- “Are you the person that we can ask questions? Or are you just a guard?” The New York Times interviews a security guard at the Guggenheim’s James Turrell exhibition. [The New York Times]
- The Metropolitan Opera won’t bow to protesters who’d like to see the opera take a stance on the Russian government’s controversial gay rights laws, and also the government’s denial of Tchaikovsky’s sexuality. Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” premiered as the opera’s season opener last night. [Bloomberg]
- The Art Loss Register has used some rather questionable methods to track lost art work. For example, the Register led a collector to believe a painting was not stolen, when in fact it was, so that he would buy it and unwittingly help the company collect a fee for its retrieval. [The New York Times]
- Did Russia censor all 26,439 Squarespace sites over a satirical gay art PDF? So reads the headline of an article reporting on Loo.ch, the New York-based art, technology, criticism, and travel website run by Ukrainian expats Natasha Masharova and Anatoli Ulyanov since 2010. They believe two pieces criticizing Russia’s new anti-gay propaganda laws caused the block. Sounds plausible, but could more than one of these 26,439 other sites have published a few critical words on the law? [Animal]
- Blackberry is in a “death spiral.” They laid off forty percent of their workforce and report a second quarter loss of one billion on 1.6 billion in revenues. Queue the think pieces. [Washington Post]
- Art collector Peter Brant, also owner of the Greenwich Polo Club, introduced a Groupon to a recent weekend event. In addition to the polo match, VIPs were given a tour of Brant’s art center; the rest watched the horses. [Boston.com]
- Carolina Miranda interviewed Ed Ruscha for NPR. [NPR]
