Category: visual

“Reed Kroloff is one of a small coterie of competition advisers who organize and administer the bake-offs so often used to determine which architecture firms will design which coveted projects. These advisers are both catalysts for — and beneficiaries of — an upsurge in interest in how architects are chosen. Competitions that only five years ago would have been local affairs now draw thousands of entries from around the world, partly because the Internet makes the rules available to any architect with a computer and modem.”

“Michael Arad, the designer who proposed the winning memorial with reflecting pools in the tower footprints, has been refining drawings for a final design expected to be unveiled on Wednesday. He is working with Peter Walker, a landscape architect who joined him during the jury selection process. ‘It is impossible to please everyone. Everybody can’t weigh in on this.’ But since the designs were announced last month and Arad’s was chosen last Tuesday, it seems that nearly everyone has.”

Architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have broken ground on their biggest project yet. “On Christmas Eve, construction began on its biggest project yet: the Olympic Stadium, which will form the centrepiece of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The 100,000 capacity arena promises to be the most remarkable stadium since Gunter Behnisch’s 1972 Olympic Stadium in Munich. It looks like a giant bird’s nest, with a mass of structural members intertwined to form its huge basket.”

Edinburgh’s skyline is changing. “The pendulum having swung from destruction to timidity, there is now the fervent hope that it might have settled in a happy middle position where we value the past, and look to continue it into an optimistic future.”

The UK has a new law to try to slow the trade of illegal antiquities through London. “The Dealing in Cultural Objects Offences Act outlaws the handling of an item knowing that it was illegally removed from a site anywhere in the world after 2003.”

The oldest figurative carvings ever found have been discovered in a cave in Southeast Germany. “While precise dates for the objects are unknown, an analysis of related deposits indicates that the artists lived from 30,000 to 35,000 years ago. The three small ivory carvings suggest a high level of artistic skill among craftspeople living at this time, experts claim.”

“Could a new Barnes thrive in a $100 million building with a $10 million annual budget, two figures floated in court? Yes, observers believe. There would be new revenue opportunities, and the Barnes would be more attractive to prestige-seeking but cautious donors. In the worst case, though, donations and attendance might drop off after an initial rush, and expenses could spiral.”

A painting was stolen from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe early Thursday but was quickly recovered, and a security guard who reported the theft has emerged as a suspect, police said.

A film is soon to be released about the painter Vermeer. But there’s a problem. “It’s not only the man but his art that is tantalisingly silent: just as no pithy quotes from Vermeer or anecdotes about the time he punched Pieter de Hooch in the face survive, nothing is known about the women in his paintings, or the stories they seem to hint at. And there’s the rub. In fact it makes film-makers of us all as we mentally complete the hints of narrative in his paintings, picturing scenarios, possibilities suggested by his inscrutable glimpses. Vermeer painted more than two centuries before the invention of cinema, but he anticipated the way films make a world and fill it with light.”

The Tate is considering selling some of its art to upgrade its collection. “Works by living artists, such as David Hockney, could be sold to allow the Tate to buy better or more appropriate items by the same person. Despite Hockney’s stature, the most recent of his pieces in the Tate’s collection dates back to 1977.”