Category: visual

“The idea was not to create an icon,” avers the director of the Centro Botín in Santander. “The building is not trying to show off or give the impression that Santander is more than it is.” “I suppose our strategy was the opposite of the Guggenheim,” says architect Renzo Piano, who designed the building not to be visible from the city center. “How many Bilbao effects can you have after all?”

“The World Monuments Fund is launching a £500,000 scheme to train Syrian refugees living in and around the Zaatari camp on the Jordanian border in traditional stone masonry. The aim is to develop skills so that cultural heritage sites that have been caught in crossfire or destroyed by [ISIS] can be rebuilt once peace is restored to Syria.”

“In a small-scale study, a research team led by Francesco Walker of Vrije University presents evidence that children and adults look at works of art quite differently, with kids focusing first on visually stimulating elements. Adults, in contrast, try to make sense of the thing from the get-go.”

“The fact that some folks have managed to make the scene while others get left out in the cold is integral to the excitement of participatory art. The thrill is akin to exotic travel, or getting to see Hamilton. Because not everyone who wants the experience actually gets the experience, these works, even if their intentions and messages are democratic, tend to become exclusive affairs.”

The gift is a large sculpture – a hand holding a bouquet of the artist’s signature balloon tulips – in honor of the victims of the 2015 terrorist attacks. But it’s a problematic present: it’s too heavy for the site Koons wants, not everyone cares for it (one museum director says, “I think it will be much less kitsch in several years”), and the city is having trouble raising the required €3.5 million to have it made and installed. (Koons’s donation, you see, isn’t the completed work; it’s the concept.)

“McCann New York’s Fearless Girl statue, placed on Wall Street for State Street Global Advisors as a symbol of the power of women in business, enjoyed a spectacular first day here at the Cannes Lions festival, sweeping the first three competitions by picking up the Grand Prix in the Glass, PR and Outdoor Lions.”

“The museum and its ex-employees are offering starkly different accounts as the museum is reeling after losing five full-time staffers, at least two part-time visitor-services workers, and seven contract support staff and educators on June 13.”

“In reality, form is described in the beautiful halftones between light and shadow. Light will bounce off of an object at relative intensity depending on the angle of the planes of an object in relation to the light source. In other words, planes on a surface that face a light source will reflect the most light, and as the form turns away from the light, less light will bounce off of the form. This is true, even for black objects. Work done from photographs will never show this.”

Vincent Lopreto, one of three men arraigned for the counterfeiting scheme on Monday, has already been convicted twice of selling fake “limited edition” prints of Hirst’s dot paintings.

“The stolen artwork included masterpieces from minimalist painter Frank Stella and French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, owner William Pordy told police.” (Yes, he kept a Toulouse-Lautrec and a Stella in a garden-variety storage unit.) The thief did leave behind five paintings, evidently on purpose.