Category: visual

Among the familiar names competing to design the new National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall: Diller Scofidio + Renfro, (Norman) Foster + Partners, Pei Cobb Freed, and Moshe Safdie. The two who aren’t (yet) widely famous: Freelon Adjaye Bond and Moody Nolan with Antoine Predock.

Martin Gayford: “At the very least, this is a product of Goya’s imaginative world; [Asensio] Julia may have taken his inspiration from his master’s work. It is still a powerful image. The works of all manner of artists, from Rubens to Jeff Koons, were actually executed by assistants anyway.”

MOCA in L.A., which just survived a near-death experience, is going ahead with three planned design exhibitions on site and two installations at a satellite location. SFMOMA’s department is on “an acquisitions spree.” And the Getty Research Institute has just established an architecture/design department.

The Cisneros Collection, considered one of the best gatherings of Latin American painting in existence, has spent the last ten years “lent out in tranches to dozens of museums in North and South America.” Now the Cisneros foundation’s trustees have decided to find a permanent home or homes for the art.

“Designed by Mansilla+Tunon and nearly 330 feet tall, it will have six stories of convention spaces, totalling over one million square feet; its largest auditorium will seat 5,000. The building itself will be shaped like a solar lens (or the Death Star, or a golf ball, depending on your perspective).”

“Two people died when a walk-through inflatable artwork broke free from its moorings because of the creator’s gross negligence, a court heard today. Maurice Agis, 77, designed the multi-coloured Dreamspace structure and was taking it on a UK tour when disaster struck in July 2006 in Chester-le-Street, County Durham.”

Brandeis University’s decision to shutter its Rose Art Museum and sell off its collection “represents the worst fears of university art museums nationwide.” The president of the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries said that it “reflected a general lack of understanding that art is not a luxury, but is a central part of a liberal education.”

“The decision to close the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and sell off its extraordinary collection smacks of panic. Panic, as everyone knows, is sometimes an appropriate response to reality. But usually it’s not, and, either way, it’s rarely edifying to watch.” Far from expendable, the museum “is the best place to go in the Boston area to see modern and contemporary art of the highest caliber.”

The starchitect “has unveiled images of a grasshopper-like extension to a refurbished fire station in Antwerp to house the port authority headquarters… [Her] practice will design both the extension and the refurbishment of the fire station at an estimated construction cost of €30.5m.”