Worst Nobel Peace Prizes ever

It has nothing to do with art, but this article is pretty good and cements something that I really believe: sometimes the prize just goes to the wrong bloke. Read the David Rothkopf article here.

My vote for the worst Peace Prize ever? Yasser Arafat.

Gopnik on Sanborn

"Terrestrial Physics," as the new installation is called, is possibly the most substantial work of art to come out of Washington since the 1950s, when Morris Louis stained his first canvases. Except Louis's fans had seen big, colorful abstractions before. No one has come across a thing quite like the new art Sanborn has made, working almost alone in his studio over the past three years.

Read Blake Gopnik's excellent profile on Washington area artist Jim Sanborn here; there's an interesting lesson for all artists in the last 6-7 paragraphs of the story.

And by the way, I was very glad to see Gopnik do something rare last Saturday: cover a couple of local DC galleries. Read that here. Gopnikism of that article: "Though boyish, the piece also is sober and adult."