The deep-black-stained pine floors that founder Dominique de Menil specified for the museum she founded three decades ago have worn down (as heavily trafficked pine wood floors will do after three decades). And the refinishing has to be perfect.
Category: visual
Canada Is Issuing Glow-In-The-Dark Money
The new $2 coin being issued for Canada’s sesquicentennial features a colored design depicting a canoe on a lake under the Northern Lights, which do indeed glow in the dark. The new “Toonie” is the first photoluminescent coin in general circulation.
Ten Essays That Changed The Course Of Art History
Following the Second World War, with the relocation of the world’s artistic epicenter from Paris to New York, a different kind of war was waged in the pages of magazines across the country. As part of the larger “culture wars” of the mid-century, art critics began to take on greater influence than they’d ever held before.
Thrilling, Disorienting Light: A Walk Through James Turrell’s Installations In Mass MoCA’s New Expansion
“The exhibition brings together light installations from every stage of the career of this 74-year-old artist and elder statesman of the Southern California Light and Space movement, from what appears to be a levitating cube (a projection of buttery light in the corner of the gallery) to a series of holographic images that seem to contain three-dimensional wisps of light.”
The Mystical Monumentality (Or Monumental Mysticism) Of Louis Kahn
Martin Filler: “How odd that the towering genius of architecture during the third quarter of the twentieth century – when his most conventionally successful colleagues prized innovation over tradition, analysis over intuition, and logic over emotion – was a mystically inclined savant who sought to reconnect his medium with its spiritual roots. Indeed, he ran wholly counter to prevailing images of the modern architect.”
Lost Jackson Pollock Painting Found In Arizona Garage
“When a Scottsdale, Arizona, man was headed to a retirement home, a neighbor helping with the move found the collectible in the garage and suggested contacting an auctioneer to appraise it. Josh Levine, owner of the auction house who was called to look at the poster, estimated the signed Lakers memorabilia would be worth about $300. But when they went to the man’s garage, what they found could be 50,000 times more valuable.”
Can Art Turn San Francisco’s Treasure Island Into Something Interesting?
“The plan would fund projects inspired by the island’s unique features: its name; its “vantage point” amid an iconic bridge and two great cities, surrounded by an inland sea; its history as a site of innovation — a world’s fair, an early nexus of commercial aviation, a military installation; and its environmental and ecological conditions. Projects will be solicited from local, national and international artists.”
How Mr. Bean Nailed The Behavior Of American Museum Audiences
“If the movie Bean has taught us anything (and what hasn’t it taught us really?), it’s that American museums and the museum-going public will line up, go out of its way, to view something spectacular, whether there’s much in the way of educational value.” Noah Charney (who cops to similar behavior himself) talks with some curators about “what you as a curator do when the material in your collection is more interesting than spectacular.”
Sydney’s Flagship Museum Stuck In The Doldrums – And Behind Its Australian Rivals
“Years after rival art museums in Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra completed their own expansions and reaped obvious benefits (including higher attendances), the acrimony surrounding the Sydney Modern Project, as the expansion [of the Art Gallery of New South Wales] has been called, reflects – and epitomizes – Sydney’s deep ambivalence toward culture.”