Category: visual

The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center opened a $30 million addition and renovation in August. “Rather than an attention-grabbing, signature structure, David Owen Tryba Architects of Denver, to its credit, created a largely self-effacing design that defers to the museum’s original 1936 building, one of the state’s architectural gems.”

Italian architect Renzo Piano has been named the 2008 winner of the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal, the highest honor that the institute confers on an individual.

“Rome is a sleeping giant,” he says. His reasons for adding a Roman gallery to his spaces in Los Angeles, New York, and London is partly that Cy Twombly keeps a studio there. Another factor is his long-standing interest in Arte Povera, the Italian art movement of the 1960s.

“An artist is inviting Londoners to come face-to-face with the wretched labor of one of India’s lowest castes — by filling an art gallery with 21 big blocks of human excrement.”

“In our post-everything world, collectors at the highest financial reaches of contemporary art are alleged to buy from digital images sent them, without seeing the actual artworks.” But really, can you buy real art without actually looking at it in person?

Damien Hirst, the “second-most- expensive living artist at auction”, has given London’s Tate museum four of his trademark artworks, including pickled cows and a canvas of dead flies.

“How should an art critic talk on TV? What is striking about the press response so far to the series (which looks at art as a barometer of changing social values) is the concern with my way of expressing myself. It is too ordinary. The reviewers are baffled that I am not more bizarre, as if it’s difficult to tell if something significant is being said if you say it so it can be understood.”

The ranking minority member on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure says the National Gallery of Art had told him it is committed to spending in excess of $100 million to renovate and move into the FTC’s Apex Building. As a result, the NGA could add much-needed space by expanding into a so-called North Wing at no cost to the federal government.

The Britih architect joins a list of star architects creating cultural buildings, winning a competition to design the Sheikh Zayed National Museum, which will be devoted to the history, environment, culture, and leadership of the United Arab Emirates.

The “nation’s attic” needs money to repair its infrastructure. Lots of it. And Senators grilled Smithsonian officials and challenged them on fundraising. It wasn’t a friendly exchange…