Category: visual

The memorial at the site of the World Trade Center has been chosen. It will be a teeming grove of trees above two deep reflecting pools within the outlines of the twin towers. “The announcement followed weeks of contentious debate in a city whose citizenry quickly scrutinized the eight finalists’ plans. The discussion underscored the difficulty of choosing one from the total of 5,201 entrants in the competition for a memorial that would encompass heroic sacrifice and unfathomable loss.”

After 18 years of planning, the new Sydney Theatre opens. “Snuggled into one of Sydney’s most artificial topographies is a new house of artifice. Its facade, dominated by that huge romanesque proscenium, declares up front a commitment to reality remade. Yet, at the same time, Walsh Bay’s new Sydney Theatre, opening on Saturday, is profoundly shaped by intimacy. You can call it ironic. Or you can relax in the knowledge that probing this truth-illusion relationship is theatre’s core business.”

The Smithsonian’s new National Air and Space Museum annex at Dulles Airport has attracted 250,000 visitors since it opened three weeks ago. “The facility houses 81 air- and spacecraft, including the space shuttle Enterprise, an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, an Air France Concorde and the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay.”

Shanghai has more than 60 private museums. But “after some 20 rough years, many private museums are now facing serious hardships in Shanghai, the birthplace of private museums. In the 1990s, the country had about 80 private museums. The figureincreased to 200 by 1996. But behind the glorious image of private museums, balancing thesheets is becoming a common problem facing almost all private museum owners. Insiders predicted that half of the private museums in Shanghai now have such problem.”

The Museum of London has a collection of 20,000 skeletons, and its director says he believes they should be reburied. “The skeletons’ fate has prompted debate among academics. Many of whom have previously said they should be held back for research into human origins and history. But Jack Lohman, the museum’s director, said it was an ‘ethical issue’ and that artefacts found alongside them suggested 70% of the skeletons unearthed in London in the past three decades had received Christian burials.”

“The Glasgow School of Art could be forced to move after a review of its buildings found it would cost several million pounds to bring them up to standard. Even the main building, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and internationally renowned, could close.”

All this angst about what to do with the peculiar building at 2 Columbus Circle in New York. Ada Louise Huxtable weighs in: “The most basic preservation question is not being asked at all. What will be lost, and what will be gained? The proposal being rejected out of hand is a promising solution by a talented young American practitioner that will reclaim an abandoned building of debatable merit for a desirable cultural facility. We do not lose the building; everything that is good about it will be retained – its size, its scale, and its intimate relationship to the street. What is bad about the building – the dark, cramped and virtually useless interior and those faux harem walls that close off spectacular views – will be changed.”

Plans for the World Trade Center site are being reviewed by preservationists. “As stipulated by the National Historic Preservation Act, the so-called Section 106 review requires that the site’s historical significance be officially evaluated before federal money can be used to rebuild it. For the first time, in other words, independent scholars will have the opportunity to address publicly the historical meaning of ground zero and its value to future generations. This is welcome news indeed. Not since the milestone Supreme Court decision that upheld the preservation of Grand Central Terminal has there been a landmarks issue of comparable importance to the future of urban America,” writes Herbert Muschamp.

Thailand has plans to build a large Smithsonian-style museum. “The project is intended to bring various kinds of museums under one roof – the new museum would have exhibits in eight fields _ science and technology, history, archaeology, art, anthropology, ethnicity, geography and environment.”

An entrepreneur has announced plans to open a pirate museum in Key West (once the base to pirates). “The museum will feature items from his pirate collection, including a treasure chest from Capt. Thomas Tew and the last journal from Capt. William Kidd, a 17th Century pirate who was executed for his crimes. ‘I want people to say, ‘Wow!’ when they see it. We’ll take them back in time’.”