The Digest. 11.25.08.

Loving Couple, India, Orissa, 13th century, at Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum. (Photo by C-M.)

• The black-and-white photographs of Martine Franck. View her portfolio here.
• Artist Jean Shin needs your old trophies for an exhibit at the Smithsonian. Deadline: Dec. 13th.
• The Day in Gloom & Doom: Minnesota Museum of American Art to close after financial and leadership trouble. (Arts Journal.)
• The Baltimore Sun reports on the state of the arts in this doody economy. (Modern Art Notes.)
• Qatar debuts the Museum of Islamic Art, designed by I.M. Pei. See the photos. 
• NPR reports on the history of museums. Interesting fact: museums in the U.S. draw 850 million visitors annually.
• Would you like fries with that? 2,400 art and museum types have signed a petition against the appointment of Mario Resca, a former McDonald’s exec, to the new position of “super manager” of Italy’s museums.
• Game Face: photos of kids’ expressions as they play video games. Just wonderful. (PDN Pulse.)
• Slow blogging. (Thank you, Sasha!)
• Mark Jenkins sculpture alarms passersby in Roanoke. (Hrag.)
• Today’s graff: KTS and Oik working with the water’s reflection in Poland.
• Os Gemeos in Cuba.
• Pac Man cupcakes. (Art Fag City.)
• While Rome (aka our economy) burns…some hedge fund managers are living the high life, dining on jumbo lump crab cakes and sipping Krug Grand Cuvee.
• Trippy Buildings! Photos from Balkanology: New Architecture and Urban Phenomena in South Eastern Europe, at the Swiss Architecture Museum.
• A Tel Aviv wall patched with Legos.
• When chapels get zig-zaggy: A temporary structure for the Deaconesses of St. Loup in Switzerland, by Localarchitecture & Danilo Mondada.
• Your moment of Bueller, cuz sometimes I feel like ditching school.