Category: visual

Technicians laying cable near the Ponte Milvio came across ruins of four rooms from the first and fourth centuries. One of those rooms has carefully wrought floors of multi-colored marble and is adjacent to a small cemetery, which leads the supervising archaeologist to think that the site may have been a place of worship.

Transparent walkways and glass walkways are quite, quite common – including in architecture schools. “This not only affects the women who work and study in those buildings — according to the Assn. of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 42% of accredited architecture degrees were awarded to women in 2013 — but it normalizes the idea among architecture students that transparent walkways are just a benign architectural feature. They are not.”

On Friday, “a few minutes after 4 p.m., around 70 protesters poured into the Harvard Art Museums’ courtyard to chants of ‘Sacklers lie, people die, fund harm reduction now,’ ‘People over profit,’ and ‘Shame on Sackler.'”

Er, indeed, sir: “‘What are the odds of finding a de Kooning in a storage unit?’ he asked. ‘It’s unheard of!'”

Who gets the balloon – the British Museum, the Museum of London, the Bishopsgate Institute, or others? “The Trump babysitters started a crowdfunding campaign to fund a ‘Trump Baby world tour’: They have so far raised over 34,000 British pounds, or about $44,500. But Mr. Smith said the creators need time to work out what to do next, and assess the offers from museums and others. Other options could include releasing the balloon’s design under a Creative Commons license so that activists worldwide can use it.”

Is it time for new art funds? When people can trade portions of the value of an art work with blockchain tokens, what happens to the artwork’s value? And – er – what about the art itself? “Funds, tokenization and even digital art are all investments that don’t give investors anything to hang on their walls.”

As soon as the Culture Pass NYC site went live, it crashed for several hours under heavy traffic. Culture Pass is “an initiative that allows New York Public Library, Queens Library, and Brooklyn Library cardholders to book free passes at 33 of the city’s museums.” Some museums’ passes went quickly – the Whitney, MoMA – but they’ll drop more in August.

More fun, or more efficient, or more in line with what specific visitors want to see, that is. “Third-party tour companies, especially those working in fine art museums, bring more external filters, from the comedic to the academic. Their tours range from special themes, like feminism or gay culture, to museum highlights designed for time-pressed or attention-deficit travelers.”

Actually, it’s a building complex, one that includes a building voted second-ugliest in LA. Should that one be preserved? Even architecture critics have worries about dismissing the buildings out of hand. “Within the context of Southern California history, however, there is no question that this is a site that carries Los Angeles history in its bones.”