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Ai Weiwei has unveiled a new large-scale reproduction of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies as part of an upcoming exhibition of the architect-provocateur’s work on view from April 7 at the Design Museum in London. The 15-meter (49-foot) Water Lilles #1 is comprised of 650,000 bricks rendered in... View full entry
After years of delays, New York City finally has a shiny silver bean of its own. A new sculpture by Anish Kapoor—modeled after his famous Cloud Gate, known as the Bean, in Chicago—was officially unveiled this week. [...]
Despite its resemblance to Cloud Gate, is different in several key ways, reported Tribeca Citizen in 2018. For example, while Chicago’s Bean is bolted securely to the ground, Manhattan’s mini-Bean is more free-flowing, able to move and shift depending on the weather.
— Smithsonian Mag
The $8 million freestanding sculpture has been teased since 2008 when renderings for Herzog & de Meuron’s domineering 56 Leonard Street tower were first revealed to the public. It has a less-expensive twin at the MFA Houston and will get an official name later in the coming months... View full entry
LA's Destination Crenshaw initiative has revealed an updated opening day for its largest component along with news of $3.4 million in federal grant contribution that will help further shepherd the project towards its eventual completion later this year. The development’s Sankofa Park... View full entry
The wait for artist Hank Willis Thomas and MASS Design Group’s public memorial to Martin Luther King on the Boston Common finally ended over the weekend with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included the sculpture's design team and a host of local political dignitaries. They were on hand to... View full entry
The Art Gallery of New South Wales, one of Australia’s most important art institutions, faces an especially acute cultural challenge. Museum building in a real-estate obsessed city that Mark Twain called “superbly beautiful” — in the sunny heart of a proud “sporting nation” — often requires overcoming a barrage of negativity. The Sydney Opera House was loathed before it was loved, and the Modern has traveled a rough road already. — The New York Times
The debate around SANAA’s newly-opened $344 million expansion in some ways mirrors the one leading up to the (then $102 million AUS) Sydney Opera House in the late-1960s, which, at the time. centered on a discussion over the value of cultural investments that culminated in philosopher Peter... View full entry
One of Los Angeles’ most significant cultural landmarks, Simon Rodia’s monumental Watts Towers sculpture, finally re-opened last month after a five-year multimillion-dollar restoration effort spearheaded by LACMA. The project was overseen by the museum’s Senior Conservation Scientist... View full entry
The Griot Museum of Black History will soon be home to a public art installation from the designer of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Architect David Adjaye will design Asaase III, a monument that surrounds the museum. The structure will be built of rammed earth, a process using soil and other natural materials from the St. Louis region to make solid structures.
— St. Louis Public Radio
The rammed earth installation is the new Order of Merit appointee’s second such following his well-profiled commission for Antwaun Sargent’s Social Works show at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. Adjaye had also incorporated earthwork into his commission for the 2019 Venice Biennale and... View full entry
UK-based studio VATRAA has created a monument in Milan, Italy composed of thousands of plastic water bottles. The installation, titled Plastic Monument, seeks to bring attention to the issue of plastic pollution. “Some plastics last up to 1000 years in our landfills and oceans while others might... View full entry
Olafur Eliasson has completed a site-specific piece of public artwork in a northern-Qatari desert. Titled Shadows travelling on the sea of the day, the Icelandic-Danish artist’s work is inspired by the “interplay of human perception and the natural world.” Eliasson’s piece comprises twenty... View full entry
New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has unveiled details of an upcoming exhibition featuring the work of media artist Refik Anadol. Titled Refik Anadol: Unsupervised, and open from November 19th, 2022 through March 5th 2023, the installation will feature three new digital artworks by the... View full entry
The terminal will also be an underground gallery of sorts, featuring enormous mosaics by two female artists with strong New York City connections, M.T.A. Arts & Design, which commissions art for the transit authority, is announcing Friday: Kiki Smith, a longtime resident known for her figurative work, and Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese sculptor and installation artist who lived in the city from 1958 to 1975. — The New York Times
The $11 billion transportation project opens in December after a lengthy 16-year construction period. Kusama’s past public installations have drawn the admiration of millions from outside the art and design worlds, while the German-born and New York-based Smith is considered a leading figure of... View full entry
In 2010, while in town for the Los Angeles premiere of his documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” the British street artist Banksy left a gift for fans: a mural of a girl on a swing, dangling beneath the five-foot red “A” of the word “PARKING” on a gritty downtown lot.
Now that girl — as well as the historic building in the downtown fashion district that serves as her canvas — is for sale to the highest bidder.
— The New York Times
The historic 26,000-square-foot Downtown Los Angeles building was purchased for $4 million three years prior to the popular documentary's premiere and underwent a $1.8 million renovation before its then-owners filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April this year. Related on Archinect: Recent Banksy... View full entry
The long-awaited public opening of land artist Michael Heizer’s monumental earthwork City is just around the corner, and the Triple Aught Foundation, the group which manages its remote Lincoln County, Nevada site, has shared some amazing new photos that offer a sense of the scale and stasis of... View full entry
City, a vast complex of outdoor structures and landmasses the Land artist Michael Heizer began constructing in the desert of Nevada in 1970, will finally begin welcoming public visitors next month. The site’s opening on 2 September, more than 50 years after work at the site began, marks the fulfillment of Heizer’s most ambitious and career-defining project. — The Art Newspaper
Get ready to weep (assuming you are among the select art tourists willing to travel to the site-specific installation, as Heizer intended): The 50-year saga surrounding the National Mall-sized sculpture is over, and the Triple Aught Foundation, which manages the site, will begin accepting up to... View full entry
The January 2021 issue of Architectural Digest featured a remodeled $42 million San Francisco residence described as a Spanish Renaissance Revival palacio. [...] ...shows ancient Khmer sculptures resting on the same pedestals.
The Cambodian government says those stone relics, depicting the heads of gods and demons, match a set that was looted years ago from one of the nation’s sacred sites.
— The Washington Post
The tony $42 million Peter Marino-designed San Francisco manse was the subject of a multi-page spread in the January 2021 edition of the magazine. A spokesperson for Architectural Digest said that photoshopping was required by “unresolved publication rights around select artworks,” but an... View full entry
