Category: visual

ONLINE GUGGENHEIM

The Guggenheim World Empire becomes the WWW Empire. The museum “has pledged the equivalent of a real building’s budget to create the Guggenheim Virtual Museum (GVM), launched this month, on a laptop near you. Wagering that the New York-based architecture firm Asymptote can do for it in virtual space what Frank Gehry’s Bilbao did in the physical world, the Guggenheim’s commitment is not only costly but long-term: Its design and construction will be ongoing, given the fluid nature of the medium.” – Architecture Magazine

WHY WE LIKE OUR BIG McHOUSES

Everyone, it seems, decries suburban sprawl. From the McHouse architecture to the sterile street life, the ‘burbs make an easy target. But “for all the scorn that’s heaped on the suburbs – and especially on subdivisions of nearly identical houses on the fringe of metropolitan areas – people like living there. And not just middle-class drones either.” – Weekly Standard

PICTURE PERFECT

Who says photography has to record something real? In the late ’70s, a number of artists began “questioning the documentary capacity of photography. Instead of taking pictures of extant scenes, James Casebere built elaborate models and photographed them, presenting the prints rather than the constructions as his art. Other artists were coming up with similar strategies at the time, all departing from the tradition of straight photography and its commitment to reality.” – Los Angeles Times

CHILD’S P(L)AY

Damien Hirst has agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to two children’s charities to settle a copyright suit sparked by his latest work, “Hymn,” a 20ft bronze sculpture (which recently sold for £1m) that is a larger-than-life replica of a well-known child’s anatomy set. – BBC

MAN OH MANN

The governor of Virginia has objected to a slide show by photographer Sally Mann given earlier this month in a state-owned museum. In his letter to the museum’s interim director the governor wrote he was ‘shocked and dismayed that this type of exhibit occurred on state-owned property.'” – Fox News (AP)