Category: visual

A former Brooklyn Museum manager admitted Wednesday he stole more than $620,000 by cutting checks to phantom employees.

“If you wanted to describe what the buildings of the past decade looked like, you’d be hard-pressed to settle on any particular description. A cool, sleek, almost chilly modernism prevailed among some designers, while others pursued exuberant and dazzling forms. Museums went through a great age of expansion, though as the decade ends, it’s not clear if they may also be in for a new age of overextension hangover.”

“Britain’s museums have done more than gentrify the urban core. Over the past 10 years they have provided cosmopolitan spaces in our multicultural society, offering a vehicle for a shared socialunderstanding. In the face of mass-migration and stark, post-9/11 and 7/7 religious tensions, Britain’s great conurbations have mostly remained free of communal violence. Our civic institutions have played an important role in that by offering settings for transcultural dialogues.”

“For the month of January, Show Media, a Las Vegas company that owns about half the cones adorning New York City’s taxis, has decided to give commerce a rest. Instead, roughly 500 cabs will display a different kind of message: artworks by Shirin Neshat, Alex Katz and Yoko Ono.”

The 00’s were “a culturally transformative one for Chicago, and the most significant developments took place right on the city’s front yard. Downtown’s great expanse of public land was always meant to be enjoyed by Chicagoans and visitors, and over the past 10 years, they found more reason than ever to do so.”

“The most striking thing about CityCenter is how, in a city that defies any notion of context, it feels somehow out of context. Locals, living in a vast, jangling assemblage of different architectural gestures, somehow feel that CityCenter is out of place, wrong for their city, like the guy who wears a dark blue suit to a Halloween party.”

“It’s been a really rugged year, but 35 million tourists will still come. CityCenter will act as a catalyst. Visitation has grown 10 to 20 percent after a significant project opens up.”

CityCenter Las Vegas – 187 million square feet of floor space, 67 acres, $8.5 billion – includes buildings by Daniel Libeskind, Norman Foster, Cesar Pelli, Rafael Viñoly, Helmut Jahn, and Kohn Pedersen Fox, plus public artworks by Henry Moore, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg and Maya Lin. How does it all work?

“The lender, which has received 45.5 billion pounds in state aid in the world’s most expensive bank bailout, is reviewing its collection to determine initially whether UK national museums wish to acquire any of the items.” The bank may then sell other works on the open market.

“German officials have ruled out returning an ancient bust of Queen Nefertiti to Egypt – saying it is too fragile to be transported. And they have insisted that the bust was acquired legally by the Prussian state nearly a century ago.”