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Artist and animator Sam Grinberg revisits the fight over the future of the American Folk Art Museum. — ny.curbed.com
Martino Stierli, a Swiss art history professor, has been appointed chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, Glenn D. Lowry, the museum’s director announced Tuesday.
Mr. Stierli, who will start next March, succeeds Barry Bergdoll, who stepped down last year to teach art history at Columbia University and remains a part-time curator at MoMA.
— artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
If you're on the hunt for some Fourth of July plans, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will celebrate the opening of its "Conceptions of Space: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Architecture" exhibition tomorrow. Featuring recently acquired projects from international and emerging architects and artists, the exhibition highlights the evolving role of space through the context of architecture as an art form, and how it serves as a response to broader cultural issues. — bustler.net
Find out more on Bustler. View full entry
[...] MoMA has said it would detach and preserve the facade’s 63 textured copper-bronze panels.
One might suppose that salvage is preferable to annihilation, but before we get too comfortable with such piecemeal preservation, it is worth noting that the panel-by-panel disassembly and storage of an architectural treasure’s metal facade has been tried before in New York City, with comically disastrous results.
Who around here remembers the Laing Stores?
— nytimes.com
Related: As demolition of Folk Art Museum begins, Archinect reflects on historical implications View full entry
The axe is set to fall on the American Folk Art Museum -- after months of controversy and protest, MoMA initiated its expansion and began preparing the FAM for demolition this past Monday. As per prior concessions by MoMA, the museum's distinctive façade will be preserved, but it's unlikely to... View full entry
The Museum of Modern Art’s controversial decision to demolish a neighbor, the former American Folk Art Museum, is about to become reality.
On Monday, scaffolding and protective netting will begin to go up around the folk art building, at 45 West 53rd Street, the museum confirmed on Friday. [...]
The building’s facade will be removed first, panel by panel, and taken to storage. Its future remains uncertain. Demolition is expected to continue through the summer.
— nytimes.com
Previously View full entry
Contrary to what you may have read lately, the Museum of Modern Art is intent on carefully preserving the former American Folk Art Museum next door.
At least, the part of it that is most recognizable to the public: an 82-foot-high sculptural ensemble of 63 panels, cast in a gorgeous copper-bronze alloy [...]
“We will take the facade down, piece by piece, and we will store it,” Glenn D. Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, said in an interview last week.
— nytimes.com
As reported last week by Archinectors Ayesha Ghosh and Alex Stewart, a discussion regarding MoMA's expansion plan and the intended demolition of the American Folk Art Museum took place at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, an appropriate venue for a conversation rife with implications for... View full entry
The controversial plans to demolish the American Folk Art Museum in service of MoMA's expansion rumbled along last night, at a panel discussion hosted jointly by the Architectural League, the Municipal Art Society, and the AIA's New York chapter.Catch-up on news surrounding MoMA's expansion... View full entry
"I think that the press has been too fast to reduce the conversation to heroes and villains and martyrs, and to suggest that what MoMA is doing is necessarily bad. We want to get more information out. We want to share the problem with others and invite them to really take a hard look" - Elizabeth Diller — LA Times
They discuss the almost uniformly negative reaction to the announcement as well as the details of DS+R’s proposal for MoMA, which is still in an early design phase. In response Michael Kimmelman tweeted "Her answers are deeply unsatisfying". View full entry
The latest edition of ShowCase highlights CRAB Studio’s Abedian School of Architecture in Queensland, Australia.Plus, the fourth installment in Screen/Print (Archinect’s experimentation in translation across media) features "fruity labors" from the quarterly journal MAS Context's 20th... View full entry
Yesterday, DS+R announced in their proposal for MoMA's redesign that the American Folk Art Museum would have to be demolished. Backlash from the #folkMoMA community quickly arose: architects and critics called the choice callous and unsustainable, outraged not only by the Folk Art Museum's... View full entry
[Diller] had great respect for the Folk Art Museum, calling it a “bespoke” design tailored to the needs of the museum. She went through several scenarios on how to integrate the museum in the expanded footprint. [...]
Adapting the Folk Art Museum building, however, would basically compromise the building’s interior beyond recognition. [...]
The architects would have had to destroy the Folk Art Museum building in order to save it.
— Architect Magazing
In what looks like the kiss of death for the #folkMoMA movement, Diller Scofidio + Renfro's design for MoMA's expansion will necessitate the destruction of the neighboring American Folk Art Museum, as proposed today in a MoMA press conference. The initial threat to the Folk Museum was made last... View full entry
MoMA will launch the first workshop for "Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities" starting Saturday, Oct. 26 at MoMA PS1 in New York City. In this workshop series, six interdisciplinary teams will propose innovative ways of how to perceive urban growth as a response to the... View full entry
Young Frank sees creative possibilities everywhere, and likes to use anything he can get his hands on—macaroni, old boxes, spoons, and sometimes even his dog, Eddie—to create things like chairs out of toilet paper rolls and twisting skyscrapers made up of his grandfather’s books. But Old Frank is skeptical; he doesn’t think that’s how REAL architects make things. — Inside/Out
MoMA's new children's book, Young Frank, Architect tells the story of a budding architect living with his architect grandfather in modern-day New York City. Hoping to give a lesson in design professionalism, Old Frank takes Young Frank on a trip to MoMA, where they find inspiration in... View full entry