Category: visual

“Zoos, police stations and dentists’ surgeries will have as much chance of winning the inaugural World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards as cutting-edge football stadiums and airports, the organisers promised yesterday.”

“What to make of this starter marriage between starchitecture and the Strip? Is it a cautionary tale about museum satellites or something closer to a worthy experiment, a bit of transitory culture for a transitory city? What does it say about the legacy of Thomas Krens, the swashbuckling Guggenheim director who stepped down in February?”

In January, the FBI raided several Southern California museums, looking for smuggled antiquities. Now “an internationally recognized expert on Asian antiquities has been arrested and indicted on a federal wire fraud charge stemming from an ongoing investigation into the importation of stolen or looted antiquities from Southeast Asia.”

“One of the strangest exhibits at the opening of Design and the Elastic Mind, the very strange show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that explores the territory where design meets science, was a teeny coat made out of living mouse stem cells. The ‘victimless leather’ was kept alive in an incubator with nutrients, unsettlingly alive. Until recently, that is.”

“Buying an architectural landmark is a daunting proposition. Maintenance is complex and expensive, restoration even more so. Few of these houses meet contemporary standards of energy efficiency. There is also the obvious problem of geography. You can’t move a landmarked house to wherever you wish, as you can a painting or sculpture.”

“The Oakland Museum is especially ambitious among Bay Area institutions. But there is no other local museum so out of date.” Now the museum is undergoing an extensive $53 million renovation.

If the estimate is correct, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping by Lucian Freud is about to become the most expensive work by a living artist to change hands at auction. If the Freud makes or exceeds the estimate, it will be a double triumph for the previously underappreciated.

The breadth of Eero Saarinen’s practice, his fondness for “iconic” forms, his forays into furniture and design, his fame — all of this feels very familiar. Another quick bullet point for this exhibition might be: Eero Saarinen, the first “starchitect.”

“Italy sent conflicting signals Friday about whether it had reached an agreement with the Cleveland Museum of Art over returning ancient works of art the country believes were looted.”