Orange Alert

From colorful swimmers to painted trees to poetic liquor-store signs: 15 public art projects in Boston this year. [WBUR]

An art student in London called out Topshop for filching an online design that should have made her Pumpkin Queen of her own domain. [Metro]

“How Making Art Will Still Matter in Trump’s America”—novelist Marisa Silver on a question for the ages. [The Forward]

Detritus

One man’s trash is … found material for Ron Barron, an artist from Ohio who prowled NYC’s streets for substance to take home. [The New York Times]

Hua Hsu, estimable music writer for The New Yorker, goes a good deal more unhinged and idiosyncratic in a Tumblr post about stuff he listened to this year. [Tumblr]

In Memoriam 

Debbie Reynolds, actress and dancer in incomparably good scenes in Singin’ in the Rain, died one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher, at age 84. [The New York Times]

Photographer Howard Bingham, chronicler of Muhammad Ali and timely aspects of black life in midcentury America, died at 77. [The Guardian via Artforum]

Design

On the mystifying magnetism of Muji, that most unbranded of brands. [Racked]

Reparation

The English government looks likely to reimburse the owner of a £4 million (about $4.90 million) painting from the 1760s by Johann Zoffany that burnt up in a blaze in a public country house, the largest payment of its kind. [The Art Newspaper]

In New York, Theater for the New City convened a public confab called “Art Startup” to talk about issues facing artists, administrators, and activists in the city. [The Villager]