... I would want to intern for Marissa Mayer.

She's Vice President, Search Products & User Experience at Google, and is a hella smart engineer with a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University (specializing in artificial intelligence for both).

She oversees about 2,000 people at Google and is responsible for things like Google Earth, Google Health, and the Google desktop.

What I really find interesting about her, though, is the fact that she combines these mad chops with other interests - she's invested in a couture level "cake gallery", is a fashion lover (she visited the last NY fashion week), and she is ad avid art collector, owning original works by
Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, among others.

Oh, and she just got appointed to the board at SF MOMA. Awesome!

Don't see many dilettantes in the tech world. Love it! So if I was an intern, I'd want to work for Marissa Mayer.

I have a commitment crush on Pierre Pinoncelli. The guy has real dedication to the cause.

So Marcel Duchamp took this urinal (<--) and entered it into an art show in 1917 as a statement. It was one of his readymades; essentially found art. It was later on voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century for it's provocativeness and ability to, as Duchamp said, "de-deify" the artist.

However, it has pissed off (ahem) a lot of people along the way. I mean, it's a urinal under the guise of high art. It was *really* not liked by my man Pierre Pinoncelli who in 1993 visited it* on exhibition in Nîmes and urinated in it. He was taken to court and fined £140,000. Not much for intentionally damaging a piece of art valued at €2.8m (current), but terribly steep for taking a leak.

But, oh, that did not stop our Pierre Pinoncelli! He came back in 2006 to the Pompidou Center in Paris where the urinal was on display and attacked it with a hammer!! At age 77!! Rawr. This time the courts weren't quite as amused. They fined him €200,000 for the crime and €14,352 for material damages. (Which in and of itself is kind of funny... €14,352 to repair a urinal? What is this, the Pentagon?)

(*They lost it after the first show; it probably got thrown out as garbage. Replicas are in lots of museums now. I saw one @ MOMA I think. It actually *did* look like a urinal. :-P

To be sure, this is no ordinary crotchety old man. A retired seed merchant who now identifies as a performance artist, Msr. Pinoncelli has also lived naked in a barrel, cut off his own fingertip, and sprayed a then-culture minister with red paint. He's a provocateur, no doubt. What I really like about him, as I said, is his dedication to the cause. I like how much he loathes this toilet.

Now, there have been many instances of art vandalism, and indeed some museums have taken taken various steps to combat this. But for some reason, Msr. Pinoncelli's vandalism really speaks to me. As someone who flits back and forth between deep and wavering enthusiasms for art, fashion, and technology, I am really impressed by someone who spent decades defiling just one thing. And a toilet no less...

As someone who sits firmly outside the art establishment, I definitely am a fan of thinking outside the box / museum / status quo. Therefore, I really enjoy stuff like this. I don't know how I'd feel about it if it was a show I'd curated / arranged / paid for, but since I haven't, I just watch and enjoy from the outside. And that's #1 in my book! ;-)

Side note: this article tells the story best. Enjoy!

I know hotel.

But this hotel - the Chambers Luxury Art Hotel - this is something else.

As always, I am a sucker for clean lines, stark decor, and modern furniture. But the Chambers takes it to a whole new level. For an art lover, this hotel is a must-stay.

In walking down the hallway, I got caught up in the middle of some minor renovations, and got bumped in the arm with a Damien Hirst splatter painting. I haven't washed that arm since.

One of my particular fascinations with art has always been in the presentation - the lighting, the flooring, the sound, the distance, the framing. Staying for a week at the Chambers (for the Lullabot workshops) was a great chance to get to "live with" some museum quality art.

The hotel restaurant, the Chambers Kitchen, by much-lauded chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten was a hit or miss (mostly miss, due to the service). However, the rest of the service was impeccable, the showers were a total spectacle, and the experience, for an art lover, was totally rad.

Check it out sometime.

Insane, in an amazing way. My favorite moment is obviously going to be 6:19. (via jjeff)

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

"Curators have about the most complicated and daunting job in the art world; they are pulled apart by pressures to raise money, write, hunt out hot new artists and oversee acquisitions, while organizing shows that attract the public. Their value and responsibilities seem less and less understood by trustees, who are experiencing their own kind of pressures. But for the continued life of museums, biennials need to be laboratories, not annual reports. Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt; it reduces the capacity for risk and dulls the imagination."

Roberta Smith, NY Times, 'Life on Mars'