Category: visual

“An Inca mummy kept in a Florentine museum might have been a source of inspiration for Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream,” an Italian anthropologist claims.”

Shelter Magazine runs a competition to design and build a pre-fab house that really works. “The results are in, and they are decidedly mixed.”

Tate Britain is inviting visitors to write their own labels for art in the galleries. “The 30 most vivid contributions will go up on the walls, beside the efforts of the curators, in time for British Art Week, starting on September 20. More will be added, and may remain for as long as the paintings stay on display. This is the first time the gallery has invited members of the public to join a contentious debate about how to label art.”

“A Honolulu businessman’s plan to take an expedition to Mount Ararat in search of Noah’s Ark ended this week when the Turkish government refused to permit it because of security concerns about the area, which borders Iran and is 150 miles from Iraq.”

Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art had ambitious plans to shut down for two years and “create a spectacular new $100 million building.” But when that plan was abandoned, it opened new possibilities and a bit of reinvention of the museum’s operation…

Fourteen years after landing at the center of the American culture wars, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati mounts a show of controversial art from the 1980s. “Cincinnati remains a conservative redoubt in a battleground state. But the selection of paintings, sculptures, videos and photographs in this show — on view through Nov. 21 in Zaha Hadid’s acclaimed new building — feels like a brave attempt by a rejuvenated institution to confront its local audience, and perhaps at the same time begin to repair the city’s reputation for cultural provincialism.”

After heavy criticism after “The Scream” was stolen, the Munch Museum in Oslo is installing new security measures to protect its art. “We are closed and will be closed for three weeks to install alarms, among other things.”

Yoko Ono plans to recreate one of her most famous pieces of art at the Tate Modern, 40 years after first performing it. “The original 1964 ‘happening’ involved Ono having clothing cut from her body by the audience until she was naked. The 71-year-old recreated the work in Paris last year in an effort to promote world peace, but left the stage in her underwear.”

“A $265 million museum devoted to the indigenous art of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania is rising on the banks of the Seine beside the Eiffel Tower. Within a year the Musée du Quai Branly, as it is known, will begin receiving the 270,000 objects in its collection.”

Contrary to popular opinion since 9/11, the New York skyline consists of far more than the Twin Towers and whatever replaces them. In fact, the look of the insanely crowded Manhattan cityscape is currently being transformed by “a growing list of stunning residential towers designed by celebrated talents like Richard Meier, Santiago Calatrava, Christian Portzamparc and Enrique Norten.” But if these residential skyscrapers represent the best of the new New York look, the worst is always just around the corner, represented by a new wave of monolithic office towers. Still, the changes are exciting, particularly following an era in which New York seemed to have lost its architectural bearing.