“Colorado artists are set to get a windfall worth nearly $1 million as decorators for the new $278.5 million hotel across from the Colorado Convention Center go shopping for art. … Another $1.5 million worth of artworks will be purchased through the city’s long-running percent-for-art ordinance, which requires that 1 percent of city-funded construction budgets be set aside for art.”
Tag: 10.07.04
The World As One Giant Design Project
“Massive Change,” Bruce Mau’s much-anticipated, optimistic but uneven new show on the future of design, has arrived. “The exhibition doesn’t set out to map the future of design in any way one might expect…. (It) maps, instead, the often invisible design of things such as the global market economy, advances in medicine and agriculture, systems of ecological renewal and human transport. Every activity mankind engages in, everything that leaves our material stamp on the world, must be contemplated as a design project, says Mau. And we have choices.”
Cattelan’s Hanging Child Does It Again
“An exhibit depicting a hanged child at an art fair in the southern Spanish city of Seville has sparked a row between the gallery and local authorities, who yesterday demanded it be removed. The work in resin by Italian sculptor Maurizio Cattelan is on show at the Biennial of Contemporary Art but has sparked controversy — as it did in Milan last May.”
Austria’s Elfriede Jelinek Wins Nobel Prize
“Acclaimed and controversial Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek, whose work often explores the role of women in society, was awarded the 2004 Nobel Literature Prize, the Swedish Academy announced.”
MoMA Rethinks Design: Less Tiffany, More Kevlar
There will be much more to see in the Museum of Modern Art’s design collection when MoMA reopens Nov. 20. Rethought during the closure, the collection now includes objects from 1821 to 2004. “But the new installation does not seize the popular moment, with respect to two important cultural developments: the arrival and establishment of virtual design and the Internet, and the remapping of the domestic landscape because of multiculturalism.”
In Terminal 5, Art Lovers Behaving Badly
When the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to allow an art exhibition in Kennedy Airport’s vacant Terminal 5, the landmark Eero Saarinen building that Steven Spielberg used in “Catch Me If You Can,” it probably wasn’t envisioning graffiti on the walls or vomit and broken glass on the floor. But no, artists weren’t responsible for those displays. The damage was done by guests at an opening-night party that got out of hand, and now the show of installations, which was to have run through Jan. 31, has been closed.
A Wild Success Could Be A Bad Omen
New York’s new bargain-basement festival, Fall For Dance, wrapped up its first season this past weekend, and the afterglow is something to behold. “Dance presenters, choreographers and artistic directors are full of praise for what they call courageous programming, for the audacity of trying (successfully) to fill a 2,700-seat theater for six nights of dance and for bringing five companies together on stage each night for a $10 ticket.” And yet, some in the business are wondering if the success of the fest might not indicate a very real danger for the dance profession as a whole…
London Playhouse To Close
“London’s Bridewell Theatre is to close in January after failing to secure sufficient funding from the Arts Council. Over the past 11 years the theatre has won itself an international reputation for music theatre and become a powerhouse in the development of new British musical talent.”
Maybe They Could Get Bill O’Reilly To Play Rumsfeld?
The new off-Broadway political docudrama, Guantanamo: Honour Bound to Defend Freedom, featured an unexpected cameo this past week by an actor known the world over for his activist tendencies and opposition to the Bush Administration’s policies at home and abroad. And no, it wasn’t Alec Baldwin. The graying eminence presiding on stage as Lord Justice Steyn was, in fact, none other than Bishop Desmond Tutu, who, having wrapped up his engagement in New York, says that he is now awaiting his Tony nominations.
Poet Laureate Puts His Foot In It
In a major embarrassment for the Scottish Executive, the new poet laureate signed an infamous declaration calling for Scotland to secede from the UK hours before one of his poems was to have been read before the British Queen. Edwin Morgan, “who was yesterday given a £5000-a-year stipend for being the national poet, or makar, said his sympathies were very much with the republicans.”