Category: visual

We are in a mature, healthy and broad market in rather rude health, thank you very much. Here’s how it panned out.

“Mimicking termites’ strategies, architects and engineers can drastically improve energy efficiency in buildings.”

Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei own the Long Museum in Shanghai and plan to make it one of the world’s great art institutions. “And nothing, Mr. Liu said, says world class quite like a Modigliani nude. … He added, ‘The message to the West is clear: We have bought their buildings, we have bought their companies, and now we are going to buy their art.'”

“In 1890, Forest City, Iowa, built a palace – not of stone, or wood, or brick, but of flax. … The inventive structure was not the only one of its kind. In the late 1880s, the Midwest was seized by a craze for building palaces out of grains – hay, bluegrass, alfalfa, and corn, corn, corn.”

“His output is very large, almost incontinent, and the failures of his work are legion. But the talent is vast enough to fill the output. I hope I’m not dumb enough to think he can do no wrong. But what he does right matters so much more than what he does wrong. He is, I think, the genius of American art since the death of Pollock, and I’m not sure that I don’t prefer the higher achievements of his art to most of Pollock anyway.”

“A well-known piece of art in Shorewood’s Atwater Park will be removed and altered after a New Jersey blogger’s accusation that it contains hidden anti-Semitic messages went viral, generating concern among village residents and local Jewish leaders.”

What’s more, the alleged thief was acquitted of stealing the painting but convicted of stealing the frame, was sentenced to three months, and may not have been the culprit even though he turned himself in. As a bonus, the return of the painting was straight out of The Importance of Being Earnest.

“An unknown Italian man identifying himself as a retired art thief has contacted the police in the northern city of Piacenza demanding €150,000 ($163,000) for the safe return of a Gustav Klimt painting. … The artwork disappeared from the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Piacenza in February 1997 while the alarm system was incapacitated due to ongoing renovation work.”

“The Lakeside City (‘La Ciudad Lacustre’), which set out to recover the ancient Texcoco lake in the east of Mexico City, is the most comprehensive urban plan the city has ever seen. Kalach and fellow architect, Teodoro González de León, proposed to limit urban growth, clear and curtail development on the original lake bed, and allow the groundwater and rain to restore the body of water.”

“We are located in the Grand Palais near the Palace of the President,” said Jean-Daniel Compain, a senior vice president at Reed Exhibitions, reached by telephone Sunday. “We were expecting another 20,000 people in those two days, and I cannot take the risk.