Art and politics

1. A competition in which architecture is influenced by politics.

2. A list of times that politics were influenced by art.

Lost Wax

I've seen (and drawn) plenty of vaguely helpful illustrations of how lost wax bronze casting works. But the Israel Museum did it right and made a fun video.

I don't think these really count as secrets

For this year's Museum Week, museums around the world were asked to post secrets. Some of these are pretty cool, and I guess it would be unfair to ask institutions to tell their actual secrets.

Big sales at the art auction

Not Christie's or Sotheby's. The Rodeo.

Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

I started reading Lawrence Weschler's book about the artist Robert Irwin, and it's one of those books I wish I had read years ago.

Originally published in 1982, the book has been expanded several times to almost double its original length. It's part biography and part critical history of Irwin, an artist I'd never heard of, even though I've admired his work before.

I can't wait to finish it and reconsider a giant portion of all the art I've ever considered.

What is statistics good for?

Among other things, identifying Banksy.

Vantablack

Yves Klein famously had his own color, and now Anish Kapoor does as well. Kapoor has somehow got the exclusive rights to a high-tech nano-pigment called Vantablack. It absorbs more than 99.9% of light, and Kapoor is the only artist who can (legally) work with it.

What does an artist do with a virtual black hole? Let's find out.