Category: visual

Mexico’s shantytowns might seem an unlikely inspiration for a high-statuts architect, but for one suburban California designer, the low-cost Tijuana communities born of necessity represent a possible antidote to Southern Cal’s plague of gated communities and endless sprawl. “It’s not that he romanticizes poverty: he recognizes the filth and clutter, the lack of light and air, that were the main targets of Modernism nearly a century ago. But by approaching Tijuana’s shantytowns with an open mind, he can extract a viable strategy for development that is rooted in local traditions.”

“The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is about to take its Web site where no museum has gone before. Where that is isn’t absolutely clear, but it merits getting excited about. The so-called ‘online national design museum’ promises to open the museum and its vast collection to visitors anywhere in the world. What’s more, if development can keep up with vision, the site will turn museumgoers into participants in a bold cultural experiment.” Specifically, visitors to the site will be able to add and manipulate content, Wiki-style. Will it work? No one really knows.

Yemen’s Amiriya Palace was built 400 years ago, but abandoned only 13 years later. For centuries it was ignored and abused until an archaeologist came along in the 1980s and insisted it be restored. It was the restoration no one wanted, but as the decades went on and the work continued, a real treasure emerged…

Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art is building its new $51 million home, the “first new art museum to be built in Boston in nearly 100 years. Designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro, the 65,000-square-foot building on the waterfront will have three times the exhibition space of the institute’s current building.”

This year’s New York Armory Show opens. “This year’s fair looks particularly neat. Certain galleries (Sean Kelly, Zeno X) have gone for an almost arctic spareness. Many adhere to a formulaic display: biggish painting (or photograph), medium-size sculpture, little paintings (or drawings) in a nook. Expensive, less expensive, beginner’s luck. The mix can work great.”

Three paintings that were said to be painted by the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco have been “withdrawn from an auction after a lawyer for his family said they could not have been his work.”

Is a fresco on the wall of an Italian church a Michelangelo? “The inhabitants of the Chianti village have long claimed that the artwork was painted by Michelangelo in his youth. The claim was supported in the 1940 by the scholar Roberto Weiss, who attributed the Pietà to the Renaissance master. However, the first visible evidence for the legend was found only recently.”

The company set up to run Charles Saatchi’s art gallery in London has landed in court, unable to pay its bills. Meanwhile, Saatchi has already announced plans to set up a new gallery…

Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Getty Conservation Institute have entered into a six-year partnership for the conservation and management of the Valley of the Queens, one of the world’s most important archeological sites.

“The $24.5 million Jepson Center for the Arts, which opens Friday, is a shockingly modern addition to both the historic downtown of Georgia’s oldest city as well as the annex’s 138-year-old sister museum.”