Category: visual

Michael Kimmelman: “When was the last time you lingered for pleasure at Kennedy Airport? When was the last time you felt happy to be there? An architectural advertisement for the thrill of air travel at the sunny dawn of the jet age, Saarinen’s reincarnated terminal is an unavoidable reminder of just how sad and degrading the experience of flying has become, if you’re not rich.” – The New York Times

In a letter to Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley dated Friday, new Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III reiterated the institution’s position that it is legally bound to keep the name of the late benefactor, Arthur M. Sackler, who, in 1982, donated 1,000 objects and $4 million toward the construction of the museum. – Washington Post

LACMA has dedicated a space to the exhibition of the new plan with a 15-foot model built in Zumthor’s studio. The site model is a single slab of molded cement, reproducing several blocks of the Miracle Mile with abstracted precision to focus attention on an all-white volumetric model of the LACMA addition.  – Archinect

Bari Weiss: “The notion of erasing art has an American pedigree. The [immigrant New Deal-era artist] Victor Arnautoff was intimately familiar with it, having been interrogated in 1956 by the House Un-American Activities Committee for drawing a caricature of Vice President Richard Nixon. But I suspect he would have been surprised to learn that more than 60 years later, progressives in charge of educating San Francisco’s children are merrily following this un-American playbook.” – The New York Times

Of course, LGBTQ life didn’t start in 1969 – but there’s not a lot of visual record out there, at least not in public. The director of 1982’s Before Stonewall reflects on her archival research and the difficulties along the way as the film gets a re-release for the 50th anniversary of the protests/riots/major point in the fight for civil rights. – The Atlantic

Barnes, a U.S. football player turned artist who did such things as “creating album covers for Marvin Gaye, receiving a commissioned by Kanye West and being named the official artist of the 1984 Olympics,” still isn’t really part of art history, curators of a new retrospective claim – and that’s what they’re trying to correct, of course. (But it’s not every day that the artist’s professional American football helmet is included in the artist’s show.)- The Guardian (UK)

Artist Donna Huanca uses semi-nudes to claim space in what she says is still a very male space. “I’m trying to distort the male gaze, to have it be so powerful that it reflects back in a different way.” – Los Angeles Times

The vote, in which 57 voted to join the union and 20 against, will see more than 90 arts handlers and facilities staff join the same union that represents roughly the same folks at MoMA PS1. – Hyperallergic

The Uffizi in Florence was never shy about saying what happened to the painting Vase of Flowers by Dutch master Jan van Huysum, but soon it won’t need that “STOLEN!” label on a reproduction on the wall. – BBC