New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art is currently homeless, as it waits for its new home in the Bowery to be completed, but rather than merely vanishing from the scene for two years, the museum is hoping to renovate its image in the interim. “The museum’s curators were… acutely aware of the need to use the transition to the new building as an opportunity to think again about the definition of the museum. And so, while it has taken 7,000 square feet of space on the first floor of the Chelsea Art Museum on West 22nd Street for a year, its curators decided that the first major show would not be within walls, but outside them.”
Tag: 07.25.04
Taking Inventory Of An Unexpected Treasure Trove
When the Philadelphia public school district discovered earlier this month that it was in possession of an art collection potentially valued at tens of millions of dollars, it was hard to know what to do about it. What the district is doing is to mount a full-scale measure of what exactly it has, where it all came from, what it may or may not be worth, and how such a varied and amorphous collection of works could best be utilized in an educational sense. One thing is for sure – the district doesn’t intend to sell any of the works – but it will take great resolve for officials to avoid being stampeded by the various interested parties sure to come out of the woodwork.
A Cross-Country Rail Rock Extravaganza, Only 34 Years Late
It was more than a quarter-century ago when some of the brightest lights of the rock ‘n roll world – including Janis Joplin, Buddy Guy, and the Grateful Dead – boarded a train in Toronto and proceeded to ride it 2,100 miles across Canada, performing festival-style shows in three cities and, more importantly, capturing the whole trip on film. “The shows for the paying customers… were terrific, but the real action took place during the impromptu jam sessions and inebriated socializing on the train.” Thirty-four years later, the sights and sounds of the Festival Express are finally getting a public viewing, after decades of legal battles over copyrights and unpaid bills.
Tibetan Art To Shine At New NYC Museum
“The Rubin Museum of Art opens on Oct. 2 with kite flying on the West Side piers, a Himalayan dog parade and some 100 fluttering prayer flags by contemporary artists. An infusion of $60 million has transformed a decommissioned temple of haute consumerism into an elegant, multihued jewel of a museum, designed by the architect Richard Blinder of Beyer Blinder Belle. Its 70,000 square feet, decked out in bright red, green, gold and blue, comprise America’s largest, boldest and most significant museum devoted entirely to Tibetan and other Himalayan art.” The whole gaudy enterprise is the brianchild of collector Donald Rubin, who bought the building that became the museum on a whim back in 1998.