Category: visual

“Shigeru Ban’s £2.7 million temporary replacement – known as the Transitional Cathedral – has a lifespan of between 20 and 30 years, is 25-metres tall and constructed from cardboard tubes on a timber and steel A-frame.” Construction should be completed by December.

“A prominent group of engineers say it is ‘technically feasible’ to restore the Christ Church Cathedral” – badly damaged in last year’s earthquakes – “and have launched a 100-signature petition to halt the demolition.” City officials had determined that the late-19th-century structure was too badly damaged to be safe, and the local Anglican Diocese says that reconstruction to current codes would be too costly.

“‘There are fantastic French artists out there,’ said Allegra Pesenti, curator of the Hammer Museum’s Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. For Pesenti, the only problem has been finding them. ‘The thing that’s always surprised me is that there are great galleries in Paris, and yet they show so few French artists.'”

Who designed stilettos? Basically, it all comes down to WWII, and the world’s recovery from that time period. Then things got crazy. “As heel tips shrank to the size of tacks, the stiletto, named for an Italian shiv from the 1700s, became an emblem of the Jet Age and French haute couture.”

“Bosnia and Herzegovina’s major cultural institutions, including the National Gallery and the National Museum, which are both in the capital Sarajevo, are in danger of closing indefinitely due to a lack of funding and government support.” The staff work without pay or heat, and are desperately trying to get some attention to the museums’ plight.

It’s tough. “The visual arts do not always produce the prettiest of pictures. There are lashings of toxic pigments, solvents, petrochemicals, formaldehyde and other ecologically destructive preservatives thrown into the mix of a working studio.”

“Pichler approached his project as if it was an advertising photo shoot for a high-end brand. He started with common items from the supermarket, like cheese, strawberries and cauliflower. After letting each food fester for a few weeks, he arranged it in his studio for a luxurious portrait.”

“Even in stable times life can be hard for artists in West Africa. Not that art ever stops being made. Cities like Abidjan, Dakar in Senegal, and Bamako in Mali are saturated in it. Murals cover public walls and the sides of trucks and buses. Pottery, metalwork and weaving, in styles new and old, fill open-air markets. Portraits of jazzy beauties, Sufi saints and culture heroes (Che, Mandela, Obama, Madonna) are for sale everywhere.”

The Field Museum apparently needs “a gentleman with elbows” as its president, according to one member of the board that is likely to offer the job to former University of Oregon president Richard Lariviere. Lariviere’s reputation as a change agent – who angered the Oregon University System’s governing board enough that they fired him in the middle of this academic year – doesn’t worry the Field Museum’s board.

A Muslim-Canadian art student finds her photo of a veiled woman holding a colorful bra ripped off the wall and held hostage by a faculty member.