Category: visual

“The design consumes less coveted park space than expected, while introducing a contemporary aesthetic that evokes Frank Gehry’s museum in Bilbao, Spain, in its undulating exterior and Turkey’s underground city of Cappadocia in its cavelike interior.”

Kriston Capps argues that it’s time to ditch that term altogether, because it has turned into a “partisan slur”: “The conservative pearl-clutching over starchitects is performed. It’s registered in bad faith. It’s at root an allergy to program, funding, public works, or intangibles that have nothing to do with the built environment. The objection to starchitects is dressed up in Culture Wars theatrics, meant to elicit partisan alignment around political identity in the face of difficult design questions.”

“In the past two years, as the city has invested millions of dollars in renovating and refurbishing the building, something strange has been brewing at the Corn Palace. For 13 years, from 2001 to 2014, the arena was run by the same director, Mark Schilling. But in 2014, he was asked to resign” and convicted of petty theft. “Since then, the city has hired two directors, one of whom was asked to step down before even starting the job, and a second who lasted less than a year.”

“This was to be the first franchise of an event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and its failure to make it here is a reminder that the art patrons in Dallas will show up dressed to the nines for galas like TWOxTWO last week, raising millions of dollars for the Dallas Museum of Art and amfAR, but aren’t interested in seeing an event like ArtPrize come to life, which allows artists of any caliber to participate.”

132 years after construction began in 1883, the magnificent Sagrada Família has reached its final stage of construction. According to the current chief architect, Jordi Fauli, six more towers will be added to the basilica by 2026, bringing the grand total to 18.

“The prominent Russian art gallery owner Marat Guelman is being evicted from an exhibition space in Moscow after hosting a charity auction for political prisoners … Two days [after the event], Guelman was served with an eviction notice from the company that rents out the building housing his gallery at Moscow’s acclaimed Winzavod art center.”

On 22 October, Italy’s Chamber of Deputies passed a measure to reclassify museums as “essential public services” on a par with schools and hospitals, effectively limiting the right to strike.

“Israel has managed to snap photos and videos of everyone from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Junot Diaz to author Ta-Nehisi Coates, all of whom project their personal style via their reading.”

“Archaeologists are in the early stages of analysing the finds, but estimate them to be at least 14,000 years old. This places the camp among the earliest in northern Europe after the freeze.”

“‘I was interested in how people use material,’ she says. ‘And how those materials are used to re-create some element of the architecture of the place they are from. You see styles of houses from the coast or from the south of Mexico — but they’re all made with materials that are only found on the border.'”