Category: visual

The LEED Silver rating for the Renzo Piano-designed wing “is part of a broader trend in which cultural institutions, in keeping with their charge to conserve society’s aesthetic treasures, are also taking care to help save the world from global warming.”

The “official photograph of President Obama, Vice President Biden and about 40 staffers who assembled to applaud the late-night passage of the [healthcare] bill … inserts Obama squarely into the middle of healthcare reform’s bipartisan history,” between portraits of FDR and his Republican cousin, “failed predecessors in the fight for federal healthcare legislation.”

Architect Peter Bohlin’s Fifth Avenue Apple store cube is reportedly “the fifth-most-photographed building in New York, the 28th worldwide.” Its design likely “helped him triumph over two superstars, Thom Mayne and Adrian Smith, to win this year’s gold medal from the American Institute of Architects,” yet Bohlin works “by sketching on paper rather than by turning on a laptop.”

The first photographer to hold the position, “Simon Roberts has been commissioned by the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art to document campaigning activity in the run-up to polling day. Mr Roberts will be given special access to the campaign trail and his images will join the House of Commons Parliamentary Art Collection.”

“Points were subtracted for inelegant taping, dripping sweat on the art, and, once, because a team that finished early didn’t ‘waste time properly’ by leaving to smoke a cigarette or go to get a beer.”

“I’m against tearing things down just because we happen not to like their looks. What you do with ugly buildings is live with them, add to them, give them a new face or a new use, and treat them with disrespect — not with murder.” The architecture of Boston City Hall is a magnet for disrespect.

“How should an architect approach the task of designing a building to represent his home country abroad? What happens if the result — implicitly or explicitly — is critical of that country’s past, politics or most cherished values?”

“The French and Italians have nicknamed it the ‘snail.’ The Norwegians have plumped for ‘pig’s tail,’ the Germans ‘monkey’s tail,’ and the Chinese ‘little mouse.’ The Russians think of it as a dog, and the Finns as a slumbering cat. … Yet the Museum of Modern Art in New York has deemed it to be such an important example of design that the @ has been officially admitted to its architecture and design collection.”

”’I am deeply ashamed and sorry for my actions,’ the dealer, Lawrence B. Salander, 60, said after acknowledging that he had defrauded clients including the tennis star John McEnroe; Roy Lennox, a hedge fund manager; and Earl Davis, the son of the painter Stuart Davis.” He admitted “to 29 charges of grand larceny and scheming to defraud investors.”

When New York art dealer Jeffrey Deitch accepted the job running the museum, he agreed to close his business so as to avoid conflicts of interest. Now he says he’ll just add his dealership’s inventory to his own personal art collection and sell it from there.