The Digest. 05.15.09.

Shipwreck ’09, a 70-foot long sculpture made of found driftwood at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge in N.C. by R.L. Croft and Michael Anthony. Click here to get a sense of scale. (Images courtesy of R.L. Croft.)

• Fascinating. You are what you eat. (ackackack.)
• Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum to shut down public exhibitions after this Sunday. Update: For now, apparently, this will be for the summer. No word yet on what will happen in the fall.
• The Gugg turns 50.
• Some lovely views of the Art Institute of Chicago’s new Modern Wing. More here and here. Plus: El Ourossof’s review. Nicky likes it! And, La Smith looks at the art.
• The Kimbell Art Museum in Ft. Worth picks up a demonic-looking early Michelangelo painting, the only Michelangelo painting to enter the permanent collection of a U.S. museum. (Hrag Vartanian.)
• Phillips de Pury sales “underwhelming.” More here. Plus: Greg.org analyzes the auctions. Basically, a bunch of dealers selling work back and forth to each other. (Bloggy.)
• Can the new NEA director make the organization relevant?
• Cranky pants: “Anyone wanting to snap an exhibit ought to be forced to look at it first for at least a minute — or be fined.”
• Art about buildings.
• David Hockney, on his inkjet drawings: “A brush, like a computer, is merely a tool.”
• Art21 is on Hulu.
• The day in space-age headgear.
• How California is like every place else.
• A round-up of vintage Indian pulp. (Coudal.)
• Who buys urban-art? According to the Guardian: the boy-man, the corporate banker, the canny restaurateur, bitter speculators and ex-subversives. (World’s Best Ever.)
• Today’s Street Art: Faile in Brooklyn.
• Landscape deflation.
• Princess Zaha’s wine pavilion in Rioja, Spain.
• Santiago Calatrava’s Atlanta symphony ain’t gonna happen. (Arts Journal.)
• Your moment of cat workout. (Hustler of Culture.)