Gauguin's Echoes Haunt Pacific Island

(NEWSER) - Looking to vacation in a spot that inspired your favorite novel? USA Today asks travel expert Melissa Biggs Bradley about the best hotels to connect physically with the literature.

• The Resort at Paws Up, Greenough, Mont.: "The Blackfoot River, which runs through this 37,000-acre ranch, is the river referred to in Norman Maclean's wonderful A River Runs Through It," Bradley says.

(NEWSER) - Controversial artist Banksy has mounted a huge show at his hometown Bristol City Museum—but the secretive vandal is nowhere to be seem, the Times of London reports. The exhibition was planned in secret through Banksy’s representatives. “We couldn’t even tell the council and the whole thing could have been a huge hoax,” the museum’s director said. The show includes paintings and sculpture. More»

New York couple makes wanting an art form

(NEWSER) - When Justin Gignac and Christine Santora wanted a pair of gold aviators, they painted a picture of the sunglasses and sold it for $243.84—then went out and bought the pair, for $243.84. The New York artists have amassed other luxuries, like dinner at Nobu, in the same fashion—but have also raised money for charities and Barack Obama, the Independent reports. More»

Piano's addition for Art Institute called his best in a decade

(NEWSER) - This weekend the Art Institute of Chicago opens a mammoth new modern wing designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. Nicolai Ouroussof praises Piano's mix of "Modern and classical themes," and "towering glass-and-steel facade, with its floating roof and excruciatingly slender columns" straddling gritty railroad tracks. The New York Times' critic calls the building one of Piano's best, "the closest he has come in at least a decade to achieving his near-classical ideal." More»

Who wouldn't want to spend $100 on an imaginary sculpture?

(NEWSER) - James Franco’s latest project is arguably his weirdest yet— and that’s saying something . The multi-hyphenate recently teamed up with conceptual art duo Praxis to create the Museum of Non-Visible Art (MONA), the Huffington Post reports. On the project’s Kickstarter site , MONA is described as being "composed entirely of ideas. … Although the artworks themselves are not visible, the descriptions open our eyes to a parallel world built of images and words. This world is not visible, but it is real, perhaps more real than the world of matter, and it is also for sale." Seriously. More»