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The Odunpazari Modern Museum (OMM), a major new institution designed by Kengo Kuma and Associates, will open in the vibrant but ancient university city of Eskişehir in Turkey in June, The Art Newspaper has learned. With stylistic echoes of Kuma’s V&A Dundee, the museum’s stacked timber design reflects surrounding wooden houses from the Ottoman era, and is named after its historic “wood market” district—Odunpazari. — The Art Newspaper
Image courtesy of Odunpazarı Modern Museum (OMM)."The museum will house and show Turkish and international Modern and contemporary works from the 1,000 piece collection of Erol Tabanca, the architect and partner in Polimeks Holding, a leading Turkish construction firm," writes The Art Newspaper. View full entry
The Rothko Chapel in Houston, founded in 1971 by the art patrons John and Dominique de Menil as an ecumenical site for both reflection and activism, will be closing on Monday for the rest of the year for the first phase of a $30 million restoration and campus expansion by Architecture Research Office. — The New York Times
New York-based firm Architecture Research Office (ARO) was selected in 2016 to be in charge of the restoration work. "During the closure, work inside the Chapel will include modifications to the entryway and vestibule, enhanced audio, security and fire systems, replacement of the existing skylight... View full entry
The Norton, which closed last July to finish three years of renovations, will re-open to the public on Feb. 9 with eight new exhibitions and a $100 million face-lift, adding 12,000 square feet of gallery space, along with new classrooms, a restaurant, a sculpture garden and a 210-seat auditorium. — South Florida Sun Sentinel
Almost exactly two years after its ceremonial groundbreaking, the Norman Foster-designed Norton Museum of Art expansion has been completed and will open its doors to the public this Saturday, February 9. Image courtesy of Foster + PartnersThe expansion plan preserved the institution's original... View full entry
2019 promises to become another big year in the international museum world with plenty of high-profile cultural centers reaching completion and (re)opening their doors to the public. In its first post of the new year, The Spaces has rounded up eleven anticipated new museums and expansions... View full entry
Carved into a sand dune along a quiet beach in the port city of Qinhuangdao, the new Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Dune Art Museum debuted its first art exhibition last month, after three years of construction. Aranya commissioned Beijing-based OPEN Architecture to design the museum, which... View full entry
Amid today’s polarizing political noise, Wrightwood 659 offers a comparable oasis.
The building greets the visitor with a refurbished facade adorned with arches, festoons and other Beaux-Arts details. But the decorous facade turns out to be a mask. [...]
Upstairs are clean-lined, contemplative galleries —“white boxes with a twist,” you might call them — filled with a trove of material about Corbusier and Ando.
— Chicago Tribune
Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin shares his impressions from the opening night at Tadao Ando's new Wrightwood 659 art venue in Chicago as well as its inaugural exhibition Ando and Le Corbusier: Masters of Architecture—and the review is full of praise: "The space is so good that it compels... View full entry
The Studio Daniel Libeskind-designed MO Modern Art Museum in central Vilnius opened its doors to the public today. At 3,100 m2, the building — which is also Lithuania's largest private museum — houses nearly 5,000 never-before-seen works by Lithuanian artists from the mid-20th century to the... View full entry
Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood is getting an exciting new art place, and it's been designed by none other than Tadao Ando. Wrightwood 659 is a major transformation of a historic building from the 1920s and will be dedicated to exhibitions on architecture and on socially engaged art. © Jeff... View full entry
Russian officials have abandoned a flagship project to build of a new State Center for Contemporary Arts in Moscow.
[...] the head of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts (ROSIZO-NCCA), Sergey Perov, revealed to the Art Newspaper Russia earlier this month that the project had been officially scrapped due to a lack of funding.
He said the government had been unable to find the 16 billion rubles ($240 million) needed to back the project.
— Calvert Journal
Irish firm Heneghan Peng Architects had originally emerged as the final winner of the international competition for Moscow’s new National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) back in 2013. Image/Visualization by LuxigonImage/Visualization by LuxigonImage/Visualization by Luxigon View full entry
The $200 million expansion adds 11 rooms constructed of stacked concrete blocks that are connected by a glass-walled passage and surround an 18,000-square-foot water court. [...]
The Glenstone addition also has a strong outdoor component, with 130 acres of meadows, woodlands and streams, designed by Adam Greenspan and Peter Walker of PWP Landscape Architecture. Among the sculptures integrated into the landscape are those by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Serra.
— The New York Times
“We considered the landscape as the inspiration,” said Thomas Phifer, architect of the five-year Glenstone expansion project. “The visitor’s arrival is choreographed through the trees and open fields, heightening your experience with the land and revealing the subtle qualities of the site... View full entry
Henry Clay Frick’s venerable Old Master paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and porcelain seem destined for a change of scene.
In an unusual game of musical chairs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Frick Collection announced today (21 September) that the Met will vacate the Brutalist Breuer building on Madison Avenue in 2020. Its departure will make way for the Frick to move in late that year while its mansion undergoes a renovation and expansion five blocks away.
— The Art Newspaper
Click here to catch up with Archinect's coverage of the not entirely undramatic Frick Collection expansion saga. View full entry
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has ordered officials to speed up the construction of a cultural centre in Sevastopol, the historic naval capital of Crimea, which will include exhibition space for the State Hermitage Museum, the State Russian Museum and the State Tretyakov Gallery.
Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. In May this year, Putin inaugurated a $7.5bn bridge to link the Crimean city of Kerch with the Russian mainland.
— The Art Newspaper
In a vast expanse beneath the Finnish capital lies a soaring circus-top culture hub. Will the €50m Amos Rex art museum put the city at the forefront of Europe’s art scene? [...]
“It is as if the museum didn’t quite agree to go underground,” says Asmo Jaaksi of local architecture firm JKMM, which masterminded the project, “and it’s somehow bubbling up into the square.”
— The Guardian
"The architects hope their sloping landscape will become a spontaneous auditorium for outdoor concerts and events," architecture and design critic for The Guardian, Oliver Wainright, writes, "but even without any performances it has already become a magnet of activity in the middle of the city... View full entry
The New Museum announced today the appointment of V. Mitch McEwen as Curator of IdeasCity, the museum's initiative exploring the future of cities. McEwen is the principal and cofounder of A(n) Office, a collaborative of design studios in Detroit and New York exploring the... View full entry
The Pavilions, designed by Thomas Phifer of Thomas Phifer and Partners, is a 204,000-square-foot building providing 50,000 square feet of indoor exhibition space. That is more than five times the space available in Glenstone’s original building, designed by Charles Gwathmey (and currently installed with an impressive Louise Bourgeois exhibition, drawn from the collection). — Washington Post
The new 'The Pavilions' space by Thomas Phifer and Partners (with landscapes designed by Peter Walker and Partners) is scheduled to open on October 4 and will showcase pieces by big name artists like Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Richard Serra, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Photo: Iwan... View full entry
