Category: visual

Rudy Giuliani didn’t cotton much to the idea of a field of naked people in Times Square posing for a photographer. So now the concept travels – maybe to Dublin? – Irish Times

• — museum for Queens. MOMA picks LA architect Michael Maltzan to design the space in Long Island City. – New York Times
  
  • Maltzan worked as an architect in Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica office during the late ’80s and early ’90s, where he was project designer for LA’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. Since leaving Gehry in 1995, Maltzan has done a series of major projects in Los Angeles, establishing a reputation as a designer of remarkable rigor and maturity. – Los Angeles Times

A German court has issued an injunction to bar the return of a painting with questionable provenance to its American owner: the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The painting is “Bauhaus Staircase” by Oskar Schlemmer, painted in 1932, considered an icon of the Modern’s collection and usually on view in the permanent-collection galleries. The painting had been on loan for an exhibition at the National Gallery in Berlin that closed on Jan. 9. Ironically the Modern has been in a similar dispute of its own over ownership of an Egon Schiele painting that had been lent to MOMA. – New York Times

• While the US Department of Justice investigates Sotheby’s and Christie’s for commission fixing, Christie’s quickly changes its commission structure to “show its good intentions.” – The Art Newspaper

• Two Canadian artists created a monument to women killed by men. Now the murder conviction of the husband of one of the women named on the memorial is overturned, and the man’s attorney threatens a defamation suit against the artists. – CBC

The great accomplishment of New York’s newly-rebuilt Hayden Planetarium is “to make the unimaginable understandable.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

• Previously: PLANETARY ADVENTURE: After six years of work, the Hayden Planetarium at New York’s Museum of Natural History is set to open its ambitious addition. “Designed by James Stewart Polshek and Todd H. Schliemann, the $210 million space is glass enclosed and luminous, a bright contrast to the heavy neo-classicism of the rest of the museum. – Newsweek

– in 18th-Century customs house will concentrate on contemporary art, leaving 20th Century to current Venice Guggenheim. – Chicago Tribune (Reuters)

A New Zealand gallery-owner is selling six paintings he maintains are by Paul Gauguin and worth a fortune. But critics say the paintings are fake, the work of master forger Karl Sim, aka C.F. Goldie. – New Zealand Herald

A group of French museum directors begins a tour of American regional museums. Last fall officials from nine French and nine American art museums formed a consortium to promote exchanges of artworks, technical expertise and exhibitions. The organization is called FRAME, an acronym for French Regional and American Museum Exchange. – The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum has become a major repository for the work of the pop artist. Now, “it wants to become an adventurous and vital cultural center that also hosts dance performances, plays, performance artists and concerts, offers lectures and symposia on topical issues, acts as an incubator for the region’s avant-garde artists and serves as a gathering place for young people.” – Pittsburgh Post Gazette