Acclaimed designer Massimo Vignelli, perhaps best known for his aesthetically groundbreaking if publicly derided 1972 redesign of the New York City subway map, died Tuesday in his home in Manhattan. He was 83.

If you ask me, trying to sell forged Damien Hirst paintings to the rich makes you the biggest class war hero since the guy who tried to sell fake wine to the rich, not someone who deserves jail time. People who buy real Damien Hirst paintings deserve jail time.

James Franco's paintings of a nude Seth Rogen are not exactly his — they're based on a series of drawings by Pinups magazine editor Christopher Schulz that were released in 2011. On today's Today show, Franco admitted that the renderings were not his idea, but explained that they should have been, so he felt justified to take them for his own.

The usually tedious one-man morality crusade Bill "Catholic League" Donohue sends along a genuinely valuable tip: On May 15, this Thursday, Sotheby's will be auctioning off a copy of Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, the maximum icon of the old Culture Wars of 25 years ago. Ask your middle-aged uncles and aunts about it.

The Borghese Gallery in Rome has resorted to the unthinkable in the art world by opening its windows to let in air as a way to prevent humidity from touching the works during the city's unusually balmy spring. The museum is home to precious art by Caravaggio, Titian, Rubens, and Raphael, among others.

This video was posted on reddit with no context other than, "I had to babysit my girlfriend's cat," as if that adequately explains what happened next.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Gothamist, for bringing us Kalan.

At least it is, according to his good friend James Franco's paint brush. That's not a euphemism. (Or is it?)

For decades, a 75-year-old Queens man was able to con the art world into purchasing millions of dollars worth of worthless forgeries that he made in his garage using some old paint and a blow dryer.

A popular street artist who's rubbed elbows with Anthony Bourdain and graffitied the walls of Facebook's headquarters used his sex-talk podcast last month to describe a forceful sexual encounter with his massage therapist that sounded an awful lot like assault.

A Department of Defense study released earlier this year found that drone operators experience the same levels of stress as combat pilots in manned aircraft. Although they're separated by thousands of miles from the casualties they cause, the job of a drone pilot still requires whatever internal reckoning it takes to fire at a human target.

For almost a year, a 19-year-old London art-school brat claimed he'd stage a jarring art performance in which he'd publicly give up his virginity through anal sex with a male friend. Sounds awful, right? Well, the performance's execution turned out much, much worse.

"Imagine Detroit as a new municipality about to build a museum stocked and operated at taxpayer expense." Robert Frank explains rationally why Detroit should sell off its expensive fine art. (There are plenty of local artists they can put in that museum.)

From filmmaker Tatia Pilieva comes something of a chemistry experiment: Pairing up attractive strangers and asking them to kiss on camera.

Santa Fe University of Art and Design boasts that it helps students to "develop their full artistic identities." Unless that artistic identity is not officially approved by the administration, in which case EVERYONE WILL BE PUNISHED. Especially if there are clits involved.

Pro tip: When opening your university's new art museum, don't pull an exhibition drawing attention to a famous donor's racist tendencies because it's "not aligned with the celebratory atmosphere." It's not supposed to be a celebration of your being a censoring a-hole.

"Two dozen never-before-exhibited" paintings by George W. Bush will anchor "The Art of Leadership," an exhibition opening April at Bush's presidential library in Texas. Reserve your tickets now. Outsider art is so hot these days.

A cleaning woman at an Italian gallery accidentally threw away thousands of dollars of art by New York modernist Paul Branca when she mistook his crumpled newspaper, cardboard, and cookie installation scattered across the floor for garden-variety trash.

"Don't touch," a guard warned, seconds before a 51-year-old Miami artist picked up an Ai Weiwei vase worth a million dollars and smashed it to pieces on the ground.

Art imitated art in Miami this afternoon when painter Maximo Caminero wielded a precious $1 million vase made by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and threw it on the ground. He is now facing criminal charges, but has vowed to "answer all the questions."