Tibby Rothman writes at The Venice Paper that artist Robert Graham, who died on Saturday, was a Venice patriot: "The last time I saw him, he was at one of those neighborhood meetings when an inordinate amount of time is spent by people given their first bite of power listening to the sound of their own voices....He treated everyone around him with such dignity. He moved through our community, your community, his community as one of, not as one over. During such squalid occasions, through his demeanor alone, he had more impact than any of Venice’s absurd politicians." More there, plus a new appreciation in Time and by Veronique de Turenne at Native Intelligence.

Arts beat: Tyler Green blogs on the ongoing Museum of Contemporary Art drama that the L.A. Times "has been demonstrating that it still has the best visual arts coverage of any American newspaper -- and that second-place is far back. (Just try to imagine any other paper flooding the zone on a major art story like this.)"