoing Met director, to get swan song show. In unrelated news: The Met’s analysis on the Superheroes exhibition is totally middlebrow and riddled with artspeak, says the Guardian’s Steven Wells.
• If you went to the Bodies exhibit, now you’re eligible for a partial refund ‘cuz it turns out that the remains on display may or may not have been comprised of executed Chinese prisoners.
• Today’s art-at-the-yard-sale find: Works by Weegee.
• “Art is boring.”
• Cy Twombly on his upbringing: “…when I grew up you ­always had to say, ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘Yes, sir’. And you were never to talk about yourself. Once I said to my mother: ‘You would be happy if I just kept well-dressed and [had] good ­manners,’ and she said: ‘What else is there?’”
• On your marks, get set, buy! Art Basel opens today.
• Art criticism of the Day: “Major artists X-ray the cultures that give rise to them. A Koons retrospective that has opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago occasions queasy wonderment, on the order of ‘We’ve come to this?,’ and the perhaps reluctant conclusion ‘Uh-huh.’”
• But will they be selling Tobias’s short shorts? You too can own a piece of furniture from the set of Arrested Development.
• Graff of the Day: Kaio in Milan.
• Drips, graffiti and fashion. (Via What You Write.)
• Video of David Ellis’s kinetic sculptures at Roebling Hall, through June 28^th.
• In the wake of attempted auctions of Neutra and Louis Kahn homes: Do auctions work for architecture?
• Unlikely architectural merch: Robert A.M. Stern has a line of home furnishings.
• NPR has a new series called Urban Frontier, that examines life in the world’s cities. First up: Karachi. (Via architecture.mnp.)
• In Kobe, Japan: A sports stadium, designed by Shuhei Endo, that can also function as a staging area during disasters.
• The Day in Contradiction in Terms: Brad Pitt to design a “socially conscious” luxury property in Dubai. (Via Life Without Buildings.)
• Your moment of auditions for gay phone sex operators. (Merci, Mlle. Connasse!)