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BBC: A woman admires a New Zealand Maori Tekoteko, or house gable apex figure, at an exhibition in Sydney, Australia.

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I believe this little guy is the ancestor of Alfred E. Neuman:

Life: Pre Columbian Art
Photographer: Andreas Feininger

Compare and contrast:

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Telegraph (uk): Balloon twisting sculptures by Jason Hackenwerth

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yahoo: A visitor passes by Vitaly Pushnitsky's sculpture 'Son' displayed at an exhibition during an independent national Russian award in contemporary art Kandinsky Prize at the Central House of Artists in Moscow, November 6, 2008.
(Denis Sinyakov/Reuters)

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A clay man sports an elaborate headdress at the Museum of Archaeology in Campeche, Mexico, which features various such depictions of ancient Maya in traditional dress.
(Paul Ross)

Experts describe the terra-cotta statuettes as the finest figurine art of ancient America. The museum in Campeche houses one of the most complete collections of Maya art in Mexico.
(Paul Ross)

Archaeologists say the Maya figures were buried with each deceased person on the island of Jaina, as many as 10,000 in all.
(Paul Ross)

Less politics, more art. From this Los Angeles Times travel section article.

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A dog with a steel grip: Another hubcap design

DailyMail: One man's treasure: The artist who turns abandoned hubcaps into animal sculptures worth £3,000

I love the artist's name: Ptolemy Elrington.

Ptolemy created this dragon, using 200 hub caps, measured 10m long, and took over a month to build. It sold for £3,000

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Ancient Americas: Colossal stone head, La Venta archaeological site, Mexico (1st millennium BC)
Photograph: Danny Lehman/Corbis

Guardian (uk): 1000 artworks to see before you die

Photo Gallery: 21 artworks from Volume One

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LATimes:

"Fading Scroll," a huge metal tapestry by El Anatsui that has graced the lobby of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Ahmanson Building for several months, has been jointly purchased by LACMA and the Fowler Museum at UCLA. The acquisition, made with support from the Broad Art Foundation, gives the two museums a major work by a leading African artist who was born in Ghana in 1944 and has lived and worked in Nigeria since 1975.

Like many of Anatsui's works, in museum collections around the world, "Fading Scroll" is constructed of metal castoffs. In this case, the artist has gathered thousands of liquor bottle wrappers and tops and stitched them together with copper wire.

The Fowler introduced Anatsui to Los Angeles last year in a critically acclaimed traveling exhibition. "Fading Scroll" will remain on view at LACMA until Nov. 2. Its next appearance will be at the Fowler in "Transformations: Recent Contemporary African Acquisitions," Feb. 22 to June 14.

You can click on the picture for a larger version. Coach Mom & I saw an entire exhibit of El Anatsui's work -- I think at one of the Smithsonian Museums -- and they are very fascinating, huge, powerful and fluid from a distance, incredibly detailed up close. Plus they're made of consumer refuse so they're recycling projects.

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Photograph taken from the Hubble Telescope

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Times (uk): (Barney Burstein)

Hot Pursuit by Paul Klee, 1939

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I think my next mug will be a Tiki Mug:



hat tip to BoingBoing

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This looks like a caption contest photo to me.

TimesOnline (uk): September 22, 2008 Pictures of the Day
Pork Chop, left. leads the field through the first corner as part of the racing and diving pig show on exhibition at the Royal Melbourne Show. The show pigs, named Ham Bone, Bacon Bone, Pork Chop and Miss Porky Pig, attract hundreds of spectators
(William West/AFP/Getty Images)

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yahoo: Visitors look at a sculpture entitled "Planet" by British artist Marc Quinn at a Sotherby's selling exhibition at Chatsworth House, central England September 16, 2008.
REUTERS/Darren Staples (BRITAIN)

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National Museum of American History: Solar System Quilt, Ellen Harding Baker, 1876

Hat tip to BoingBoing

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'Pigs Might Fly' by Damien Hirst (Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Independent (uk):
Rembrandt? I'm just like him, says Hirst – it's all about cash
A ground-breaking auction of new works by Damien Hirst could fetch £65m, but his gallery won't see a penny of it. Arifa Akbar reports

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Horse by Fernando Botero, one of 20 modern sculptures standing in the 105-acre garden

Guardian (uk): Baby boom at Chatsworth House

A photo gallery of outdoor sculptures.