Category: visual

Beijing is growing at a dizzying pace, and while progress is presumably to be celebrated as a concept, some are asking whether architectural identity is being sacrificed in the name of speedy modernization. “Are we in danger of replacing one form of cultural imperialism with another?”

“Norman Foster, the world’s most celebrated hi-tech architect – the Sultan of Seamlessness, so to speak – has just completed an elephant house at Copenhagen Zoo that is not just low-tech but, to an almost shocking degree, earthy in its materiality… Foster’s team sought to deliver an architectural paradigm-shift in a genre that is utterly foreign to them.”

Last week, a London art critic panned a high-profile Klimt show at Tate Liverpool, and the museum’s director isn’t taking the shot lying down. “It is disappointing when a show’s gift shop receives more coverage than the show itself… What counts is the ambition and quality of the exhibition.”

“A set of 11 agate and alabaster seals, which date from between 3,000 B.C. and 2,000 B.C., was returned after having been snatched during the widespread looting at the museum in 2003. The cylinder-shaped seals were turned over to Iraq’s antiquities ministry at a ceremony in Baghdad on Monday.”

Each of the individuals whose names have been mentioned has both advantages and drawbacks as a future director for the Met.

Since it opened, Tate Modern had a light at the top of the chimney rising above the museum. Now it’s suddenly gone with no explanation. “Tate describe it as a ‘temporary structure’ and insist that it was due to come down anyway (though you have to wonder how long it would have lasted were it not for the storm).”

“Ben van Berkel’s Five Franklin Place takes the glass-box condo and ties it up in sinuous ribbons of black metal. Frank Gehry drapes the Beekman Tower’s 76 stories in voluptuous folds of stainless steel. More is to come from Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind and Jean Nouvel. These are not just emblems of confidence in the New York market. They also express faith in architecture that strives for significance.”

The show was deemed not appropriate for public display.

“Police in B.C. say some of the artwork stolen from the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology has been recovered. Twelve works of gold jewelry by Haida artist Bill Reid and three Mexican necklaces comprised of gold coins were stolen from the museum overnight May 23 in a highly sophisticated break-in.”

“The head, with its neatly trimmed beard and fringe of exquisitely crimped curls, is certainly Hadrian but it seems the body it has been attached to for almost 150 years belongs to somebody else.”