Category: visual

“[F]or the huddled masses yearning to partake in architecture’s biggest night of the year, head lice exams gave way to X-ray scanners, as design titans, masters of the universe and assorted well-coiffed others awkwardly deposited their Constructivist jewelry and Ferragamo belts in plastic bins on conveyors.”

“‘Silent, weird, beautiful,’ Walt Whitman observed coming upon the still-uncompleted structure one night, ‘a majestic and lovely show there in the moonlight.'” Restoring the building has demanded “almost 20 years of work,” and the “results have been so extraordinary that Philadelphians forget how dreadful the place looked for so many decades.”

“In the case of … the riotously sculptural $100-million Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, the story is about the depths — and ultimately the limits — of the human mind. It’s the poignancy of that architectural narrative that ultimately helps the building … overcome its reliance on some of Gehry’s most recognizable architectural gestures.”

Andrea Palladio is “the godfather of American civic architecture.” The Renaissance master “combines practicality with grandeur…, which particularly appealed to American sensibilities. Since Palladio’s designs could be achieved in a variety of materials, and with a variety of means–grand and modest–they particularly suited a democracy.”

“Street artists in the city seem to be under siege at the moment. The Banksy markings come on the heels of a massive tagging attack on Shepard Fairey’s mural on East Houston Street. … Police say they’re investigating the tagging, and note that Banksy lacked a permit for at least one of his drawings.”

“Most museums acquire 90% or more of their collections as donations, but they don’t want everything…. Responding to inquiries for donations requires considerable tact, if for no other reason than a collector offering one unwanted object may have one or more others in which the museum would be far more interested.”

Diller, Scofidio & Renfro “have conjured … magical yet subtle alterations throughout the complex” in “[t]he latest phase in a years-long, $1.2 billion overhaul” that has “transformed the tired bombast of the architectural ensemble. None of the three theaters can be mistaken for great architecture, but now they seem to stand tall and throw their shoulders back.”

“In terms of culture and meaning, Tate Modern’s influence has probably been a disaster. Not because there is anything wrong with having fun looking at art — there isn’t — but because the greatest art is only rarely fun to look at. The Sistine ceiling is not fun. Guernica is not fun. Rembrandt’s Blinding of Samson is not fun.”

“This is what Labour needs to learn about culture: the modern does not equal the radical. Nor do history, tradition and achievement equal conservatism. Rembrandt is not a conservative…. The narrow desire to be the party of Tate Modern (and leave the National Gallery to the rightwingers) was a dry and self-diminishing discipline.”

“The court heard on Monday that during a face-to-face exchange over tea at Clarence House, the prince ‘pissed in [the emir’s] ear about how awful the scheme was’, causing him to order aides to withdraw the designs” for a housing development that would have put “more than 500 apartments on the former site of the Chelsea Barracks by Lord Rogers.”