Category: visual

Sir David Adjaye On His Design For DC’s African American Museum And How Architecture Can Shape Issues

“I believe that good design can provide a critical inquiry into social responsibility and civic consciousness. Spaces should provide access to a collective consciousness, reflecting the times we live in now. People are constantly affected by, responding to, and reshaping their built environment, and I believe designers have a responsibility to steward these dialogues.” – GQ

The Greatest Art Forger Of All Time Might Have Been Killed By The Mafia

When Eric Hebborn was found with a fractured skull near his home in Rome in 1996, his death was a mystery. But now, filmmakers making an 8-part miniseries about his life (and the more than 1,000 forgeries he claimed to have passed off as real) say they have evidence that not only was he working for the mafia for years, but they may have had him murdered as well. – The Guardian (UK)

Here Are The Details Of How That Black Hole Picture Came To Be

It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t fast, and it involved – shock – physical material. “The dreamy photograph represents a tremendous technological achievement, assembled using eight radio telescopes in four continents—two each in Hawaii and Chile, and one each in Arizona, Mexico, Spain, and Antarctica—all synced together to scan the skies for several days in a row.” – The Atlantic

This Week, A Calmer Pizza Party And Potluck To ‘Decolonize’ The Whitney

The quickest way to the heart, and all that: “The activists offered pizza and veggie dumplings to protestors and members of the museum’s staff in an action far less boisterous than in previous weeks. In return, they were greeted with a milder security team and a relatively indifferent response from the Friday free pass museum visitors.” – Hyperallergic

Parents Lead Push To Remove Sackler Name From Harvard Building

Parents who lost children to the opioid epidemic are pushing Harvard to take the Sackler name off a building that used to host the Arthur Sackler Art Museum. One: “Harvard, we want the Sackler name to come down. … This is a wonderful institution. And to be associated with the Sackler family is wrong, on every level possible. No more blood money.” – The Washington Post (AP)

These Depression-Era Murals About George Washington Feature Fraught Imagery. Should They Be Removed?

“In the debate over the 13 murals that make up The Life of Washington, at George Washington High School [in San Francisco], one side, which includes art historians and school alumni, sees an immersive history lesson; the other, which includes many African-Americans and Native Americans, sees a hostile environment. … [The muralist] depicted Washington, accurately, at a time when that was rarely acknowledged, as a slave owner and the leader of the nation that annihilated Native Americans.” – The New York Times

Guggenheim Museum Faces Complicated Questions About Conceptual And Minimalist Art — And Even ‘Decommissions’ Some Works

“For nine years, [the museum] has been foraging for answers to some of the most confounding questions raised by Minimalist and conceptual art from the 1960s and ’70s: What makes a work genuine? If an artist decides he prefers an earlier or later iteration of his original work, which one should have pride of place in a museum? If an artist disowns a work altogether, how should the museum label and classify it?” The issues arise from the Guggenheim’s famous Panza Collection, acquired from 1990 to ’92. – The Art Newspaper