Around the web: cannabis curator, superblue crayon, and pink Guggenheim

Victor Hugo, Vianden Seen through a Spider Web, 1871. Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y.; artres.com

Some stories we’ve been reading this month:

UNUSUAL

• How surreal: Salvador Dali’s body is to be exhumed to resolve a paternity case.
• An interview that asks the tough question: how does a curator match art with cannabis strains? Unfortunately, it’s not very clear on how one can get that kind of job.
• The illustrated history of the morse–a hairy, fearsome walrus-like beast that was said to snooze on cliffs while hanging by its teeth.

• Forget piñatas, in the middle ages Britons used to play games such as Hot Cockles, which involved people taking turns hitting an individual who, blindfolded, had to guess the identity of their striker. Lucky for us, in 1801, a British writer and engraver published a compendium of these bizarre medieval pastimes.

SCIENCE

• The way you draw circles says a lot about you. Try it yourself!
• The contestants in this art competition work in a most unusual medium: microbes.
• Not to be outdone by microbe artists, these artists have created a range of works that include photographic curation, music videos, and impromptu performances using another unusual medium: Google Street View.
• We’ve told you about the world’s blackest black, the pinkest pink, and now a new superblue has been unleashed upon the world–as a Crayola crayon.
• Volcanoes are awesome–just look!
• A team of researchers are working to find a solution to an unlikely scourge that is marring the surfaces of canvases around the world: soap.
• Old works of art are helping med students learn how to diagnose. (Not that it comes as a surprise to us.)

MUSEUMS

• Sweden has opened a “Museum of Failure” to celebrate our best errors. Here’s wishing for its success!
• Frank Lloyd Wright considered making the Guggenheim pink. It’s not too late, if you ask us.
• Out of the more than 10,000 works by Roma artists currently kept by European state collections and cultural institutions, only two are permanently featured in state-run exhibits. The newly launched European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture is here to change that.

MISCELLANEA

• South Asian “truck art” is becoming a global phenomenon. With good reason!
• To make sense of the current political environment, the ACLU’s executive director turned to a 14th-century fresco by Italian Renaissance master Ambrogio Lorenzetti. What can a 700-year-old painting possibly teach us about life today?
• As protesters target the famed Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, it’s worth remembering how views of the mythical creature have changed over time.
• Here are eight writers who also painted, including Beat Generation-related scribes Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski.
• On the difference between books and artists’ books.
• In the 1940s, before he found acclaim as a painter, Alex Katz rode the subway for hours, often into the early hours of the morning, sketching the passengers who caught his eye. (If you like that, take a look at his other work from that period.)