Ben Sutton

GIF courtesy of @alexteplitzky

• Dogs are people too. Gregory Burns has been running his dogs and others through MRI scanners to learn about how dog brains work. He discovered that dogs share similar emotions and concludes that we need better laws to protect them from places like puppy mills and dog racing. [The New York Times]
• Donald and Shelly Rubin are our kind of philanthropists. They focus their giving on smaller organizations outside of Manhattan. The Times has the profile. [The New York Times]
• David Carr reviews the Julian Assange film “The Fifth Estate” for the New York Times. He makes it sound like a Hollywood wash; Wikileaks isn’t happy and has released their own annotated script. [New York Times]
• In an interview with the Village Voice, Banksy says he’s lives in New York and intends to continue painting on walls and bathrooms throughout the city, and those paintings are quickly defaced. You can look at them while listening to his audio guide, accessed by a toll-free number. There’s also nothing to sell that’s immediately attached to this series. “I know street art can feel increasingly like the marketing wing of an art career, so I wanted to make some art without the price tag attached,” he says. “There’s no gallery show or book or film. It’s pointless. Which hopefully means something.” [Village Voice]
• This seems like a terrible idea. British writer Alain de Botton, is using the Art Gallery of Ontario as his guinea pig for his book out October 14th, “Art as Therapy”. That means the de Botton will use works in the collection to illustrate cures for very specific problems. For example, in the online component of the exhibition, “love” leads to the subheading “I want to break up” which leads to a 1704 painting of strawberries by Dutch master Adriaen Coorte. “The artist knows something about us: how familiarity dulls our appreciation of what is on offer,” reads the description. God, what bullshit. [The Toronto Star]
• An unpaid intern’s sexual harassment claim has been thrown out by a New York judge because interns don’t count as people employees. A few months ago, ProPublica broke down how these laws [don’t] work. [Businessweek via Gawker]
• When DIS asks Mark Dion (who makes art out of environmental destruction) if he sees a future for eco-friendly policies, he says no. “How about some fucking leadership?” he asks. Don’t look at him. “I am not the artist to turn to for answers about how to fix things. I am the guy you call when you want to know how bad things are and how we got here. That’s my job, to chronicle disaster.” I think that’s stupid. If you want something done, do it yourself, Mark Dion. [DIS]
• Damien Hirst, Joana Vasconcelos, and others make Stormtrooper helmets for charity. [BLOUIN Artinfo]
• GEICO’s newest ad campaign features paintings. A missed opportunity: Ben Sutton thinks they missed “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” [BLOUIN Artinfo]
• The Village Voice rounds up Bill de Blasio’s Reddit AMA; he actually answered some questions. One solution offered to the rent problem in the city is to rapidly develop market-rate apartments to drive prices down. He promises more AMAs when he’s mayor. [Village Voice]
• Important: Actor Carl Weathers ends every single one of his tweets with the phrase “Be Peace.” [Carl Weathers]