- After it came out that Facebook has been manipulating peoples’ moods with algorithms, programmer Lauren McCarthy has given us a mood manipulator, a plugin for us to control our own moods! [Animal New York]
- Something’s up with this: John Wilson, director of the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego, has been ousted by the museum’s board and replaced by an art conservator as interim director. [San Diego Union-Tribune via ArtsJournal]
- Former Corcoran curator and Citi Private Bank art advisor Jonathan Binstock has been named director of the University of Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery. [Democrat & Chronicle, via @TylerGreenDC]
- There’s one less cupcake franchise in New York. Crumbs is closing all of its stores and considering bankruptcy. Cupcake history in NYC here. Business Insider has the full story. [Business Insider]
- Curating meets online contest: the Rauschenberg Foundation is joining up with Artsy to create a curating competition. Aspiring curators can submit proposals for an exhibition with Rauschenberg’s work, and the winner will be selected by a public vote. [The Art Newspaper]
- 25 of the world’s most “creative” sculptures and statues. This is by far the dumbest art slideshow we’ve ever seen. (Consider this your hate-read for the day.) Half the time the blogger doesn’t even name the artists. [Bored Panda]
- A list: ARTnews presents an alphabetical list of the “200 Top Collectors.” Why would anyone need an A to Z list? Poor Jochen Zeitz, the South African collector and very last entry on tab eight. [ARTnews]
- Everyone is writing op-eds: Taylor Swift, Tyra Banks, a Border Collie. Artists, too, are getting more words out there than ever, thanks to the Walker Art Center; it launched its Artist Op-Eds project today. [Walker Art Center]
- Coline Milliard does not like the Liverpool Biennial. She notes that it tries to ride a few of the recent curatorial trends but there’s not enough of a thread to tie together seemingly-random selections. [Artnet News]
- Woot.com’s Matt Rutledge had breakfast with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and asked him why he bought woot. A recount of that answer:
So there sat Bezos at the breakfast table, faced with a question for which he was apparently unprepared. Many painful seconds passed without an answer. Rutledge let the pause lengthen as long as he could bear it and was just about to tell his host to forget it, when Bezos finally spoke.
He looked down at his plate. Bezos had ordered a dish called Tom’s Big Breakfast, a preparation of Mediterranean octopus that includes potatoes, bacon, green garlic yogurt, and a poached egg. “You’re the octopus that I’m having for breakfast,” Rutledge remembers Bezos saying. “When I look at the menu, you’re the thing I don’t understand, the thing I’ve never had. I must have the breakfast octopus.”
Not until Rutledge had returned to Dallas and related the story to his anxious employees—now Amazon’s employees—did he realize just how absurd that explanation sounded. Before it can be eaten, generally, the breakfast octopus must be killed. [D Magazine]
Comments on this entry are closed.