Category: visual

“For decades, the harbor was a noxious stew, a watery dump for Boston’s sewage and industrial waste. Like Lake Erie in the 1960s, Boston Harbor was given up for dead. But Lake Erie came back to life, and so has Boston Harbor. Its fate changed for the better in the 1990s when a sewage treatment plant opened to keep raw waste out of the harbor. Appropriately, the new museum building represents a similar rebirth for the Institute of Contemporary Art.”

“Chicago has just 29 buildings and projects that bear the equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from the U.S. Green Building Council, the Washington-based non-profit that sets the standards for what is officially considered green. While that is more than any other American city except Seattle and Portland, Ore., it nonetheless represents a tiny fraction of Chicago’s total of more than 500,000 buildings. More broadly, it is a sign that the fledging green movement has mountains to climb before it achieves broad acceptance.”

“Buffed for its birthday, the building looks better than ever. Its bulging fronds — metallic flowers in bud — remain irresistible. The shingled titanium surface blushes as it refracts the setting sun off the Nervion River. Inside the great atrium, curving white walls and shards of glass zoom thrillingly skyward. Along the looping pathways, shifting planes of stone and glass kaleidoscopically dapple light and shadow. I wondered how many artists have asked themselves, ‘Can my work stand up to this’?”

“With the arrival of the Impressionists in the 1860s, there was a divorce between France’s curators and contemporary creation. For the following century the museum seemed to project a disdain for living artists.” Now the Louvre is commissioning living artists to create works for the museum.

“The fallout from this fiasco continues, even as the art world digests its lessons. Büchel has appealed the court ruling. Michele Maccarone, the New York gallery director who represents Büchel in the United States, said she will tell collectors not to support the museum and will steer her stable of artists, including Christian Jankowski and Carol Bove, away from the institution. Mass MoCA is planning a symposium this fall on the now notorious disaster. And thanks to thousands of pages of documents filed in court, the dispute could serve as the ultimate how-not-to guide in the complicated world of installation art.”

“A very preliminary and completely unofficial model depicting a new high-rise home for the Orange County Museum of Art made an appearance Thursday… This year, city officials approved five high-rise residential developments in the district — among them an 80-unit, 300-foot-tall condo tower rising above a museum that would occupy the lower three or four floors.” Still, the building’s deisgn and the museum’s role in the process are not yet fleshed out, nor is the matter of who will pay for it all.

“A Los Angeles federal judge has dismissed a case that jeopardized the Norton Simon Museum’s ownership of a nearly 500-year-old pair of paintings of Adam and Eve by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. The action halts dueling lawsuits filed by the museum and Marei von Saher of Connecticut, the heir of a Jewish art dealer who lost the artworks to the Nazis in World War II.”

“In the era of movies with elaborate special effects and video games with graphics that cause players to marvel at the feeling of being inside the game, its no wonder museums are scrambling to keep up. For many, the answer to a more sophisticated audience and one with, perhaps, a shorter attention span is interactivity and immersion. Science and childrens museums have long trafficked in hands-on, sensory experiences. Now, with improved technology, the experiential exhibit is reaching new heights and turning up in a variety of venues.”

“Some 350 boxes stuffed with receipts, photographs, letters and other records chronicling the history of the Leo Castelli Gallery are being given to the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art in Washington. Castelli, who died in 1999 at 91, fostered the careers of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and Frank Stella, among others.”

The Stirling Prize, the UK’s top award for architecture, gets handed out on live TV, but it hardly makes the cultural radar for most Britons. And in contrast to the success enjoyed by authors who win major prizes, architects who take home the gold rarely see a major bump in commissions. So why do we even have such prizes?