Category: visual

“On the same Tuesday in March that will see Mayor Eric Garcetti facing no real opposition for reelection, L.A. voters will consider Measure S (once known as the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative), which calls for a two-year moratorium on major new development projects. Its backers say new construction is out of control — and out of scale with historically low-rise Los Angeles. What they can’t quite bring themselves to say is that the measure itself is an expression of mourning for an L.A. that is already dead, a city of single-family subdivisions, highway construction, discriminatory zoning and free parking that worked (to the degree that it ever did) only as long as the region continued to sprawl voraciously at the edges.”

Tristram Hunt, the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent, a Midlands city that’s been dubbed “the Brexit capital” (66% ‘leave’ vote), is leaving politics to take over the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Unfortunately, this may last only a few months.

Prosecutors had accused Guy Wildenstein, two family members, and advisors of attempting to avoid paying €550 million in inheritance taxes by transferring assets out of France. In delivering his verdict, the judge went out of his way to say that he does not think the Wildensteins are innocent: the problem is with French law.

The museum had hoped to open the extension to its main building for its 150th anniversary in 2020; now even the groundbreaking is seven years or more away.

“The [18-month] restoration has systemically treated all of the bridge’s structural elements for the first time in more than 400 years.” (vandals have already tagged it with graffiti, alas.)

“It was a diverse scene that held out a hint of utopian promise at a time when Abstract Expressionism was waning and new categories had not yet hardened: It included many more women than the uptown art world; it was not completely white; abstraction and figuration jostled side by side (if not always comfortably), along with genre-bending sculpture; and the gloriously messy birth of modern performance art took place in the midst of it all.”

“Balshaw has been director of the Whitworth Art Gallery since 2006. She became joint director of the Whitworth and the Manchester Art Gallery in 2011. In 2014, she in effect became Manchester’s cultural attache when she took on the role of strategic lead for culture at the city council. At the Whitworth, Balshaw has led the much-admired £15m redevelopment of the gallery, helping to breathe new life into the collections and dramatically increasing visitor numbers. It won the 2015 museum of the year prize.”

“The tiff spiraled out of control Tuesday, with House Republicans acting on two separate occasions to pull the artwork down from a tunnel in the Capitol complex, after it was rehung by Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), whose young constituent painted it.”

“The architects trick visitors into the daunting [eight-story] climb by changing the subject with a fun house of surprising events. The entrance leads past a decorative digital wall to a long ride on an escalator through a tunnel spotted with mirrored discs. Visitors land at a wide terrace, … [and] another escalator leads to an outdoor piazza … [which] marks the start of a modern version of the Spanish Steps in Rome.”