Category: visual

When the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to allow an art exhibition in Kennedy Airport’s vacant Terminal 5, the landmark Eero Saarinen building that Steven Spielberg used in “Catch Me If You Can,” it probably wasn’t envisioning graffiti on the walls or vomit and broken glass on the floor. But no, artists weren’t responsible for those displays. The damage was done by guests at an opening-night party that got out of hand, and now the show of installations, which was to have run through Jan. 31, has been closed.

“Two weekends ago, the staid art galleries of [New York’s Chelsea neighborhood] got a shot of guerilla art, when the RIDER Project parked in the area. The inside of the 15-foot truck had been meticulously sheetrocked, taped and painted white, turning it into a white cube art space showcasing the work of 17 emerging artists… Some of the gallery owners were not so pleased.”

Aficionados lust after houses designed by famous architects, but owning one isn’t an easy task. The 1929 Lovell House, a Richard Neutra masterpiece, needs expensive renovations, and its elderly owner wants to do them. But she says Neutra’s son is pressuring her to forbid alterations by future owners.

Elbowing postmodern architecture aside, modernism has come back in vogue. As Caltrans’ hulking new district headquarters in downtown Los Angeles suggests, this may mean a return to the days when architects and officials pretty much ignored city residents’ vigorous opposition to the unfriendly designs they would have to live with.

What with having to persuade the Taiwan military and get approval from China’s Culture Ministry, an artist’s vision for an exhibition that examines the legacy of war between Taiwan and mainland China took 13 years to be realized. But now, in the abandoned bunkers and minefields of Quemoy, Taiwan, the show has finally taken shape.

Thieves smashed a cabinet at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum on Monday, and made off with the nine antique jade objects it contained. The pieces are estimated to be collectively worth over $100,000. The museum has launched an internal investigation into its security.

The Los Angeles museum created by billionaire Armand Hammer to house his personal art collection got off to a terrible start when it opened in 1990. First, Hammer himself died only days after the opening, and lawsuits over the money used to build the museum followed. The organization “limped on with no clear identity, serving chiefly as a venue for staid traveling shows. [But] no more. Today the Armand Hammer, on Wilshire Boulevard in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, is considered one of the city’s hottest cultural attractions, with a keen eye for emerging artistic talent and a busy schedule of ‘destination evenings’ that routinely draw crowds to the museum for readings, concerts and films.”

Over the last decade, 380 young women have been brutally raped, tortured, murdered, and dumped along a remote stretch of the Texas-Mexico border. 800 more women are missing, with no real attempt being made to find them. “But now, a proliferation of art is emerging from the tragedies amid the blood and sand of the dusty industrial border town across from El Paso, produced by artists and performers fuelled by moral outrage and responding to what has become a human rights crisis and a bi-national scandal.”

Three portraits of former U.S. President Richard Nixon have been removed from the walls of the Norwegian parliament, after MPs complained that they were inappropriate, disquieting, and generally “shocking.” The head of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee insists that he’s all for freedom of expression, but doesn’t feel that the disgraced former president is an appropriate symbol for a governmental institution.

The town of Carmel, California could be considered an art mecca in miniature – four out of every ten businesses in Carmel are art galleries, with 61 having opened in the last four years. But last month, the Carmel city council decided that you can have too much of a good thing, and passed a moratorium on new galleries. “The ordinance puts an immediate halt to issuing business licenses for new art galleries that don’t meet certain standards, such as being a working artist’s studio or a gallery that features the work of just one artist.”