The Digest. 05.13.09.

Brooklyn rooftops. Best viewed large.

• Just Landed, a video by Jer Thorp. (NotCot.)
• Obama names nominee for NEA: New York theatre producer Rocco Landesman, the guy behind Angels in America and The Producers.
• Welcome to reality: Art school students like totally bummed about job prospects. (@artnetdotcom.)
• Art market now being described as ‘recalibrated.’ I describe it as being in the shitter.
• In honor of LACMA’s Pompeii show: The Pomplaylist. Related: The L.A.T. asks museum-goers whether the $25 ticket is too much to pay for the show.
• An auction raises money for L.A.’s troubled MOCA. But that doesn’t mean the budget cuts and layoffs are over.
• The Tate Modern is looking for identical twins.
• Marcel Duchamp explains how to make a readymade: Take a Rembrandt. Iron on it. (Eyeteeth.)
• The Arbitrary Grant.
• Photo Essay: Installing Ernesto Neto at the Park Avenue Armory.
• Edo-era pregnant dolls.
• Pixels out of control in this trippy animated short. (NotCot.)
• Overcoming tourism.
• Luuuuucha Libre! Coming soon to a town near you…if you live in California. Photo essay here. (World’s Best Ever.)
• Is Bansky now into self-portraiture? The Internerdz are atwitter. (@artnetdotcom.)
• Which U.S. state has the boldest architecture? Ohio, says Fast Company. (Buildings and Food.)
• Ada Louise Huxtable looks at public architecture in NYC. Apparently, it is much improved from the bottom-line crap that usual gets built. Now, if only these forward-thinking design principles could be applied to Ground Zero. (Arts Journal.)
• Jonathan Glancey reports on Prince Charles’s respectful speech at the Royal Institute of British Architects: Not all that interesting, it turns out. If you miss the days when HRH got crazy about modernist carbuncles, however, Looking Around helpfully links to Chuck’s 1984 speech.
• Starchitecture on fire! A blaze consumes part of Zaha Hadid’s yet-to-be opened Guangzhou opera house. The extent of the damage is unknown. (Arts Journal.)
• Your moment of the Simpsons getting architectural.