Category: visual

“A graffiti art exhibition called Space Invaders has been the surprise star attraction this summer at Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia, where overall visitors are markedly down on last year.”

“Will the story end with the country’s having overcome its shameful history and approaching a state of racial harmony and equality? Or will the museum argue that the legacy of racism is still dominant — and, if so, how will it make that case?”

“The work–which includes cleaning and reinforcing the exterior of the nearly 2000-year-old monument, its circular galleries and some underground spaces currently off-limits to the public–could begin by the end of the year and is expected to last between two and three years.”

The building “spills over with populist ideas, sometimes to the point of distraction. Enclosed inside a simple stucco box, its raucous interior forms — a pileup of rehearsal studios joined to a 756-seat hall — are part of an effort to break down the emotional distance between performers and the public, and in doing so to pump new life into an art form that is often perceived as stuffy and old-fashioned.”

A successful project could provide a blueprint for other rapidly developing Asian cities where urban planning is sometimes “brutal,” he says. Projecting forward 10 years or so after the West Kowloon project, Mr. Koolhaas says he hopes “Hong Kong has a cultural machine that both directs the local situation and the Asian resurgence, and is also a useful entity for South Korea, the Philippines, for China, Singapore.”

“That contrast – the powerful sense that something new has arrived – is one of the best things to happen to the District, architecturally, in decades.”

“Efforts to keep some of the most important works of art in Britain for the nation are being undermined by overseas collectors, the BBC has learned.”

“The New World Symphony’s new $160 million home is the architectural analogue of the mission the 23-year-old orchestral academy has adopted under founding artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas: to encourage experimentation within the stolid walls of the classical-music tradition.”

“What is most troubling in these interviews is that Clough seems to be blaming this controversy not on intolerance, or the threat of censorship, but on his curators. It is the job of a museum head like Clough to hire the best possible curators and then let them curate.”

Wayne Clough, who has been the secretary of the Smithsonian 2 1/2 years, said he wishes he had taken more time and spoken to more art experts before making the decision. “It’s the most painful thing I’ve ever done,” he said. But he said he didn’t consider it an act of censorship because in making the decision, “I didn’t judge this work of art.”