PDX, aka Portland's airport is changing its carpet... we design oriented people in Lil Beirut are very interested in this. Honestly PDX should have simply commissioned artist Damien Gilley to do the redesign.

The whole attempt to "monetize" the Detroit Institute of Art's collection is simply wrong and is just a drop in the bucket. Tyler Green digs a little further into why it is such raiding party... turning public assets into private gain.

Last but not least, Jerry Saltz discusses the big MFA bubble situation. It is true, there is something about academia that blunts artistic development after a certain point... I'm talking about the professors, not the students. About 95% of the art professors I watch seem to plateau when they start teaching full time (I attribute it to a defensive/careerist attitude they adopt), the other 5% are simply the sorts whose progress cannot be slowed by anything short of an asteroid impact (they also take pains to not be wholly owned by academia). From the student perspective arts education has become a kind of puppy mill situation. Overall, I prefer BFA programs that concentrate on fundamentals like OCAC and Lewis and Clark do. Any MFA program should be considered with a realistic goals and a very sober assessment of the school's true capabilities beyond the hype.