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Inspired by the engineering, intricate choreography, and impromptu interactions of your daily commute? Wish there was an open mic night for historians and urbanists? A show-and-tell for your creative musings on mass transit? Looking for a public platform to present your ideas to a captive audience?
Us, too. That’s why we are excited to announce PLATFORM, a new series of cross-disciplinary programs created by the public for the public. Have an idea? We’ll give you a platform.
— NY Transit Museum
The New York Transit Museum is launching an open exhibition program, accepting proposals for projects devoted to any and all aspects of public transportation. The aptly named Platform program will exhibit the first winning proposal in its subway station home in downtown Brooklyn, on Thursday... View full entry
100 Years of Architectural Drawing—a recently published book by Neil Bingham, a design and architecture historian who is the consulting curator of architectural drawings at the Royal Academy of Arts, London—highlights 300 architectural drawings from the 20th century that illustrate the evolution of the form. — slate.com
When it comes to museums, Hiroshi Sugimoto doesn’t mince words.
“This is the worst space I ever encountered,” he told the Journal before opening a retrospective of his work at Seoul’s Leeum Samsung Museum of Art late last year. The Japanese artist was especially unhappy about a steep escalator leading down into the main gallery space of the OMA-designed building. “Why do that? It’s terrible,” he lamented. “I feel a kind of bad will from this architect.”
— blogs.wsj.com
Architecture is usually the product of multiple, conflicting constraints, so how does it fare in the context of a gallery? Shielded from the realities of climate and context, client and user, planning and building regs, what of architecture is left? Liberated from the obligations and contingencies of a real building, can it jump free and take on a greater sensory power – or is it hollowed of all meaning and left to fall flat? — theguardian.com
"The results in the Sensing Spaces exhibition lie somewhere between these two camps." View full entry
Architects always have the future in mind when they design. That's particularly evident in today's cityscapes as they continuously try to one-up each other in who can raise the world's next tallest, more-modern-than-thou skyscraper for all to gaze in awe -- or not. For Jingjing Naihan Li, a... View full entry
Not long ago, these questions — of policy but also political and ethical questions — seemed to be out there on institutional tables, demanding discussion. Technically, they may be there still, but museums seem to be most interested in talking about real estate, assiduously courting oligarchs for collections, and anxiously scouting for the next “Rain Room.” Political questions, about which cultures get represented in museums and who gets to make the decisions, and how, are buried. — nytimes.com
And on the subject of integration, why, in one of the most ethnically diverse cities, does the art world continue to be a bastion of whiteness? Why are African-American curators and administrators, and especially directors, all but absent from our big museums? Why are there still so few black... View full entry
National and local foundations have pledged more than $330 million to a fund to protect city-owned art at the Detroit Institute of Arts from being auctioned off, mediators in Detroit’s bankruptcy announced Monday.
A statement from Chief U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Rosen’s team of mediators called the financial commitments “an extraordinary and unprecedented effort” to preserve the art collection and raise money for Detroit’s underfunded pension funds.
— detroitnews.com
Previously: Detroit’s Venal Art Sale No Fix for Urban Nightmare View full entry
If you still remember our Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital book giveaway last month, we're finally announcing the five winners!Nick C. - New Orleans, LAChristopher A. - Chicago, ILMartin C. - Los Angeles, CAMark V. - Brooklyn, NYNate O. - Iowa City, IA Edited by Museum of Arts... View full entry
As virtual access to art collections expands through online walk-throughs and projects like Google’s Open Gallery, museums have long been experimenting within their own halls with ways to accommodate a wider range of visitors, particularly those with disabilities. Historically, museums... View full entry
Reactions to Alan Parkinson's luminaria range from rhapsodic and enlightened, to energized or calmed. These giant inflatable structures, first designed by Parkinson in the 1980s and now touring worldwide under his "Architects of Air" organization, resemble multi-colored bouncy citadels, and... View full entry
The holiday season is in full swing — or sleigh, in this case. Hello Wood, an architecture and design studio, built an 11-meter tall Christmas tree in one week using 365 sleighs in front of the Palace of Arts in Budapest. (Watch the video below.) After Christmas, the temporary structure... View full entry
Called Lumiere, it's a four-day festival expected to attract tens of thousands of spectators to see the city's historic cathedrals, walls, bridges and squares illuminated by splashes of light. Projects range from LED and neon sculptures to large-scale projections by leading artists and lighting designers from Ireland and beyond. — cnn.com
Once a bustling and stylish avenue, now a street that no longer knows its identity or purpose, no other street in Rotterdam provokes as much discussion as the Coolsingel. — Sculpture International Rotterdam
The Coolsingel is Rotterdam's civic artery, a 1km street home to the city's economic, commercial and political focal points. But despite its central position and function for the last century, the street has suffered a bit of an identity crisis, and lacks the vibrancy it once channeled. To... View full entry
The director of exhibitions at Design Miami heard about the duo's eagerness to move beyond traditional forms and building materials, and asked them to submit a design for the entrance to the annual fair's pavilion at Art Basel Miami Beach 2013. "We got a cold call in late May, and it all happened at a fairly quick pace," says Ricciardi. "We had two weeks to develop a concept, and within a week they let us know that we had been selected." — papermag.com
In the 13th Arrondisement in Paris, the brightly painted "Tour Paris 13" building -- is easy to spot from a distance. Described as the largest group exhibition of street art, Gallery Itinerance gathered over 100 urban artists representing 16 nationalities to use their artistic skills to repaint... View full entry
