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Sam Jacob Studio to design the Cartoon Museum's new London home

2018-07-06T14:40:00-04:00

Sam Jacob Studio has been commissioned to design the new home of Britain’s Cartoon Museum. Known for their avant-garde approach to design, the studio will help the museum expand its programming and bring a "real sense of fun and vibrancy to the visitor experience," says museum chair, Oliver Preston.

Founded in 2006 by a dedicated cadre of cartoonists, comic artists and collectors, the Museum has been operating out of an old London dairy. But, wanting a new permanent home that will help it develop to its full potential, the museum has accepted a 25-year lease at 55 Wells Street, located near Oxford Circus.

Proposed Book Shop at The Cartoon Museum © Sam Jacob Studio

Their archive holds over 5,000 books, 4,000 comics and 1,700 original strips, graphic novels, animation and caricatures, ranging from the 18th century to the present day. Scheduled to open early 2019, the new space will create permanent and temporary exhibition spaces to give the Museum greater flexibility in displaying its...

Materials & Applications to move out of Silver Lake home and expand programming into other LA neighborhoods

2018-03-27T19:49:00-04:00

Materials & Applications—the part gallery, part research space, and part pocket park, that has been a cultural center for the Los Angeles architecture community since 2003—will be moving out of its Silver Lake home.

"Our mission is to bring creative experimentation into public space and public dialogue and we will continue to do so by expanding into new spaces and new audiences throughout Los Angeles" the group stated in an e-mail sent out today with the news.

The non-profit cultural organization's expansion will include the launch of two new spaces—a new office headquarters in Chinatown and a tiny storefront/satellite space on Sunset Blvd that will host intimate events and displays. In lieu of their permanent space, Materials & Applications will broaden their programming into various neighborhoods throughout the Los Angeles area with temporary projects and multi-sited exhibitions.

The organization tested out this process in 2016, with theirTURF: A Mini-Golf Project, which transfor...

A MAD gallery in Beijing that doubles as "a new facade for the city"

2017-05-30T19:16:00-04:00

Galleries often act as stagnant interior display spaces: their primary function is to host works in a relatively unobtrusive way that is artful without being ostentatious. But what about galleries that are designed to serve another purpose, as the freshly completed Roca’s Beijing Gallery in Dongzhimen by MAD Architects does?

Instead of tacking a few fixed pieces onto the walls, the gallery itself has an interior LED-laden wall that projects images both of gallery visitors and the pedestrians outside in a purposeful attempt to create an interface with the surrounding urban environment. Imagine combining the introspective mirror and looped video concepts of someone like Dan Graham with the aesthetic thirst for juxtaposition of a gallery curator: the rotating series of images, which was designed by art critic and curator Jérôme Sans, changes at varying intervals, and can be glimpsed by those passing by outside.

Sometimes the changes occur in seconds; in others, days go by before the imag...

Shenzhen's Design Society to feature V&A gallery for its October 2017 opening

2017-01-12T13:38:00-05:00

As brand-new collaborations go, the Shenzhen Design Society's choice to feature London's V&A gallery as part of its cultural hub opening this October isn't too shocking, unless you consider that galleries of Chinese art and photography aren't necessarily a common feature of the global art world circuit. The inclusion of the gallery is partly a tribute to the V&A's numerous exhibitions that showcased Chinese culture in Europe, including one of the first exhibitions on contemporary Chinese film and photography in 2005 (!). According to Lonely Planet, the hub's goal is to "focus on the history of groundbreaking design, with the aim of opening a dialogue on how design can be a catalyst for social change."

Why does LA have so many new galleries?

2016-03-11T12:27:00-05:00

The grand openings of the Los Angeles branches of European galleries Sprüth Magers and Hauser & Wirth (called Hauser Wirth & Schimmel), on 23 February and 13 March respectively, are sure to generate even more buzz about the booming Los Angeles art scene [...] Some of the buzz is well earned, especially when it comes to cheaper downtown real estate and the great artists working and teaching here. But there is another strong incentive behind so many galleries making the move...

According to the Art Newspaper, LA's new gallery boom reflects market competition to represent the disproportionately sizable population of impressive, well-established artists who, for a variety of reasons, lack gallery representation in their hometown. The article also notes that while opening an LA satellite serves a defensive, even necessary move, the city has yet to develop a real, sustainable collector base.

For more on LA's ever-growing art scene, check out some past coverage: