Category: visual

“Gehry’s withdrawal is but the latest in a series of obstacles to have come in the project’s way. Sheikh Raed Salah, a leader of Israel’s Islamic Movement, has charged that the construction would desecrate an Islamic holy site and, together with Jerusalem Arab families whose ancestors are buried in the Mamilla Cemetery, he petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to block it.”

“In an interview Tuesday,” Eli “Broad unexpectedly revealed the third site” he’s considering for his museum: “a 10-acre parcel on the campus of West L.A. College in Culver City.” But “West L.A. College President Mark Rocha says neither Broad nor any of his associates ever replied to a letter he wrote to them last November about the property.”

The map “is the work of Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary from Italy. One of the first westerners to live in what is now Beijing in the early 1600s, Ricci was famed for introducing western science to China, where he created the map in 1602 at the request of Emperor Wanli.”

Jonathan Jones: “Loving Blake is natural when you’re a teenager. Some people turn against him later on and see him as a hamfisted draughtsman, a Hanoverian hippy. In reality Blake … is the only [artist] we have ever produced who really captures the national genius. This is because he was a writer as well as an artist.”

“The Milan-based Triennale Design Museum has signed a 15-year lease for 18,067 square feet at 40 W. 53rd Street, to open a four level museum. The space will be the Triennale’s first location in the United States, and its third overall.”

The co-chairs of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s board say that MOCA’s newly appointed director, art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, would “be violating his employment contract … if he were to use his position to improperly benefit himself or his friends and former business associates.”

“The centre, called the V&A at Dundee, will be the focal point of a major redevelopment of Dundee’s waterfront similar to schemes to regenerate other once-ailing ports and industrial centres such as Gateshead, Salford, Leeds and Liverpool with prestigious arts and cultural venues.”

Dubai’s Burj Khalifa bears a resemblance to Wright’s unbuilt “Mile-High Illinois” tower. “I’m not sure if the famously prickly Wright would have considered imitation the sincerest form of flattery, but he would have been pleased to see a version of his conception take shape in the Middle East, which was the site of one of his most spectacular unbuilt projects.”

“Now the foundation, established 15 years ago under the terms of the will of the abstract painter Judith Rothschild – who died in 1993 – has defaulted on all 17 of its 2009 grants to artists’ estates and arts organizations.”

“All but one department head at [the institution] have reportedly lost their roles after the positions they held were recast and readvertised.”