Category: visual

“U.S. sculptor Richard Serra, renowned for his large-scale metal structures, has been named the winner of Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias award in the arts for his innovative ability to integrate urban spaces in his work … Each prize includes a €50,000 ($63,000) cash award and a sculpture by Joan Miró.”

“Tate Modern has used the occasion of its 10th birthday to show how it is expanding its collection beyond Europe and North America, actively buying work from artists in countries from Algeria to Egypt to Iran.”

“Zhang Huan’s colossal installation Three Heads Six Arms is striking, bizarre and fairly overwhelming.”

“Witnesses said the violence broke out a few minutes into [Lars] Vilks’ lecture about the limits of artistic freedom, when he showed a film by an Iranian artist about Islam and homosexuality. A young man leaped from his front-row seat and tried to attack Vilks, police and the artist said.”

The Morgan Library & Museum, which recently underwent a $106 million renovation and expansion by Renzo Piano, “is embarking on a $4.5 million project that will gently restore one portion of the old Morgan that was not touched by Mr. Piano: the building designed by Charles McKim in 1906 to house J. P. Morgan’s personal office and library.”

“A Jasper Johns painting of an American flag from the estate of writer Michael Crichton sold for a record $28.6 million tonight at Christie’s International in New York.”

“Like the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Centre Pompidou-Metz has been given a spectacular and unconventional building. It resembles a white Teletubby house; or a collapsed parasol; or a giant stingray. But unlike its celebrated parent, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, built in 1977, the Metz Pompidou does not flaunt its innards to the world.”

A look inside and outside this very strange fish.

“The finalists include one of the world’s best-known firms, Foster + Partners, … and cult favorite David Adjaye Associates, whose only completed building in the United States is a small museum in Denver. The other finalists are Snøhetta, a Norwegian firm that designed the National Sept. 11 Memorial now being built in Lower Manhattan, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro….”

“In an incident with little if any recent precedent on the National Mall, the truck shattered a plate-glass window that forms part of the outer wall of the museum’s lobby. … Linda St. Thomas, spokeswoman for the Smithsonian Institution, of which the circular-shaped museum is part, said the truck came about one foot into the building.”