The Digest. 03.27.09.

Sleeping Girls in a Japanese Bed, circa late 19th century. From the New York Public Library’s photography collection. (Image courtesy of the NYPL.)

• Cities deal with a surge in shanty towns. Slideshow here. (architecture.mnp.)
• Boombox bikes. Related: you can see pieces like this by Future Shock at the Queens International 4 at the Queens Museum, through April 26. (ackackack.)
• James Turrell/Alice Aycock Google Maps face-off.
• The very long press release that explains the 100-count indictment against art dealer Larry Salandar. Plus, the NYT story of his arrest. (Culture Grrl, Arts Journal.)
• The Corcoran cuts staff.
• Jonathan Lethem to curate the Brooklyn Museum’s art Twitter feed for April. (Tomorrow Museum.)
• More on the Bergamot Station situation in Santa Monica. (Marshall Astor.)
• The Berlin art bubble deflates.
• A Prada/Koolhaas/Vezzoli clusterfrack in Interview. (Art in America.)
• Artists, kick ‘em while they’re down.
• More Hitler paintings to go to auction. (Interestingly, they kinda resemble hipster art.) Not really related: Giacometti cats also to go up on the block.
• The trailer for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are.
• Today’s Graff: A tape elephant by Roa in Belgium.
• Shepard Fairey statement on his pending AP lawsuit: “I did not create the Obama poster for financial gain…A free download of the Obama image was available on my website, which should provide further evidence of the desire to disseminate the image, not to benefit financially.”
• New Orleans’ mad buffer the Grey Ghost gets a 60-day suspended sentence for trespassing to remove graffiti.
• A hyper minimalist house.
• A sublime shot of the U.S. Mexico border wall. By the way, it’s a wall, not a “fence.” This is a fence. (Tomorrow Museum.)
• Frank Gehry’s having a hard month.
• Yale architecture dean Robert A.M. Stern on the lack of women in architecture: it’s ‘cuz they make babies.
• Your moment of Disco Godfather. (Thank you, Dawn!)