- Finally, a border wall proposal so relatively inexpensive and easy to assemble a Republican could do it. [Dezeen]
- Related: the indie video game “Papers, Please” is seeing a surge of interest as of recent weeks, unsurprisingly. The 8-bit game lets users play as a border agent in a dystopian Eastern European nation, rejecting or accepting immigrants based on suspicions they might be a smuggler or terrorist. [Humble Store]
- MoMA is protesting Trump’s visa ban with a rehang of its permanent collection. They’ve interrupted the galleries’ usual art-historical arc by replacing a room of Picasso and Matisse works with pieces by artists from countries on the ban list. These include mostly artists from Iran. [The New York Times]
- Meanwhile in Mexico, Samah Abdulhamid, a Syrian refugee, was greeted at the airport by a crowd with signs welcoming her to the country, including “Aquí no hay muros” (Here there are no walls). She’s the first female Syrian student to arrive via Proyecto Habesha, which is helping Syrians whose studies have been disrupted by the war attend universities in Mexico. It seems like a really great organization, especially if you’re looking to donate to something making a concrete positive impact now. [Fusion]
- I can’t figure out why this Salvador Dalí painting is being described as one of the artist’s “most controversial works”, but it’s going up for auction at Bonhams. It’s an innocent-seeming portrait of his sister, painted as a gift shortly before the two had a falling-out. [Blouin Artinfo]
- Ridiculous headline of the day: David Spade is suing Peter Beard, along with his wife and gallerist, over Beard’s failure to authenticate a photograph Spade bought fifteen years ago. [artnet News]
- Pretty much all of the gay world just lost whatever respect we had left for Lady Gaga after she somehow managed to perform the least controversial Super Bowl Halftime Show of all time. Seriously, what the fuck? These past few months she had been a such an outspoken Trump opponent and she blew the one opportunity to have “other America” watching? Someone must’ve had a gun to her stylist’s head. [Gay Internet]
- Trump is really bad at writing executive orders, but here’s a meme generator that lets you do it for him! [Executive Order]
- “The definition of ‘pretension’ is somebody who elevates something that is not worthy of any kind of elevation… Brad does that quite a bit, but nothing he makes is straight-up dumb.” -Paddy Johnson is quoted several times in Adrian Chen’s profile of Brad Troemel, which has to be one of the most thorough biographies of a young artist I’ve read. [The New Yorker]
