It’s 4 p.m. on a Monday afternoon and Anna Sorokin is blasting Drake from her quaint apartment in the East Village of Manhattan. When I arrive at the top of her five-floor walk-up, she doesn’t come out, instead yelling from the bathroom to let myself in.

“Sorry, I’ll be right out. I can’t figure out what to wear! What’s the vibe?” she asks, in that iconic European accent that Julia Garner mastered in her portrayal of the fake German heiress in “Inventing Anna.”

The Netflix series created by Shonda Rhimes details the real-life story of 31 year-old Sorokin, who throughout the 2010s took the name Anna Delvey as she scammed her way through Manhattan, using an invented trust fund to persuade the city’s power brokers to invest in a members-only arts club. In 2019, she was convicted with grand larceny, among a slew of other financial crimes, for stealing more than $200,000 from investors, banks and friends, and ultimately destroying the lives of many in her innermost circle. She spent the majority of her two-year sentence in Rikers prison.

The rap music playing from a shoddy Bluetooth speaker, a messy display of outfit choices splayed out on her bed: it feels as if we’re getting ready for a night of clubbing in Downtown Manhattan. But of course, nightlife is no longer an option for Sorokin, who after being released from prison in February of 2021, was detained by immigration authorities for overstaying her visa. Now, she’s on house arrest with an ankle monitor and an agreement to stay off social media, meaning her photo shoots for the foreseeable future will have to take place from home. And she seems to have a lot of them. She’s been on a packed press schedule since her release last month, usually the sign of some sort of promotional campaign for a new product release or the announcement of a book or show. But now that she’s out of jail, Sorokin is back to promoting more of the same: herself.

Her ad-hoc home (she signed onto a temporary six-month lease) is small the way all New York apartments are small, but anyone familiar with the New York housing market knows that you need a fairly sizable savings account to land a newly renovated one-bedroom apartment in the heart of the East Village. Four massive prints from Graham Fortgang’s “New York Is Dead” photo series take up most of the real estate on her wall (these cost $2,500 to $8,000 each, but she says she got them for free through a pop-up event she has planned with gallery owner Samara Bliss). One wall is dedicated to her own art, illustrations that she created behind bars and whose copied prints, she says, have already made her a whopping $200,000.

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This holiday season, you might already be looking to the year ahead and considering learning a new skill or brushing up on an old one. But an online art class might just be just the right gift for a creative friend or family member. Below, see our list of some of the best online courses for artists. 

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On June 2, 2021, a noteworthy event took place in the world of online education. On that day, LinkedIn completed its incorporation of the online educational content and thousands upon thousands of video classes that had been part of the website Lynda.com. Lynda.com was one of the first online education websites and one of the most successful. Now, all that content will appear on LinkedIn Learning.

This transition comes more than six years after LinkedIn bought the online education company from its founders, Lynda Weinman and her husband, Bruce Heavin, who started the website in 1995. The price: $1.5 billion.

In addition to being an author and business leader, Lynda Weinman is also an artist. On Lynda.com students all types (including artists) could learn to crop a selfie in Photoshop, produce a funny animated GIF for their grandparents, or edit a graduation video for family and loved ones.

In August, climate change activists glued themselves to the frame of a Peter Paul Rubens painting at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. According to a report in Monopol, the legal consequences of that action have arrived.

The Munich District Court has issued criminal orders against the two activists who stuck themselves to the frame and one against the protestor who filmed the action. The Munich I Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement that “a significant” but unnamed fine was applied in each case. “We will of course assert our claims under civil law,” Tine Nehler, a spokeswoman for the Pinakotheken said, suggesting that it would be an expensive number. 

According to the public prosecutor’s office, the demonstration in August resulted in 11,000 euros worth of damage. One of the gluers and the filmmaker have objected to the penalty order, which will be addressed in a trial at the district court on an unspecified date. 

The activists are members of the climate crisis group Letzte Generation, which has orchestrated a slate of actions targeting world-famous artworks at museums across Europe.

Other activists with the group have attached themselves to several masterpieces, including Raphael’s Sistine Madonna (1512–13) at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. Similar groups have hurled food at works by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Emily Carr, and others.

Climate activists struck again earlier this morning, when members of Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) threw roughly 18 pounds of flour at a BMW art car painted by Andy Warhol at the cultural center Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan.

Women in the group aimed to draw attention to the “collapse of the climate,” they stated. In a video, they can be seen approaching the Warhol-painted 1979 German sports car and dumping packages of flour on it. Security guards then dragged two of the activists out of the room.

“It is useless to have more sustainable materials if governments don’t even do what they have pledged to do to reduce climate-changing gas emissions,” said Maria Letizia, a researcher in science and technology of materials who took part in the protest. “Emissions continue to increase and this leads us towards hunger and wars for water, for food, for survival.

“Staying in the classroom or in workshop with my students without trying everything possible to get governments to do their part has become unbearable to me,” Letizia continued. “These young people with me in action belong to the last generation that can still do something, I want to help them so that they are not the last generation on the face of the planet.”

Members of the group had reportedly planned to stick themselves to the car windows, but were unable to do so.

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