Category: visual

Architect Santiago Calatrava has a winner in the transit station he has designed for the World Trade Center site, writes Blair Kamin. “That design, unveiled last month and expected to be finished in 2009, seems destined to become the finest piece of architecture at ground zero, head and shoulders above the awkward “Freedom Tower” that resulted from the stormy collaboration between architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind. The transit station will simultaneously provide a grandly scaled civic gateway to lower Manhattan and the kind of light-washed, cathedral-like public space that Chicagoans and other visitors rave about in Milwaukee.”

Maybe you didn’t like the proposal chosen for the World Trade Center monument. Well, take a look at the proposals that didn’t make it: “All 5,201 of the entries that the jury sifted through went on display at www.wtcsitememorial.org yesterday. Visitors to the site who signed on to second-guess the jury — “How could they have overlooked that?” — probably left with a new respect for the jurors’ devotion and patience in going through the entire lot without pay. Visitors may also have left with a sense that the world cared, no matter how clumsy or inartful the expression.”

Civic buildings get built in waves, writes James Russell. “Cities often want to build the architectural bauble du jour in their unending search for the grail of world classness. There was a wave of convention centers, followed by sports stadiums, (add a zoo or aquarium here or there) then museums. Now, especially after the tumultuous reception that Disney Hall in Los Angeles received, everyone wants a concert hall.”

Is a painting thought to be a Caravaggio in Dublin’s National Gallery a copy or a fake? “The recent discovery of an identical work in Italy has sparked heated debate, with Italian art dealers convinced theirs is authentic and the other a copy. But art collector and historian Sir Denis Mahon said the Italian artist had painted at least two versions of The Taking of Christ and both were originals.”

London’s Toy Museum, which has been operating since 1876, is likely to close soon, if money is not found to rescue it. “Spread over two floors, six small rooms and several winding staircases, the walls of Pollock’s Toy Museum are covered with an estimated 20,000 exhibits dating back more than a century.”

The United Nations headquarters in New York was an architectural trendsetter when it opened in the 1950s. Now it’s time for expansion and “plans for extensive renovations and the addition of a new administrative building, to be designed by Fumihiko Maki, have once again put the UN at the forefront of design – this time the struggle to reconcile security features with aesthetics and openness.”

The Moderna Museet in Stockholm is “the largest and most important museum of contemporary art north of Dusseldorf.” But two years ago it closed, a “sick” building that need to be closed and extensively repaired. “So, 27 months after its closure, the building has re-opened. The museum has come home. But home has changed quite a lot. The place looks different. The place feels different. The art is organised in quite different ways too.”

Last year Col. Matthew Bogdanos led the US team trying to recover art looted from the Iraq National Museum. “Now, after recovering more than 4,000 stolen artifacts, Bogdanos’s team is in shambles, its members recalled to other projects or done with their tours of duty. The Marine colonel himself will be returning to civilian life at the end of March. So this winter he’s touring the world, pleading with government officials, military experts, and antiquities specialists to continue his effort to recover more than 9,000 missing treasures dating back to the birth of city life, the invention of written language, the world’s first laws.”

Plans for the Museum of Scotland won praise and awards in 1998 when they were unveiled. “But recent changes to the £50m Museum of Scotland have been labelled as crude, perverse, wretched, and tacky by leading figures in the architectural community.”

A Canadian court has disallowed a scheme whereby investors could buy art at a low price, then claim an inflated value by donating it to museums and universities. “It’s been estimated that the scheme, called Art for Education, resulted in tax-credit claims of more than $65-million. In December last year, Canada Customs and Revenue announced it was eliminating the tax shelter, saying that henceforth, purchase price would be considered for donations being made for tax purposes.”