- Librarian Xiao Yuan has admitted to stealing over 140 paintings from the collection of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Yuan had been replacing the school’s collection of paintings with his own forgeries and selling the originals at auction—a scam that generated roughly $6 million. [ABC News]
- Move over Qatari oil moguls! Are movie stars the new blue-chip collectors? Hollywood’s top ten collectors collectively own around $4 billion worth of art, about 16 percent of their combined net worth, according to research firm Wealth-X. The tastes of the rich and famous? Leonardo DiCaprio’s $10 million collection includes works by Takashi Murakami and Basquiat. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas might have made their respective fortunes from movies full of explosions, but they’ve spent them on boring-old Norman Rockwells. [CNBC]
- Georg Baselitz has withdrawn artwork on loan to museums as part of a protest against Germany’s proposed restrictions on international art sales. Under the new legislation, the state could declare artworks over 50-years-old as national treasures and block their export to foreign buyers. This would be great for Germany’s museums, but bad news for gallerists and collectors looking to cash out. An eye-roll-inducing letter signed by 300 German dealers compared the proposed regulations to Nazis looting artwork from Jewish collectors. [The New York Times]
- David Brooks writes about Dustin Yellin and Pioneer Works in his opinion column for the New York Times. This is a little off his regular beat, which is largely espousing Republican political viewpoints and occasionally talking about books. [The New York Times]
- In case you missed “GIFs to Have Sex By,” you can now view them all on the Digital Sweat online gallery. [Digital Sweat]
- Tommy Craggs and Max Read are resigning from Gawker. Naturally, Gawker’s got the scoop. [Gawker]
- In today’s robot news, exo-skeletons are now becoming a reality. Panasonic, for example, is just months away from marketing an exoskeleton that will help humans carry additional weight. Like a human ant. [MIT Technology Review]
- The young-ish organization Triple Canopy, begun in 2007, has already found a home for its archives. NYU’s Fales and Special Collection Library will “use its computer storage to make room for the group’s files and will continue to add new issues as they roll in,” says ARTnews. So Triple Canopy is getting extra hard-drive space? [ARTnews]
- Housing activists are protesting Mayor de Blasio’s upcoming appearance at the Vatican. De Blasio is set to appear with the Pope to discuss environmental issues and human rights. The group Metro Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) claims this would be an “embarrassment” to Pope Francis, as they hold the DeBlasio administration accountable for unacceptable conditions in the city’s deteriorating housing projects. [New York Daily News]
Tuesday Links: Digital Sweat in Your Exo-Skeleton
by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Corinna Kirsch on July 21, 2015 Massive Links
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