Category: visual

“As academic research goes, it doesn’t get more untidily free-form” than MIT’s busy, highly interdisciplinary Media Lab. In designing the lab’s new building, Fumihiko Maki “has taken MIT’s $90 million and methodically disciplined its sprawling idea factory while keeping all the experimentation on display.”

“Dr David Gill, reader in Mediterranean archaeology at Swansea University, said that the four antiquities bore soil traces that indicated they were excavated during illegal digs. Images in the Bonhams auction catalogue show the same sculptures cleaned and restored.”

“So what’s it like for an artist at this stage in her career to see her works — or words — everywhere? ‘It startles me sometimes,’ said Holzer, who winced at a few of her old sayings as they scrolled past at the Standard [Hotel]. ‘And it has funny side effects. When my daughter was young, she thought all electronic signs were mine.'”

One battle is over “Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to take away $415,000 in arts grants from groups that qualified under the standard competitive application process, in favor of four that he chose. The other is [over] preserving rent-free use of city buildings by nonprofit organizations, including leases on 245,000 square feet devoted to the arts.”

“As part of the plea deal, the West Hollywood resident admitted she paid an art restorer $1,000 to create a reproduction of a work by Pablo Picasso — a 1902 pastel ‘La Femme Au Chapeau Bleu’ or ‘The Woman in the Blue Hat.'”

“Company founder Peter Carlson said it will be filing something ‘akin’ to bankruptcy,” and said the economy was a big factor in the situation. “Besides Koons, Carlson [& Co.] was the producer of choice for dozens of top contemporary artists, including Doug Aiken, John McCracken and Charles Ray.”

“Two high-profile architectural offices and a lesser-known candidate are in the running to design a new home for the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, BAM officials announced Tuesday. Joining high-wattage New York firms Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects is Boston-based architect Ann Beha.”

“The stencil of a rat descending in a parachute was believed to be the only remaining work left by the elusive British graffiti artist during his time in Melbourne in 2003.”

“The San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is the country’s only airport with a museum program accredited by the American Association of Museums. Exhibits are scattered through various terminals and change several times a month.”

“[I]t’s as if we had decided, when we tore down the overhead green-painted Central Artery, that we would memorialize it on the ground. We’d make another big green disruption through the heart of the city. So what’s the solution for the Greenway? My answer is simple. Make it a neighborhood.”