Category: visual

“Buildings sometimes fail because of incompetence or shoddy workmanship, but the examples that follow failed for a different reason: architectural ambition.” A Hall of Shame of iconic buildings with major problems in structure (Fallingwater, MIT’s Stata Center), mechanical systems (Pompidou Center), or the translation of ideology into practice (Le Corbusier’s idea of “the Radiant City”).

“It’s a challenge that’s been around since the aerobicized decades of the ’80s and ’90s…. The goal, teachers say, is for students to learn how to draw different bodies, learn a sense of proportion, and get a perspective on reality. You can’t get that from drawing the same kind of body” — that is, a young, slender body — “all the time.”

“Tete de Femme (Jacqueline), a 1963 portrait of the artist’s second wife, had not been seen in public since 1967. A spokeswoman for Christie’s auction house said the painting had been expected to fetch between £3m and £4m.”

“The troubled 77-year-old art supplies chain is closing the 969 Market St. store, which has been open since the mid-1990s, along with seven other stores across the country,” reflecting the fact that, as one analyst says, “the art supplies industry has not done particularly well in recent years.”

“At least 250 employees,” or 14 percent of the staff, “were fired or took buyouts as the museum reported that its investments declined by more than $600 million, or 24 percent,” according to the museum’s 2008-09 annual report. “Designated gifts by donors plunged by 46 percent to $43.1 million, according to the report.”

“A federal appeals court has decided that a lower court erred in 2007 when it ruled in favor of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in a bitter dispute between the museum and the artist Christoph Büchel over an immense, unfinished installation.”

“Some of the most sinister historic monuments in Britain, a set of hardened concrete bunkers built to shelter American nuclear bombers, are to be protected and preserved.” Government planners and the English Heritage agency have decided “that the site is one of the best preserved Cold War landscapes in Britain.”

“With hindsight, Mr. Campbell now sees a ‘silver lining’ to the turbulence of his inaugural year. He acknowledged, when asked, that the crisis had given him the opportunity to appoint a hand-picked team much sooner and less controversially than would have otherwise been possible.”

“[I]t was jarring to read obituaries of the 91-year-old Salinger last week accompanied by pictures of him in what appeared to be his early 20s. A portrait from a 1961 Time magazine cover reveals a slightly different Salinger: grayer, morose, perhaps beaten. The National Portrait Gallery unveiled the work by Robert Vickrey today.”

“While no price was disclosed, the collection has been insured for more than $100 million” and includes about 185,000 prints. MSD Capital LP, Dell’s investment firm, “will lend the photos for five years to the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin.”