Category: visual

“We’re starting from zero. There is room now for a real contemporary art museum, a 21st-century museum. And this is going to be it.”

The Church of Santa Barbara in the town of Llanera “fell into disrepair after the Spanish civil war. Now, after decades of neglect, the Romanesque revival structure has been transformed into a street art skatepark. Called the Kaos Temple, its walls and vaulted ceilings are painted in kaleidoscoping rainbow patterns by Madrid street artist Okuda San Miguel.”

“Its demolition is the stuff of New York legend, an act of architectural vandalism so unspeakable that it gave rise to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, saved Grand Central Terminal and upended the city’s development priorities. … [Yet] the Penn Station that was torn down between 1963 and 1966 was scarcely the building it had been a half-century earlier.”

“Often the sound of a place is so pervasive that we stop noticing what we hear. Or we think the sound could not be otherwise — that is, until we, say, turn off the buzzing overhead lights.”

“Do wealthy collectors with art advisors have a duty to investigate authenticity and research provenance, or can they do what they’ve always done and rely on what a reputable gallery tells them?”

“After scrapping the first design in July, the government Tuesday picked a less-costly and greenery-rich plan by architect Kengo Kuma for the new National Stadium that will serve as the centerpiece of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.”

“A small confession: I came to appreciate the paintings of Ellsworth Kelly … in only the last ten or 15 years. Now, his work stuns me from its own Platonic eternity. I see one of his paintings, and I wake from my habitual self and feel like I’m in the presence of some shimmering undead vampire, something incessantly present.”

“The agreement, which has been initially approved by both institutions’ boards, would become effective June 30, paving the way for the art school’s more than 700 students and roughly 145 faculty members to come under the Tufts banner.”

“The flagship Taipei museum boasts more than 655,000 Chinese artefacts spanning 7,000 years from the prehistoric Neolithic period to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. They were removed from the Beijing Palace Museum in the 1930s by China’s Nationalist government to prevent them falling into the hands of invading Japanese troops.”

“They have been relentless and rude, insulting his hair and clothes, making fun of his accent at public meetings. They have forced him to invest more than $7 million on land-impact studies and lawyer fees to fight court challenges. They’ve called him a foreigner, which he’s not, and criticized his art, reminding journalists and elected officials repeatedly that they are too unsophisticated to actually understand his work, which is a polite, Colorado way of saying they think it sucks.”