Category: visual

“Augmented reality (AR) has been touted as the bridge between the physical and virtual worlds, as new technologies add information to real-world environments.” A new exhibition titled “Give Me More” uses AR “to reveal hidden layers of meaning associated with ordinary objects. … Storybooks become animated, t-shirts bestow powers on their wearers, and Euro notes show their more salacious face.”

Surveying the history of artists’ attempts to fool their viewers, from Ancient Rome through Giotto and the Flemish masters to American tricks with pictures of money and sculptors who made rock look like bronze and porcelain resemble wood.

“The Los Angeles County Museum of Art saw its investment portfolio lose nearly a quarter of its value during its 2008-09 fiscal year.” In the same period, contributions to the museum fell by $100 million – nearly 80 percent – from the year before.

Some “60 exhibitors from last year’s Art Basel Miami Beach are not returning, including Berlin’s Arndt & Partner, London galleries Waddington and Maureen Paley, and New York’s Per Skarstedt. Fair organiser have added 65 new exhibitors, including some who had previously been turned away. The 2009 edition now boasts 266 dealers from 33 countries. Another big change is the fair’s physical appearance…”

“Very little remains, and what remains is puzzling. … [Most of the survivors] were mural paintings, preserved (ironically) by the lava of Vesuvius, while the paintings in other cities, such as Rome itself, were destroyed or faded away. Was the art of these two provincial towns inferior to the art of the capital? If we saw real Roman painting, would that make the work that’s survived look very average? Or is this as good as it got?”

“The center, a mad work of architectural megalomania and historical recovery, is one of the strangest but most memorable museum buildings to open in ages. Imagine an Art Deco version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon stretching nearly the height of the Empire State Building, its decorations coded with Armenian symbolism. Did I mention the artificial waterfalls?”

“Architectural plans released today for the $250-million, 225,000-square-foot George W. Bush Presidential Center, to be built at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, carry no hint of the swagger, bravado or taste for confrontation that Bush was known for as president.” Rather, Robert A.M. Stern’s design is handsome and contextual.

“A shortage of funds has prompted UC Berkeley to abandon its plan to construct a new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive downtown. The building, a distinctive and innovative design by Tokyo architect Toyo Ito estimated to cost $143 million, was to replace the museum’s present, seismically endangered quarters on Bancroft Way, completed in 1970.”

The Old City in the Yemeni capital, San’a, “is one of the world’s architectural gems, a thicket of unearthly medieval towers etched with white filigree and crowned with stained-glass windows. But more unusual than their mere survival is the fact that the traditional building arts continue to thrive here.”

“It was the highest level of new business for the nation’s architects since August 2008, a report from the American Institute of Architects says. ‘This news could prove to be an early signal toward a recovery for the design and construction industry,’ said Kermit Baker, the AIA’s chief economist.”