Friday Links: A motley crew of Duchamp, the Guerrilla Girls, Kafka, and Stonehenge

Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org

Some stories we’ve been reading this week:

• Highly recommended: How to respond to people who say “I could do that” when they look at modern art.
• The feminist art collective the Guerrilla Girls turns 30. But their fight is not over.
• Irony of ironies – the estate of Marcel Duchamp, who basically invented appropriation, sues to stop artists from appropriating his work.
• And from Duchamp we go to his close friend Man Ray: More than 4,000 artifacts from the artist’s estate sit in the backroom of a Long Island auto body shop.
• Kafka’s Charlie Brown. Good grief.
• On the life and work of Arthur Heming, the colorblind Canadian painter who worked for most of his life in a distinctive palette of black, yellow, and white.

• In the last decade, a retired social worker has tracked down the life stories of more than 350 child laborers in Lewis Hine’s documentary photography.
• It’s becoming clear to us (and anyone who regularly reads our Friday Links) that scientists are obsessed with art. What’s new this week? By comparing the techniques employed in da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with those in La Bella Principessa, scientists claim to have unlocked the mystery of Mona Lisa’s famously enigmatic smile.
• Mixed feelings about this one: Rapidly melting ice in Yellowstone is revealing the tools, spears, and even baskets from ancient Native Americans faster than archeologists can collect them.
• Construction workers dug up a Roman-era sarcophagus at a building site and for some reason then tried to hide it.