Category: visual

Nothing was good enough, apparently, to win the American Institute of Architects’ 25 Year Award. Blame post-modernism? “The 1980s and early ’90s were a transitional period in architecture and in some ways a fallow one. Post-modernism was enjoying an unsteady reign in those years. Having finally toppled corporate modernism — and thus having been robbed of a villain to help inspire new work — the movement was having trouble figuring out what kinds of landmarks to produce on its own terms.”

The Banksy piece, which was made to protest pollution, was painted on a container. “The site’s owners, EDF Energy, had reportedly warned locals of their intention to clean up the beach, which would have involved destroying the container – and therefore the Banksy.”

In 2012, Terra began convening local curators and scholars, soliciting ideas for publications, exhibits, and programs that would clarify Chicago’s role as a “catalyst and incubator for innovations in art and design.” The result is a still-growing 29-exhibit, 100-plus-program, 60-institution collaborative effort that includes academic research, multiple books and catalogs, and a four-part public television documentary.

“The project involves restoration of the Castle and the Hirshhorn, the addition of an underground visitor center with amenities including restrooms and food service, and upgraded and centralized mechanical systems. The Haupt Garden, which is the roof of the subterranean Quadrangle building, would be replaced and the building’s entrance pavilions would be moved closer to the Mall.”

Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain, is planning a complete rehang of the gallery, five years after the last major transformation of the displays in 2013. In an interview with The Art Newspaper, he outlines a new vision for the collection based on three “pillars”: art and society, history and the present, and Britain and the world.

“Most of the final-year art history students I spoke to recently at one of the UK’s leading universities had heard about the Salvator Mundi, or at least its price. But when I put an image of a well-known Titian on the screen, only one of them (of around 40) could identify the artist. I asked what they had all been doing for the past few years; “reading” came the unenthusiastic answer.”

Jerry Saltz: “As with much minimalism, these prototypes are hard-edged geometry and impervious materials brought into the American landscape of the West and arranged to impose order, inspire awe, and try to manage and align mystic political forces — and to make something that while instantly obsolete, like some useless Stalin Gulag project, meant to last forever. Trump has made something that evokes a real monument — one that may correctly be said to stand for everything he believes in. And I think mustn’t be forgotten.”

“The owner of a historic Frank Lloyd Wright building in Whitefish, Montana razed the structure last week, immediately after last-minute negotiations with preservationists attempting to buy it fell through. Designed in 1958 – one year before Wright’s death – as a medical clinic, the 5,000-square-foot building is the first Wright-designed one to be demolished in over 40 years.”