– The CBGBs of Berlin's Art World: As luxury developers move their wrecking balls toward Tacheles, the graffiti-covered former department store that for years was the German capital's alternative art hub, some are sanguine ("It’s just like an empty relic," says O32c publisher Jörg Koch, "a dirty version of Disney World"), while others lament its loss in poignant terms ("I’d hate to see Berlin smoothed over, with no critical voices left, the way the alternative art scene has been sanitized away in New York," says artist Felicitas Adler). [NYT]

– MoMA Gets Fluxed: As the Modern was unpacking the hefty Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, one orange box burst open with a spring-coiled snake and confetti proclaiming "Happy Flux Year" — proving that the artist, George Macunias, was the Ashton Kutcher of his day. [Observer]

– Suicide Notes from the Underground: A deluxe new Moscow subway station that artist Ivan Nikolayev has turned into a shrine to Fyodor Dostoevsky — complete with a glowering portrait of the author and scenesfrom his tortured novels playing out against grim stone walls — has some psychologists fearing that the setting may "even encourage suicidalimpulses." [NPR]

– Gormley's Not Gormless: The British sculptor has been tapped for the 2011 BBC Radio 4 Reith lectures, becoming the first artist to give the august talks (which he plans to center on the theme of "art as survival"). [FT] 

– Weezer's New Album Art Gets Lost: By which we mean the cover ofthe album, called "Hurley," will be a photo of Jorge Garcia, who playedHurley on "Lost." This is one band that clearly hasn't lost touch with its base. [NYM]

– Also, He Won the Creepy Dad Prize: Australian artist Michael Zavros received the $140,000 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize for a portrait he painted of his five-year-old daughter pretending to be dead,covered in a black skull-dotted shroud (actually a scarf by Alexander McQueen, but still). [CBC News]

– Abu Dhabi's Very Congested Traffic-Themed Art Contest: The emirate's Grand International Artistic Traffic Competition, meant to educate people about the evils of gridlock, is on pace to break the record of the most popular art competition in the world, with 134,583 entries already submitted. [Sify]

– An Interview with Bharti Kher: The Indian artist reveals, amongother things, that she'll be the latest Perrotin artist to take on Versailles, making the palace's hall of mirrors the theme of her upcoming show at the Pompidou. [EconomicTimes]

– Art-O-Mat Heads to the Smithsonian: Artist Clark Whittington's vending machine, which dispenses original artworks the size of cigarettepacks, will join the Smithsonian American Art Museum. [Vending Times]

– Richard Price Tours "Lush Life": Touring the well-received exhibition across nine Lower East Side galleries, the author is grumpilybemused by the show based on his book. "It’s like a parlor game," he says. "It's like that old phrase 'You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.' You don’t bring a book to an art show." [NewYorker]