– Frank Gehry, Curator: The architect has organized a show of ceramics by Glen Lukens. Also, he'll be doing the exhibition design for a 2012 Ken Price retrospective at LACMA. [LAT]

– "Caravaggio and Me": The Guardian asked a number of artists — from David LaChapelle to Martin Scorsese, who convincingly calls himself an artist — to reflect on what Caravaggio taugh them, and Peter Doig delights in an unconvincing epiphany that the angels in "The Seven Acts of Mercy" are having sex. (Seems more like a play on a weird traditional motif that can be found in a relief of two intertwined doves over Raphael's tomb.) [Guardian]

– The Gaga Effect: In a consideration of how Lady Gaga's hyper-stylized embrace of art-world and underground influences has affected the pop sphere, Jon Caramanica writes, "The space for women in pop to try out new aesthetic identities hasn’t been this vast in some time." (But, he points out, while her precursor, Madonna, used brash style as a way to sneak in religious and political concerns, Gaga taps into freighted subjects — Nazism, for instance — purely for their superficial appeal.) [NYT]

– Remains to Be Seen: Galileo's digits — his fingers, not his computations — will be displayed at Florence’s Museo Galileo, while Caravaggio's randy bones squeak and gibber elsewhere in Italy. (Reminds one of Joyce's line: "Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travellers his grandmother's corpse.") [Bloomberg]

"The Best Pictures He’s Ever Had Taken": Images that photographer Steven Vaccaro shot of Jackson Pollock at his East Hampton studio in August of 1953 for a never-published Look magazine piece are now on view at the Pollock-Krasner House. [NYT]

– "Does the Nation's Culture Need Federal Protection?": Yes, says Bill Ivey, NEA director under President Clinton. He argues that powerful private interests are gaining too much control over American culture. [Boston Globe]

– Words that Dance: For her first collaboration with a choreographer since 1985, Jenny Holzer has teamed with Miguel Gutierrez for a project at Summer Stages, organized by Co-Lab and the ICA Boston — even though the artist and the dancer have never met and appear to have had spiky interchanges. [NYT] 

– "Did the Smoke of Verdun Really Hang Over Matisse’s Studio?": Simon Schama doesn't think that MoMA's Matisse show successfully makes its case for the years 1909-1917 being a time of radical, uncharacteristically aggressive experimentation on the artist's part, saying the viewer will question of the works on view "whether all this really represents a decisive turn towards gravity." [FT]

One Word, Landscapes: A typically by-the-numbers Sunday Times art profile, this one of Rackstraw Downes, elicits some interest in the offhand comment that American landscape painting is "a form that is starting to get more respect" — an interesting development, since so little has been done in this field recently by well-known artists that it suggests an opening for discoveries. [NYT]

– Bye Bye, Geese!: The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena has gently turned out the art-loving avian family that made the Pasadena institution their home this spring, calling animal professionals to bring the publicity-ginning birds to a more appropriate wildlife location (though we suspect they just got tired of giving them free admission). [LAT]

"The Last English Romantic, a Pure Painter": Jonathan Jones, in a review of Howard Hodgkin's latest show, heaps yet more praise on one of his favorite artists, calling him a "philosophical painter" who should be grouped with Johns, Rauschenberg, and Twombly, whom the critic has labeled "the last great American artist." [Guardian]

– Tijuana Brass Works in Bronze, Too: Herb Alpert, the musician whose name will forever be associated with a whip-cream-covered lady, has a show of rather dramatic, totem-like sculptures at Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills. [LAT] 

– Doug Ohlson, Abstract Painter, Has Died: Born in Iowa, the 73-year-old artist had worked as an assistant to Tony Smith and showed for many years at the Fischbach Gallery. [NYT]

– VIDEO OF THE DAY: Restoring "Virgin of the Rocks [Guardian]