Category: visual

“The small but established downtown museum was to have shared a spangled new building near the memorial with the International Freedom Center, a still-unborn institution that is trying to coalesce out of murky good intentions. Pressured by families of the 9/11 victims, Gov. George Pataki and a coterie of cringing officials at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. tried to force both institutions to declare that their exhibits would not be used as a platform for anti-American views.” The Freedom Center agreed, and the Drawing Center said no thanks.

In an apparent concession to some Sept. 11 victims’ relatives who said that the World Trade Center Cultural Center could disrespect the dead and America, John Whitehead, director of the redevlopment effort, gave the International Freedom Center until Sept. 23 to work with family members and produce specific plans for its museum. If the plans do not satisfy the LMDC, he said, ‘we will find another use or tenant consistent with our objectives for that space’.”

“The Miami muralist who misspelled Shakespeare, Michelangelo and nine other famous names on a mosaic outside the Livermore (CA) library slipped into town to correct her errors — at a cost of $6,000 to the city. And this time, city officials promise they have checked her work before it gets set in stone.”

“As the result of an out-of-court settlement, Bay Area resident Thomas Bennigson will receive $6.5 million from Marilynn Alsdorf of Chicago for a Pablo Picasso painting reportedly stolen by the Nazis from Bennigson’s grandmother years before Alsdorf acquired it in 1975… The settlement ends a protracted legal battle over Picasso’s 1922 oil ‘Femme en blanc’ (Woman in White). The dispute began in 2002, when Bennigson sued to have the painting returned to him.”

A British TV show is soliciting votes for viewers’ most hated building. Then it proposes to knock the building down. “Many of the buildings that have been put up for the TV experts to knock down for us on Channel 4 will be ones that some love, others hate. More will be of the sort that simply need to hide away until fashion, or a truly streetwise property developer comes to their rescue.”

Russia’s gallery scene is booming, and contemporary art is selling well. “Europe’s second-most-populous city, Moscow has one of the highest concentration of billionaires in the world — 27, according to Forbes magazine. Oil and metals income, boosted by prices at record highs, has transformed the Russian capital into a construction boomtown and the new rich want art to furnish their houses and apartments.”

International outrage was sparked in 2001 when Afghanistan’s repressive Taliban regime ordered two 1,600-year-old statues of Buddha in the country’s Bamiyan Valley destroyed, but despite pressure from Western countries to preserve the massive artifacts, the statues were wiped out. Now, a Japanese artist plans to commemorate the Buddhas with a laser-based installation in the Bamiyan Valley which is drawing funding from the United Nations. “Fourteen laser systems will project 140 overlapping faceless ‘statues’ sweeping four miles across Bamiyan’s cliffs in neon shades of green, pink, orange, white and blue.”

The BBC is polling its audience to choose Britons’ favorite piece of art. “In what the BBC has described as the first ever national survey of paintings to be held anywhere in the world, the public have been invited to vote for any painting in Britain to determine the nation’s greatest work of art. The poll has attracted such artistic luminaries to discuss their favourite painting as Jack Vettriano and Boris Johnson, but held no attraction for Time Magazine critic Robert Hughes who was scheduled to appear on Saturday’s broadcast. Yesterday, he dismissed the poll as a ‘minor circulation-building exercise’ and said he refused to discuss it because it was of ‘no relevance’.”

Los Angeles is seeing a boom in tall buildings. “In all, 32 towers are on the horizon for downtown, though some still need city approval as well as financing. Twenty are considered skyscrapers because they climb more than 240 feet, or about 20 stories. From 1986 to 1992, almost two-thirds of towers 20 stories or more built in the U.S. were for office use. But recently this has really flipped. “Between 2003 and June 2005, about 84% of new towers were for residential, multifamily use — an indication of investor and consumer appetite for multifamily condo development. Luxury high-rises are what’s being demanded.”

“When the Egyptian Museum was built about 100 years ago, it was host to only 10,000 artifacts. The architecture was French colonial, with a lush, cozy garden and a Nile view. Today, the museum is surrounded by a concrete jungle of overpasses, skyscrapers, five-star hotels and an endless stream of cars. Moreover, it holds at least 150,000 antiquities from Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Coptic and Islamic civilizations. The rooms in the King Tut exhibition area were brushed up and supplied with air-conditioning a few years ago. But many others still lack ventilation and humidity control, and some even have their windows open wide, allowing the noise and smoke of the streets to pour in.”