Particularly after a statement by the museum’s director Janne Sirén: “We are also not in the business of collecting buildings. We are an art museum and our service is to our public and to the artworks in our custody. The buildings are here to serve us, and not us as the staff, but the public and the art. That is our foremost responsibility. The buildings are the utilitarian tools, in some respect, that allow us to accomplish our mission.”
Category: visual
Architect Gordon Bunshaft’s Albright-Knox Museum Is A Modern Masterpiece; Now The Museum Wants To Alter It
“The plan, which is still its early phases, would see Bunshaft’s tranquil gap between his black box and the 1905 building filled in with a new, glass-enclosed space; Bunshaft’s galleries and courtyard would be demolished. Surface parking currently in front of the 1905 building would be converted back into green space—as it was before the 1962 expansion—with parking and future gallery space buried underneath.”
Experiencing A 5,000-Year-Old Subterranean Cave System With Ruth Bader Ginsberg
It doesn’t matter if the West, whatever the president meant by that, wants to or “has the will to survive,” whatever survival means. “Visiting the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum is a good reminder that no matter how hard you resist, everything around you will eventually be buried and that most likely no one will find it until thousands of years later, and if they do, it’s usually by accident.”
Of *Course* There’s An ‘Accidental Wes Anderson’ Reddit Thread
The internet, and Reddit, can be terrible cesspools – and they can also be very, very wonderful places, where people who love Wes Anderson films and sets and filmography know how to replicate the eye of the director. “There are the eye-popping colors and the strong, well-defined lines. There are the eccentric architectural triumphs and eerie quiet. But most importantly, there are those shots ― the ones that zoom in and out with an almost borderline obsessiveness in their quest for near-perfect, everything-just-so symmetry.”
The Lowrider Pinata That Made Its Way Into LA’s Auto Museum
Artist Justin Favela “likes the idea of rendering powerful objects in cheap tissue paper. ‘The lowrider, it’s always perceived as this very masculine thing and I like to play with that,’ says Favela. ‘It is hyper masculine. But in this case, it’s also feminine, because of paper and craft.'”
Where Have All Of Ukraine’s Lenin Statues Gone?
Two years ago, the statues were banned by governmental decree. Since then, “some statues have been turned into public works of art, some have simply ended up in shop windows and one has even been remade into an effigy of Darth Vader.”
The 3 Million Dollar Hobby Lobby Illegal Smuggling Case Casts A Pall Over The Museum Of The Bible
Not good, and Biblical scholars are taking note. (Also, wow: “The company never met the dealer, and wired payments to seven different bank accounts. The items arrived in 10 packages at three different Hobby Lobby addresses, labeled only ‘ceramic tiles’ and ‘clay tiles (sample).'”)
The Women Who Built New York’s Art World
“During this period, other women—like Peggy Guggenheim, Grace Nail Johnson, and Florine Stettheimer—also helped carve out the New York art landscape by establishing influential galleries and salons that fostered avant-garde art. Rarely, however, are these women heralded as the pioneers they were.”
An Expedition To Spiral Jetty
“The road conditions near the jetty were highly variable, which was to say not always roads. The lake’s water levels, too, needed to be below 4,195 feet for us to see it, and those levels were partly dependent on snowfall (this winter there was lots) and how much of that snow, by the time we arrived, had melted and sluiced down the mountains — water that also, en route to the lake, could turn the 16 miles of unpaved roads into impassable mush.”
Report: Vast Majority Of Pre-Columbian Art In San Francisco’s Mexican Museum Is Not Museum Quality
“According to the report, only 83 of 2,000 artifacts from the pre-Hispanic, or pre-Columbian, era could be certified as museum-quality by an independent team of museum curators who came from Mexico City to conduct the test. The other 1,917 are considered “decorative,” and will probably be given to schools or smaller museums before the museum moves from its temporary Fort Mason site to a permanent home in a luxury condo tower being constructed near SFMOMA.”