- Old Navy tells you to give up already. [artnet News]
- The New York Times has published their annual round up of obituaries. Ellsworth Kelly and Mary Ellen Mark were the two artists whose deaths were cited, but it was a tough year over all. We lost Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy, Times writer David Carr, baseball player Yogi Berra, and Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. We need to find a cure for death. [The New York Times]
- Painter Johanna Barron has been attempting to recreate the CIA’s collection of Washington Color School artworks based on rare photos and anecdotes. She doesn’t have a lot to go on: all of her Freedom of Information Act requests for images and descriptions have been mysteriously rejected. Don’t we, as the American public, technically collectively own the CIA and by extension its art collection? I can never figure out how our government is supposed to work. [Hyperallergic]
- “I was having my second Frogasm of the night when dinner got weird.” That is the way to start a review. Pete Wells offers a report on Señor Frog’s in Times Square, a Cancun, Spring Break type restaurant that greets diners with its dress code signage, “Do not show underwear”. The whole piece is hilarious. [The New York Times]
- Particle physics can be fun. Here’s a list of all of Richard Feynman’s diagrams, which can be drawn. [Quantum Diaries]
- Is there such a thing as documentation porn? If there is, then I nominate the slideshow of images from Olafur Eliasson: Baroque Baroque at the Belvedere Museum’s Winter Palace of Prince Eugene. The solo exhibition, on until March, features works from two private collections, are installed in one of the most storied Baroque edifices in Vienna. [Artsy]
- For the headline alone: “Bushwick Had the City’s Most Burglaries This Year Because Gentrifiers Forgot to Lock Doors”. [Brooklyn Magazine]
- Vladimir Putin’s 2016 calendar is, as expected, bizarre and wonderful. One shot has him shirtless while fishing, the other cuddling a puppy. The image for March has him smelling a flower, with a wistful glance into the distance accompanied by the caption: “I like all Russian women. I think Russian women are the most talented and the most beautiful.” [Express.co.uk]
- Related: it’s been a month so far, but the friendship between a Siberian tiger and a goat in the Primorsky Safari Park in the Russian Far East continues to endure. The goat, Timur, should have been tiger food but now enjoys long walks with Amur the tiger, sometimes playing tag and hide-and-seek. [Observer]
- This looks like the most fun place on earth. The Cuban government gave musician X Alfonso permission to turn a state-owned factory in Havana into a late-night art gallery, performance/screening venue, and discotheque. In the not very-originally-named “The Factory” one might encounter $2 mojitos, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and art that actually sounds pretty good. [The Washington Post]
- Here’s a different type of story involving art appreciation and pandas on camera than one is accustomed to hearing around the AFC offices: a man in a panda mask brazenly stole artwork from a Nebraska fast food restaurant. It’s all captured on surveillance cameras for posterity. [WOWT NBC Omaha h/t Hyperallergic]
- In depressing news from earlier this month, a Virginia school cancelled classes after a teacher gave students an Arabic calligraphy assignment. [Gawker]
