Category: visual

“Armstrong, just off the pace after five of 21 [Tour de France] stages, wrote on his Twitter social-networking feed he was ‘speechless’ after seeing Hirst’s design on the bike’s frame. He didn’t give details. The artwork features butterflies” and “will be used for the final stage of the race, which ends July 26 in Paris.”

“A questionable deal is a lot like art. No one can define it, but people know it when they see it. What everybody knows is that at least a couple of the paintings recently sold by the Orange County Museum of Art were stellar examples of California Impressionism. Yet no one except the museum’s director and a few others know why they were sold so secretly, for such an apparently low price, or to whom.”

“The late-Roman-era mosaic floor, one of the largest and finest in Israel, was unveiled by the authorities last week for just the second time since it was discovered 13 years ago” in the town of Lod. Following two more years of conservation work (and the exhibit of one section at the Met Museum next year), “the entire mosaic is supposed to be returned to this patch of ground … and put on permanent display in a protected environment.”

“A new contractor has been hired to finish the construction of the complex Zaha Hadid-designed pavilion in Millennium Park, and the opening of the already-delayed pavilion has been pushed back another two weeks to Aug. 1. … [The temporary structure] was scheduled to open to the public June 19 and to have a 4½-month run.”

“I don’t want to get too serious about what is essentially a tourist attraction. But perhaps there’s a shred of significance in these wow-inducing glass boxes near the top of the nation’s tallest building, especially when you pair them with the news that the crown atop the Statue of Liberty … reopened to the public Saturday for the first time since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Could it be that America is rediscovering the sky?”

Artist Damon Rich has used the Panorama of the City of New York, created for the 1964 World’s Fair, to map foreclosures’ impact on the city in 2008. “Each plastic triangle represents a block where there have been three or more home foreclosures. Visitors on the balcony walkway that surrounds the Panorama, at the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, can see in a single glance precisely where subprime lenders wreaked the most havoc.”

“Italy’s biggest prize in the war against looting antiquities went on view recently at the Villa Giulia in Rome. … Maybe overexposure explains why this didn’t strike Italians as particularly big news. The media mostly gave the event a pass. The gallery was empty the other afternoon. A new book may help revive interest.”

“The achievement of the memorial that is to be unveiled to the victims of the bombings in Hyde Park today is that it communicates a sense of collective loss while also honouring the individual tragedies that took place. Designed by the young architects Carmody Groarke, it comprises a field of 52 closely spaced columns, which have been cast in stainless steel.”

“A building with an intimate connection to one of Boston’s most celebrated figures, Isabella Stewart Gardner, was smashed to the ground yesterday at the back of the museum that bears her name. The so-called carriage house was razed to make way for new museum buildings designed by the architect Renzo Piano.”

“The total volume of sales at London’s June auctions of Impressionist and contemporary works declined 70 percent on last year as auction houses cut jobs and guarantees to sellers to adjust to the financial slump. Sotheby’s, Christie’s International and Phillips de Pury made 165.9 million pounds ($269.4 million) at the summer sales, down from a record 558.8 million pounds in 2008, according to calculations made by Bloomberg News based on auction house results.”