#AND ALSO ALSO WHICH OF *THOSE* BUILDINGS COUNTED AS PART OF THE BIENNALE

[ivy-and-ivory]

Hey :) So the next time you hear me start to say :) hmmmm :) maybe I should set this fic in a highly specific real-world location :) that might be kind of fun :) the next time I say that :) please :) for the love of god :) somebody :) fucking :) stop :) me :)

[architectnews]

National Gallery London Building, Trafalgar Square

National Gallery London, Sainsbury Wing, Architect, Images, NG200, Date, Extension Design, Photos

National Gallery London Architecture

Key Public Building in Trafalgar Square, England, UK Built Environment News

14 July 2021

National Gallery Building London Renewal Winner

Selldorf Architects win the NG200 Project at The National Gallery

The National Gallery has today (14th of July 2021) announced that a team led by Selldorf Architects has been selected to work on a suite of capital projects to mark its Bicentenary, with an initial phase to be completed in 2024.

Selldorf Architects’ team also includes Purcell, Vogt Landscape, Arup, AEA Consulting, Pentagram, Kaizen and Kendrick Hobbs.

Annabelle Selldorf, founding Principal of Selldorf Architects, USA: photo © Brigitte Lacombe

Based in New York, Selldorf Architects has considerable experience within the arts and culture sector across the UK, Europe, and the US. It counts among its current and previous clients: The Frick Collection, Luma Arles, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Neue Galerie New York, the Clark Art Institute, David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, Frieze Masters, and the Venice Art Biennale.

The Selldorf Architects-led team will work with the National Gallery to complete the initial phase of works to its Trafalgar Square buildings to greatly improve the ‘welcome’ it provides to the millions of visitors it receives each year. This will include remodelling parts of the Sainsbury Wing and the public realm, and the provision of a new Research Centre. These sensitive interventions will be pivotal in reshaping the National Gallery for its third century and the next generation of visitors.

Over the coming months, the approach submitted by Selldorf Architects’ team will be refined into a comprehensive brief alongside the National Gallery team, and extensive engagement and liaison with external stakeholders will begin.

Underpinning the brief is the desire to create healthy, sustainable, and accessible spaces and an environment that is open and inclusive where visitors can feel welcome and reflect as they plan their visit to one of the world’s finest art collections. Following a year of unprecedented challenges due to Covid-19, the National Gallery wants to build on its strength, inventiveness, and relevance to play a vital role in the nation’s recovery story.

A major part of the National Gallery’s Bicentenary celebrations will be a programme of inspirational exhibitions and outreach around the country and around the world, under the banner NG200. The National Gallery plans to engage the whole of the UK with the Gallery’s collection, demonstrating itself as a national institution at the heart of national life. An extensive programme of digital engagement will also be leveraged to extend and redefine the Gallery’s influence as a global digital institution.

Commenting on the appointment of Selldorf Architects, Director of the National Gallery, Dr Gabriele Finaldi said:

‘We are delighted to appoint Selldorf Architects as the design-team partner for NG200. Throughout the selection process, Selldorf Architects demonstrated a real understanding of our ambitions as well as sensitivity to the heritage of our existing buildings. However, the talent and tenacity demonstrated at all levels by each of the six shortlisted teams was remarkable. I would like to thank all those involved, particularly the judging panel who have guided us through the selection process.

The capital projects form the first stage of our Bicentenary celebrations and are essential in building the foundations of the Gallery’s future. Working alongside Selldorf Architects, we will develop and deliver a detailed brief that will be the framework through which we consolidate our role as the nation’s gallery.

The next five years will be pivotal in fighting our way out of the crisis of Covid-19. We recognise the catastrophic impact this has had on so many, and particularly on arts and culture institutions’ visitor numbers. It will take time for these to return to 2019 levels, but there is hope on the horizon and arts and culture will be crucial in the healing of our country. We plan to build on our strengths, respond to challenges and opportunities, and forge a pathway to the National Gallery of the future – for the nation and for the world.

Our Bicentenary in 2024 is a key moment in this creation of the new National Gallery. We will demonstrate the values we hold, and the value we create as we enter our third century with renewed and bold ambition, and perhaps most importantly – hope.’

photo courtesy of the National Gallery

Annabelle Selldorf, founding Principal of Selldorf Architects, added:

‘It is an honour to be appointed to work alongside the National Gallery on its NG200 project. This is a significant opportunity for an iconic cultural institution to reflect on its ambitions for the future and drive forwards an innovative, bespoke brief that befits its many visitors. The National Gallery is home to one of the most exceptional collections of art in the world and has often led the way for other institutions globally.

Our team will work sensitively and thoughtfully with the National Gallery, guided by its vision for a Gallery of the future that is inspiring, sustainable, and truly inclusive.’

The selection process was run under the Competitive Procedure with Negotiation in accordance with UK procurement regulations by Malcolm Reading Consultants. The five other shortlisted teams were led by: Asif Khan, Caruso St John Architects, David Chipperfield Architects, David Kohn Architects, and Witherford Watson Mann Architects.

In addition to the Executive team and Trustees of the National Gallery, several independent panellists were appointed to the judging panel to select an architect-led design team. These were: Edwin Heathcote, architecture critic and author; leading structural engineer Jane Wernick CBE FREng; and Ben Bolgar, Senior Design Director for the Prince’s Foundation.

Selldorf Architects, New York City

Previously on e-architect:

8 Apr 2021

National Gallery Building London Renewal Shortlist

The National Gallery Announces Six Shortlisted Design Teams For Its NG 200 Plans

The National Gallery has today (8 April 2021) announced six shortlisted design teams in its search for a partner to work with it on a suite of capital projects to mark its Bicentenary. An initial phase of work will be completed in 2024, to mark the Gallery’s 200th year.

The shortlisted teams are:

Asif Khan with AKT II, Atelier Ten, Bureau Veritas, Donald Insall Associates, Donald Hyslop, Gillespies, Joseph Henry, Kenya Hara, and Plan A Consultants

Caruso St John Architects with Arup, Alan Baxter, muf architecture/art and Alliance CDM

David Chipperfield Architects with Publica, Expedition, Atelier Ten, iM2 and Plan A Consultants

David Kohn Architects with Max Fordham, Price & Myers, Purcell and Todd Longstaffe‐Gowan

Selldorf Architects with Purcell, Vogt Landscape Architects, Arup and AEA Consulting

Witherford Watson Mann Architects with Price and Myers, Max Fordham, Grant Associates, Purcell and David Eagle Ltd

The shortlist has been drawn from an impressive pool of submissions from highly talented UK and international architect-led teams. In addition to members of the executive team and Trustees of the National Gallery, several independent panellists are advising on the selection process, which is being run by Malcolm Reading Consultants. These are Edwin Heathcote, Architecture Critic and Author: leading structural engineer Jane Wernick CBE FREng: and Ben Bolgar, Senior Design Director for the Prince’s Foundation. The extremely high quality of the submissions led the panel to increase the number of design teams shortlisted from the originally envisaged five, to six.

Following an open call launched in February 2021, the next steps will require the shortlisted teams to submit an initial tender, attend negotiation workshops, submit a final tender and then be interviewed by the selection panel. No design work will be required, and some expenses will be paid to the shortlisted teams. An appointment is expected to be made in July 2021.

Commenting on the announcement of the shortlisted teams, Director of the National Gallery, Dr Gabriele Finaldi said: ‘We were impressed and delighted with the high quality of the submissions we received. It was not an easy task to reach the shortlist, but we are confident that we have chosen six teams that will produce a range of different approaches to excite and inspire us.

This is a significant moment in the development of the National Gallery as we look forward to the recovery of our arts and cultural institutions, our city and our country. It is important that we choose a team who we can work with collaboratively and that shares our vision for the future. I’m looking forward to the next phase of the selection process.’

Paul Gray, Chief Operating Officer of the National Gallery, added: ‘We thank everyone who submitted for the NG200 Project. From these six shortlisted teams, we are looking for demonstrable and exceptional design talent as well as the creativity to respond sensitively to the heritage and context of the Sainsbury Wing. We have identified teams that we know will offer exciting and inspiring visions, and we look forward to working with the winning team to unlock the potential of the spaces within the Sainsbury Wing and the public realm.’

NG200 will celebrate 200 years since the National Gallery’s foundation in 1824, programming a series of inspirational exhibitions and outreach around the country and around the world. The celebration will also include the completion of an initial phase of works to its Trafalgar Square buildings to improve the ‘welcome’ it provides to the millions of visitors it receives each year.

The brief for the project includes sensitive interventions to the Grade I listed Sainsbury Wing to reconfigure the ground- floor entrance and upgrade the visitor amenities, creating new spaces that will provide a welcome experience befitting a world-class institution and that meets the expectations of 21st-century visitors.

A new Research Centre will support the Gallery’s vision of becoming a world leader in research into historic painting, and communicate the Gallery’s work as a global thought leader by creating a powerful resource for studies into art history, digital humanities, conservation, and heritage science. It will be a resource for everyone interested in studying art, from students to international academics.

The successful team will also be asked to reimagine the public realm immediately outside the Sainsbury Wing and along the northern edge of Trafalgar Square to improve the presence of the building in its context and create a more attractive and enjoyable setting for visitors and the public.

Underpinning the brief is the desire to create healthy, sustainable, and accessible spaces and an environment that is open and inclusive where visitors can relax as they plan their visit to one of the world’s finest art collections. Following a year of unprecedented challenges due to Covid-19, the National Gallery wants to build on its strength, inventiveness, and relevance to play a vital role in the nation’s recovery story.

photograph © Nick Weall for e-architect

National Gallery Building London Renewal Shortlisted Teams

Information on shortlisted teams

Asif Khan

We have assembled a highly experienced team of innovators, experts, and dear friends of the National Gallery to collaborate and deliver a new beginning for this sensitive site on its 200th Birthday.

Our team is led by Asif Khan Ltd., the award-winning London architecture office who have been working on the Museum of London and Dubai Expo public realm for the past four years; globally renowned graphic designer and visual communicator Kenya Hara; award‐winning structural engineers AKTII; innovative environmental engineers Atelier 10; landscape architects Gillespies; historic building architects Donald Insall Associates; and courageous urban practitioners Joseph Henry and Donald Hyslop.

We sincerely believe that our team will bring the exact mix of diversity, respect and freshness that this old friend needs to help it into the next century.

Caruso St John

Caruso St John Architects with Arup, Alan Baxter, muf architecture/art and Alliance CDM

Since its foundation in 1990, Caruso St John Architects has been pursuing an architecture that is rooted in place.  The practice resists the thin‐skinned abstraction that characterises much global architecture in favour of buildings that are perceived slowly over time and that have an emotional content. Its work is enriched by an ongoing dialogue with the European city and with history —that of architecture, art, and culture more widely. Caruso St John’s approach brings an intensity to the built work and ensures the rigorous construction quality for which the practice is renowned.  The result is an architecture that is considered, meaningful and enduring.

David Chipperfield

David Chipperfield with Publica, Expedition, Atelier Ten, iM2 and Plan A Consultants

David Chipperfield Architects (DCA) has brought together an experienced and award‐winning London‐based team with the collective expertise to meet the ambitions and specific challenges of the NG200 Project. Led by architects and heritage experts DCA, the team includes urban design and public realm specialists Publica; Expedition and Atelier Ten structural and services engineers; Principal Designer iM2; and Plan A design managers. The team shares a common spirit of partnership, collaboration, and design excellence.

Over the last 35 years DCA has been widely celebrated for its cultural projects such as Museo Jumex in Mexico City and James‐Simon‐Galerie in Berlin as well as its sensitive work with historic and listed buildings, including masterplans for Museum Island in Berlin and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The practice has a proven track record with the restoration and re‐use of modern landmarks such as Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie.

David Kohn

David Kohn Architects has a reputation for arts and education projects. Gallery projects have included the V&A Photography Centre, refurbishment of the ICA, a restaurant for the Royal Academy, and spaces for Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Collaborations with artists have included A Room for London with Fiona Banner RA, The Salvator Mundi Experience with Simon Fujiwara and Ickworth House with Pablo Bronstein.

The practice is currently working on new campuses for New College Oxford and the University of Hasselt, Belgium, and new market halls for Birmingham City. The proposed team are successfully collaborating on these projects but also bring skills specific to the NG200 Project. In particular, Purcell has worked with the National Gallery for 30 years and have an unrivalled knowledge of the estate. David Kohn has recently written about Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and their influence on his practice, in the Architectural Design special issue, Multiform.

Selldorf

Selldorf Architects with Purcell, Vogt Landscape Architects, Arup and AEA Consulting

The team of Selldorf Architects, Purcell, Vogt, Arup and AEA bring extensive experience in the sensitive updating of museums and other historically significant buildings in important public contexts. Lead designer Selldorf Architects is currently working on the $160 million expansion and renovation of The Frick Collection in New York City and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

Founded in 1947, Purcell is the largest UK practice working in the field of historic buildings. Vogt was the designer for the public realm of Tate Modern and is one of the leading voices in landscape architecture today. Arup is unparalleled in their technical creativity and were the original Structure and MEP engineers of the Sainsbury Wing. AEA Consulting is a global firm setting the standard in strategy and planning for cultural and creative industries. The team is committed to world‐class, place‐making architecture and urban design that is sustainable and future‐forward.

Witherford Watson Mann

Witherford Watson Mann Architects + Price and Myers + Max Fordham + Grant Associates + Purcell + David Eagle Ltd

Witherford Watson Mann Architects are specialists in the transformation of cultural heritage. RIBA Stirling Prize winners in 2013 and shortlisted for the award in 2019 for their work at Astley Castle and Nevill Holt Opera, their designs for the Grade I listed Courtauld Institute of Art at Somerset House and Clare College, Cambridge are currently under construction.

Their team includes Price & Myers, structural engineers and Max Fordham, services engineers, longstanding collaborators of the practice and substantial contributors to their award‐winning projects; Grant Associates, landscape architects whose work ranges from the discreet urban landscape at Accordia, Cambridge to the flamboyant Gardens by the Bay in Singapore; Purcell, deeply experienced in the field of historic buildings, who have delivered sensitive and creative projects for the National Gallery, the British Museum, and the V&A; and by David Eagle, CDM advisor amongst others to Argent at Kings Cross and Woolwich Creative District.

National Gallery Building London Renewal Competition Jury

Selection Panel

The selection panel is comprised of:

Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director, The National Gallery

Lord Hall of Birkenhead CBE, Chair of Trustees, The National Gallery

Malcolm Reading RIBA, Chairman, Malcolm Reading Consultants

David Marks, Trustee, The National Gallery

Tonya Nelson, Trustee, The National Gallery

Jane Wernick CBE FREng, Director eHRW

Edwin Heathcote, Architecture and Design critic and author

Ben Bolgar, Senior Design Director, Prince’s Foundation

More information about the design team selection process including the full brief can be found here: https://competitions.malcolmreading.com/nationalgallery

page updated 6 Mar 2021 + 23 Jun 2014

National Gallery Building London Renewal

The National Gallery has announced it is seeking a multi-disciplinary design team to work with it on a suite of capital projects to mark its bicentenary, with an initial phase to be opened in 2024.

To celebrate 200 years since its foundation in 1824, the National Gallery is planning a programme of inspirational exhibitions and outreach around the country and around the world, under the banner NG200. This will also include the completion of an initial phase of works to its Trafalgar Square buildings in order to improve the ‘welcome’ it provides to the millions of visitors it receives each year

photograph © Nick Weall

An open, two-stage selection process, run by Malcolm Reading Consultants, is being undertaken to identify a team who can work with the Gallery and its advisers to develop an architectural vision and conceptual approach to a phased five-year programme of works.

The first stage is an open, international call for architect-led, multi-disciplinary design teams to register their interest and demonstrate their relevant skills and experience. A shortlist of up to five teams will then be asked to submit details of their approach to the design and delivery of the project and will be interviewed by a selection panel. No design work is required and some expenses will be paid to the shortlisted teams. An appointment is expected to be made in July 2021.

Commenting on the launch of the selection process, Director of the National Gallery, Dr Gabriele Finaldi said: ‘The capital projects are a hugely important part not just of our bicentenary celebrations but of our vision for the National Gallery of the future.

We are extremely fortunate to have a superb building and a modern classic in the Sainsbury Wing; one that has more than met its original brief, notably in the practically perfect picture galleries. The dual challenge of a huge increase in visitor numbers and the changing expectations and needs of those visitors over the last 30 years, means we do need to look again at the spaces we have, and in particular the ground floor entrances and amenities.

We recognise, of course, that we are all currently experiencing an unprecedented time of crisis, with an impact felt by every sector in every part of our country and across the globe. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a catastrophic effect on visitor numbers to all cultural and arts institutions, the National Gallery included, and it will take time for these to return to 2019 levels.

But there is hope on the horizon and art and culture have a vital role to play in the healing of our country. The National Gallery was the first major museum to open after lockdown restrictions were lifted in July 2020, demonstrating its commitment to be part of the nation’s recovery story. As the nation’s gallery, we want to play a full part in this in the future, and to do so, we need to start planning now.’

The overall brief for the project includes sensitive interventions to the Grade I listed Sainsbury Wing, including remodelling the front gates and ground floor entrance sequence; interior works to the lobby and first floor spaces and upgrading visitor amenities; in particular orientation and information; retail and security. As the main entrance to the National Gallery, the Sainsbury Wing requires inspiring spaces that meet the expectations of 21st-century visitors, befitting a world-class institution housing an outstanding collection of art.

The creation of a new Research Centre, likely to be housed in the west wing of the Wilkins Building adjacent to the Sainsbury Wing, will form part of a phase of work. It will support the Galley’s vision of becoming a world leader in research into historic painting and communicate its work as a global thought leader by creating a powerful resource for studies into art history, digital humanities, conservation, and heritage science. It will be a resource for everyone interested in studying art, from students to international academics.

The design brief also allows scope for the reimagining of the relationship between the Gallery and the public realm immediately, from the loggia of the Sainsbury Wing, across Jubilee Walk and along the northern edge of Trafalgar Square to the front of the Wilkins Building. Although limited, the refocusing and strengthening of these spaces would provide greater visibility and presence for the Gallery on Trafalgar Square, while creating a more attractive and enjoyable setting for visitors and the public.

Underpinning the brief is the desire to create healthy, sustainable, and accessible spaces and an environment that is open and inclusive where visitors can relax and reflect as they plan their visit to one of the world’s finest art collections. Following a year of unprecedented challenges due to Covid-19, the National Gallery wants to build on its strength, inventiveness and relevance to play a vital role in the nation’s recovery story. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said:

‘The National Gallery has been inspiring visitors for almost 200 years, and this innovative project will welcome a new generation of art lovers to its halls. Culture is going to play a central role in the nation’s recovery, with global icons like the National Gallery helping us build back better from the pandemic.’

Paul Gray, the Chief Operating Officer at the National Gallery is leading the selection process. He added: ‘We are looking for a team that can demonstrate exceptional design talent and creative flair. Sensitivity to the heritage of the existing building and its context will be crucial as will the ability to design and deliver complex projects working in collaboration with the client and wider team.

Most importantly, we want to identify people and organisations that excite and inspire us and can open our eyes to the potential of the spaces within the Sainsbury Wing and the public.”

Nelson’s Column, central to Trafalgar Square, looking south towards Whitehall: photograph © Nick Weall

Malcolm Reading, Search Director, and Chairman, Malcolm Reading Consultants, said:

‘The process chosen by the National Gallery is not a conventional design competition seeking design concepts but instead creates the opportunity for much more interaction ‒ something the Gallery values and we know architects appreciate. We welcome both national and international teams. They will need to be exceptional and the international teams will require a UK partner for stage two.’

The deadline for first stage responses is: 2pm GMT Thursday 18 March 2021. Details of how to enter are available at: competitions.malcolmreading.com/nationalgallery

This selection process is being run under the Competitive Procedure with Negotiation in accordance with UK procurement regulations.

National Gallery London

Dates built: 1832–38 (façade) Architect: William Wilkins

Dates built: 1872-76 (Barry Rooms) Architect: E. M. Barry

photograph © Nick Weall

Address: Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN, UK

Phone: 020 7747 2885

Opening hours: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm, check with operator

National Gallery Building by William Wilkins architect – entry stairs and portico on south frontage: photo © Adrian Welch

This is an art museum on Trafalgar Square in central London. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The Gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Its collection belongs to the public of the United Kingdom and entry to the main collection is free of charge. It is the fifth most visited art museum in the world, after the Musée du Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum and Tate Modern.

Sainsbury Wing – National Gallery Extension – interior view of long entry stairs flight: photo © Adrian Welch

The present building, the third to house the collection, was designed by architect William Wilkins from 1832–38. Only the façade onto Trafalgar Square remains essentially unchanged from this time, as the building has been expanded piecemeal throughout its history. Wilkins’s building was often criticised for its perceived aesthetic deficiencies and lack of space; the latter problem led to the establishment of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897. The Sainsbury Wing, an extension to the west by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, is a notable example of Postmodernist architecture in Britain. Soyurce: wikipedia

photographs © Adrian Welch

National Gallery architect : William Wilkins

Sainsbury Wing – National Gallery Extension, Trafalgar Square Dates built: 1988-91 Design: Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates – Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, based in the USA

photos © Adrian Welch

photographs © Nick Weall

National Gallery Extension design : Venturi Rauch Brown, architects

photographs © Nick Weall

The architectural proposal by ABK – for the building that came to be known as the Sainsbury Wing – was infamously described by Prince Charles [May 30, 1984] as being “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”. This helped set up a polarisation in the UK between traditional and contemporary architecture styles and thinking.

photographs © Nick Weall

ABK’s design for the extension was abandoned.

photographs © Nick Weall

Sainsbury Wing – National Gallery Extension: image © Adrian Welch

Location: National Gallery, London, England, UK

London Art Galleries

London Art Galleries

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery

Saatchi Gallery, Chelsea Design: Allford Hall Monaghan Morris Saatchi Gallery

National Gallery in London

National Gallery Context

The public space in front of the building:

Trafalgar Square

A building structure close by to the south west:

Admiralty Arch

London Buildings

Contemporary London Architecture

London Building Designs – chronological list

Architecture Walking Tours in London by e-architect

London Architecture Offices

London Architecture

English Building

Tate Modern Building Design: Herzog & de Meuron Architects

Prince Charles Lecture – RIBA, May 2009

RIBA Awards 2006: West London – awarded

London Buildings

Comments / photos for the National Gallery London Architecture – Sainsbury Wing page welcome

The post National Gallery London Building, Trafalgar Square appeared first on e-architect.

[juliandmouton30]

"Is Phoenix doomed to fall back into the ashes?"

If sprawling desert metropolises like Phoenix, Arizona, are going to survive an increasingly scorching climate, they will require a different kind of sustainable urbanism than typical cities, says Aaron Betsky.

Is Phoenix doomed to fall back into the ashes? In his 2015 book, The Water Knife, the author Paolo Bacigalupi imagines a future Valley of the Sun that has shrunk back to its urban core: "a dust-draped sprawl of low-rises and abandoned singe-families slumping across the flat desert basin. Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Gilbert, Scottsdale – the remains of a metropolitan sea that had flooded the open basin, filling it with houses and arrow-straight boulevards until they lapped against the saguaro-studded mountains at its rim."

It is a scene of total collapse: "In her own mind she imagined Phoenix as a sinkhole, sucking everything down – buildings, lives, streets, history – all of it tipping and spilling into the gaping maw of disaster –sand, slumped saguaros, subdivisions, all of it going down."

What remains of the city is the kind of war zone we know from science-fiction movies and the alt-right's imagination of urban areas today. Downtown, the rich living in high-rises, cocooned with filtered air, abundant water, and cool temperatures.

Ironically, these structures are "arcologies", "a half-alive monster looming over all things Phoenix", filled with "braided waterfalls and hanging gardens", and patterned on architect Paolo Soleri's eco-utopias of the 1970s. They recycle all their waste, including that of humans, and grow their own food. They are also owned by Chinese corporations.

Phoenix shouldn't even be where it is

That is the fate many think will befall not only Phoenix, but most of the other Sunbelt cities of the United States, as well as the growing cities at the edges of the Chinese and Arabian deserts. Once Las Vegas, Tucson, El Paso and Phoenix start to experience weeks of Fahrenheit temperatures not just in the triple digits, but in the 120s and 130s, no air conditioning will be able to make them habitable.

Moreover, their sources of water, from the Colorado River to the groundwater reservoirs and aquifers hiding deep under parts of the Sonoran desert, will dry up. If social strife does not kill these beleaguered cities, the reality of climate change will.

From such a perspective, Phoenix shouldn't even be where it is, at least not at its current size: well over four million inhabitants and growing. It is a human-made ecosystem with no grounding in the dry desert landscape using up prodigious amounts of energy just to be able to survive. But, is the place really such a waste, in every sense of the word?

According to Grady Gammage Junior, an urban-planning lawyer and analyst, the metropolitan area actually holds up quite well by most measures of sustainability. It is denser, believe it or not, than cities such as Seattle, Washington DC, Houston, Detroit, and Atlanta, and has a lower per person carbon footprint than sixteen of the largest Standard Metropolitan Areas, including New York and Chicago (although it does use more water, and at cheaper rates, than all of them).

If social strife does not kill these beleaguered cities, the reality of climate change will

Moreover, it has taken quite a few steps in recent years to increase everything from density to energy conservation, while building a burgeoning light-rail system and including parks along its major transportation routes.

If it is up to the State's Senior Republic Senator, John McCain, it will even reclaim a considerable part of the Rio Salado, as well as the still-extant canals that once irrigated vast reaches of the Valley – all of which once helped make Phoenix the West's "Tree City".

There is a lot the city can still do to improve its future. One fundamental thing the Valley – or we – can do, however, is to stop thinking about it as a traditional city. As Gammage shows in his book, it is not that Phoenix is less dense than other cities, but that it is less gradated in density: with only a vestigial downtown, the city has little of a centre.

Even its cultural core, which in most cities counts as the marker of centre, is here a long line (Central Avenue) that is not quite walkable, even if it is served by a light rail line. Phoenix might be what we think of as the name of the whole area, but Scottsdale is larger in terms of land area, and a city such as Mesa easily ranks as a mid-size city in its own right.

There is a lot Phoenix can still do to improve its future

The Valley is instead a carpet of nodes, some large enough to be Edge Cities per American author Joel Garreau's definition, but many smaller than that: retro downtowns such as Scottsdale's New Urbanist shopping, residential, and resort areas such as the Kierland Resort, Kierland Commons and Scottsdale Quarter, and endless confluences of hospitals and shopping malls, sporting venues and hotels, and resorts, shopping, and residential agglomerations.

What we need to do to make the Valley more sustainable is to concentrate on these nodes, or "stims", as the critic Lars Lerup would have it, and figure out three things: how to make them more sustainable and varied in themselves; how to connect them in a manner that wastes less time and energy; and how to make that landscape of networks and nodes more appropriate to the Sonoran Desert.

We know how to do the first, as sustainable building practices have now reached a point where we can make not just "net-zero", but energy-positive buildings that produce more energy than they consume. Fulfilling the goal of creating true stims also means, however, that we make the housing and the social services in these nodes affordable to all, and that has larger policy and economic implications.

The second goal will demand that we not only embrace such new technologies as driverless cars, but that we also embrace and socialise shared transportation to develop models of light rail, jitneys, shared vehicles, and high-speed direct connections that are available to all.

We need to accept that the dispersed beauty of the Valley is based on openness and scale

Answering to the third goal means that we must learn how to build with, rather than on the land, use riparian patterns as our guides, and in general figure out how to create urban and urbane forms that are common sense and sensible. The extensive complexes of the Spanish missions might offer one model, as might the settlement patterns developed centuries ago in desert landscapes from Africa to Asia.

Notice that what will not work is for Phoenix or the Valley of the Sun to withdraw into its core, allowing the rich to huddle in their control centers and the next-in-lines to congregate around their coffee shops in the rental laagers of the Type 3 behemoths that are now being built all around downtown.

Such a segregation will make Bacigalupi's vision come true. We need to accept that the dispersed beauty of the Valley, and its logic, is based on the openness and scale that still attract tens of thousands of people to move here every year.

The romance of the open range is also the logic of the Hohokam, who built canals fanning out from the Valley's rivers to the foothills of Camelback and other mountains. It is also the dream of dissolving the inefficient and socially stratified snarl of overly concentrated cities to try to recapture the democratic landscape of which Thomas Jefferson dreamed in far-away Virginia.

Phoenix has risen not only from the desert, but also from the ashes of 19th-century urbanism. The challenge now is to make its flight more sustainable, open to all, and beautiful.

Aaron Betsky is president of the School of Architecture at Taliesin. A critic of art, architecture, and design, Betsky is the author of over a dozen books on those subjects, including a forthcoming survey of modernism in architecture and design. He writes a twice-weekly blog for architectmagazine.com, Beyond Buildings. Trained as an architect and in the humanities at Yale University, Betsky was previously director of the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006-2014) and the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2001-2006), and Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1995-2001). In 2008, he also directed the 11th Venice International Biennale of Architecture.

Related story

"The more we build in areas that endanger us, the more we erect defensive systems"

The post "Is Phoenix doomed to fall back into the ashes?" appeared first on Dezeen.

from ifttt-furniture https://www.dezeen.com/2017/12/12/opinion-phoenix-arizona-desert-metropolises-doomed-climate-change-sustainable-urbanism-aaron-betsky/

[alisonfloresus]

Surprise? Iranian Contemporary Art Leads Market

A rule of thumb: Work by any artist you have ever heard of is probably quite expensive and likely out of your price range. The search for good and not astronomically priced original artwork may lead some prospective collectors to art colleges’ senior shows, to sidewalk art fairs and flea markets, to out-of-the-way auctions or art galleries, to the work of artists at the second tier of some major movement or to hunt through decades-old reviews of artists who seemingly have dropped off the radar but might be primed for a comeback. It might also take you to work by artists in or from foreign countries. The “globalization” of the art market has produced a large supply of new work by artists in China, India, Africa, South America and the Middle East. In many cases, the number of new artists has far outstripped the volume of new collectors in these countries, creating the opportunity for reasonable prices until the collectors catch up.

Let’s focus on the Middle East, particularly Iran, one of the most populous countries in the region and the one that produces by far the largest number of artists. While much of the world views Iran in terms of its nuclear ambitions, its undeclared sponsorship of terrorist organizations and its home-grown dissident movement, the art world is seeing the recent emergence of a scores of Iranian visual artists on the international scene whose prices are expected to rise considerably over the next five to 10 years. Theirs is not an art of jihadic propaganda – no portraits of mullahs and ayatollahs, no pictures of conquering soldiers (Iran is not North Korea after all) – but an art, produced by Iranians, both living in Iran and in other countries, which reflects many of the same interests and concerns of artists in the West and elsewhere. In short, it is artwork that is competing increasingly for attention on the world stage.

Thirty years ago, the term “Iranian student” was synonymous with hostage-taker, and selling weapons surreptitiously to “moderates” in the Iranian government got the Reagan Administration in trouble. However, since the disputed presidential elections in June of 2009 the rest of the world has seen a forward-looking middle class and a freedom-seeking youth culture that was always there but hidden by the official rhetoric. These artists may be putting their nation’s best foot forward.

“The Iranian public, especially artists, is very connected with the rest of the world through traveling and particularly through the Internet,” said video artist Shoja Azari, who lives in Manhattan. “Iranians are the greatest number of bloggers in the world. The uprising that took place last June after the elections in Iran was a FaceBook and Twitter revolution.” That view was seconded by Farbod Dowlatshahi, an Iranian retired oil refinery builder and art collector (1,891 and counting paintings, sculptures, installations and videos) currently living in Dubai, who noted that “for 30 years, the only message that came out of Iran was negative. Because of the current political situation, the only positive message coming out of Iran is the young people. The younger artists are promoting a very positive future.”

Signs of the growing interest in contemporary Iranian art are unmistakable. In the summer of 2009, the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City exhibited 210 artworks (paintings, sculptures, photography, video and installation pieces) by 56 contemporary Iranian Artists in a show called “Iran Inside Out.” Also last summer, a show of artwork by young contemporary artists in Tehran were featured at London’s Asia House and, in 2008, the Missoula Art Museum in Montana held an exhibition of contemporary photography from Iran (“Persian Visions”). A year earlier, a U.S. State Department-sponsored exhibit of younger Iranian artists, titled “Wishes and Dreams,” toured nine U.S. cities.

Individual artists have also made an impression. The work of conceptual artist Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar (b. 1977), who won last year’s inaugural Magic of Persia prize – awarded annually to an emerging Iranian artist by the London-based foundation Magic of Persia – is being exhibited currently at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Y.Z. Kami, who was born in Tehran in 1956 and currently lives in the U.S., had his work featured at the Istanbul Biennial (2005), Museum of Modern Art (2006) and the Venice Biennale (2007). With works already in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum, he is represented by the Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan, which is as A-list as an artist can get. Shirin Neshat, a filmmaker and photographer born in 1957 in Qasvin and living in New York City with her husband Shoja Azari, has had her work acquired by the Tate Gallery in London and the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She won the international award at the 1999 Venice Biennale for her video work and the Silver Lion in 2009 at the Venice Film Festival for her film “Women without Men.” She has been represented by New York’s Barbara Gladstone Gallery since 2000. Back in 2000, Neshat’s still images sold for $ 2,000-3,000 but have reached $ 200,000 at the secondary market, according to one of the gallery’s directors, Max Falkenstein.

Many other Iranian artists have earned plaudits and enthusiastic buyers but continue to be represented by art galleries that feature contemporary Middle Eastern art, such as LTMH Gallery in New York City (www.ltmhgallery.com), as well as Rose Issa Projects (www.roseissa.com), Waterhouse & Dodd (www.waterhousedodd.com), Berardi and Sagharchi Projects (www.artnet.com/gallery/425718123/berardi-and-sagharchi-projects-ltd.html) and Osborne Samuel Gallery (www.osbornesamuel.com) in London.

The fourth annual art fair, Art Dubai, took place this past March, featuring 70 galleries from 30 countries and a variety of art exhibits. Dubai opened its first contemporary art museum in 2009 (Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1977), and the Guggenheim is expected to open its Abu Dhabi branch in 2012.

Perhaps nothing, however, has demonstrated the desirability of Iranian and other Middle Eastern contemporary art more than the auctions that have taken place in Dubai and Qatar. Christie’s was the first international auction house on the scene, holding its first sale in Dubai in 2006, followed by Sotheby’s (in Doha, Qatar) and Phillips de Pury (in London) in 2009, and these have become twice-annual events. “This is the wealthiest area in the world,” said Lina Lazaar, a contemporary art specialist at Sotheby’s who arranges the auction house’s sales. “When the collecting spirit and habit has matured, you can expect prices to jump.”

And there lies the opportunity for buyers right now. Ordinarily, one wouldn’t want to get into a bidding war with people of unimaginable wealth, but many of the richest people in the Middle East are not yet collectors of the contemporary artists in their midst. “Traditionally, Iranians have bought carpets as investment,” said Mamak Nourbakhsh, owner of Tehran’s Gallery Mamak. “Today we see many rich Iranians buying artwork and in rather large numbers. Indeed, this has already led to higher prices for the works of many artists and has affected the art market here in general.”

For the past three years, London’s Waterhouse & Dodd Gallery has arranged an annual survey of contemporary Middle Eastern contemporary art in its gallery, as well as created mini-shows in its booths at art fairs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, in order to spur greater interest in collecting this art. At present, owner Ray Waterhouse claimed, the greatest potential for growth in buying “is still in the Middle East. We have sold many photographs and oils up to a value of $ 100,000 in the West, but above that price the collectors tend to be Middle Eastern buyers in the Middle East or living in the West.” Becoming a patron of the arts has developed considerable cachet among the rich in this part of the world, for it is “the desire of locals to collect and to be seen collecting.” He noted that he has given talks in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Dubai on how to build a collection, and one of those talks was to the crown princess of Abu Dhabi (“and 23 princesses in her family”).

Lazaar noted that Middle Eastern collectors have looked to Western institutions, such as the auction houses, and collectors to signal which of their artists are of greatest value and importance. “The auction houses have filtered the information and reduced it to two sales a year,” she said. “Because no institutions did this type of job until a few years ago, we’re doing a lot of the curating job that a museum would do.” She added that Iranian and other Middle Eastern art galleries have used the auction houses’ catalogues as a way to educate their buyers, because of the critical essays in them. Back home, the University of London also made a purchase of 200 catalogues from one sale for one of its Middle Eastern art courses. Prices for works by contemporary Iranian artists have risen sharply in the past decade. Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller, an Iranian art gallery owner in Manhattan, noted that prices for Shoja Azari’s work has risen from $ 15,000 in 2007 to “upwards of $ 40,000” now, while Detroit-based Shiva Ahmadi’s paintings were priced as low as $ 800 in 2004 and now reach $ 18,000. Rose Issa, an Iranian gallery owner in London, noted that “in 2002, paintings by Farhad Moshiri sold for £1,000 – today they sell for one hundred times this initial price. Photographs by Shadi Ghadirian that were purchased in 2000 for £100 now run into the tens of thousands, as do the large panels by Chant Avedissian. Similarly, the young Lebanese artist Ayman Baalbaki’s prices have tripled in the last three years. Investors would rarely achieve such returns on the stock market.” Farbod Dowlatshahi stated that when he began collecting the paintings of Charles Hossein Zenderoudi in 2006, the prices (“ridiculously low”) were €10,000; the most recent work he purchased by the artist, in 2007, was for €500,000. A painting by another artist he has collected in depth, Rokni Haerizadeh, cost $ 7,000 in 2006, far less than the $ 75,000 he spent this past March at Art Dubai.

With these auctions, price records are being set regularly: In October 2009 at Sotheby’s sale in Doha, Y.Z. Kami’s painting “Blue Dome I” earned £73,250, a record for the artist, beating the previous record of £39,650; Ramin Haerizadeh’s painting “Election is Sh…t!” earned £12,500, a new record surpassing the old one of £8,125; Farhad Ahrarnia’s mixed media on canvas “The Flesh of Words” brought £15,000, bypassing the previous record of £5,000. The auctions certainly are showing the potential. In May of 2009, at the height of the worldwide recession, Christie’s sale in Dubai resulted in many lots matching and exceeding estimates, including Charles Hossein Zenderoudi’s painting “Wav + Wav + VE” ($ 206,500, estimate $ 150,000-200,000), Sohrab Sepehri’s untitled painting from his “Tree” series ($ 182,500, estimate $ 150,000-200,000), an untitled painting by Mohammed Ehsai ($ 152,500, estimate $ 80,000-120,000), Abolghassem Saidi’s triptych painting “Trees” ($ 146,500, estimate $ 80,000-110,000), Mohammed Ehsai’s painting “A Bunch of Daffodils” ($ 140,500, estimate $ 120,000-180,000) and Afshin Pirhashemi’s photography-based painting from his “X Series” ($ 122,500, estimate $ 40,000-60,000). Saidi’s $ 146,500 set an auction record for the artist.

Although prices are increasing, there still remains a long way to go before they top off. Lazaar stated that, although Sotheby’s will continue to hold its semi-annual Arab and Iranian Art sales, the auction house plans to incorporate the work of some of the top Middle Eastern artists into its regular contemporary art sales, an acknowledgment that these artists are no longer of regional interest primarily.

Having Iranian artists names mentioned in the same breath as other internationally known contemporary artists in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere is the goal of the galleries and auction houses, and that appears to be the path on which the art market is moving. Ali Y Khadra, the Dubai-based publisher of the art publication Arab Magazine, for instance, noted that his sizeable collection includes pieces by contemporary Western artists, such as “Sylvie Fleurie, Julian Opie, Aaron Young, Anselm Reyle, Jeff Koons and Karl Lagerfeld, to name a few.” However, “around 30 percent of my art collection consists of contemporary Iranian artworks. It mostly includes paintings, but I also have sculptures, photographs and videos. The collection comprises works by Parviz Tanavoli, the Haerizadeh brothers, Farhad Ahrania, Reza Derakshani, Reza Aramesh, Nicky Nodjoumi, Sadegh Tirafkan, Fereydoun Ave, Farideh Lashai and many others.”

from JournalsLINE http://journalsline.com/2017/07/09/surprise-iranian-contemporary-art-leads-market/ from Journals LINE https://journalsline.tumblr.com/post/162773847470

[nofomoartworld]

Shanzhai Archeology: defying our standardized technological imagination

DISNOVATION.ORG (With Clément Renaud & Yuan Qu), Shanzhai Archeology. Photo : Sébastien Moitrot

Shanzhai Archeology – Research Database – beta. Photo: DISNOVATION.ORG

Over the past couple of years, Maria Roszkowska, Clément Renaud and Nicolas Maigret from DISNOVATION.ORG have been quietly smuggling odd-looking phones from China to Europe. They’ve got a phone that doubles up as a stun gun, one that’s shaped like a big strawberry, one you can use to light up your cigarette, one that will assist you in your religious rituals, etc.

These bizarre devices belong to the shanzhai production. They are counterfeit consumer goods, sold at lower prices and boasting multifunctional performances.

There’s a lot to admire about them though. First, they were designed to respond to very specific market needs. Second, they are hybrid products that emerge directly from the technological cross-breeding of the Made in China. These odd-looking artifacts question the hyper-normalised western technological imaginary and challenge the monopoly of our black touch-screen rectangles.

Shanzhai Archeology is an experimental research project that uses shanzhai as the starting point for a critical reflection on the normalization process of Occidental technological imaginations.

After a preliminary research on the industrial and political history of the shanzhai (see The Pirate Book), the members of DISNOVATION.ORG have been building up a collection of some 60 hybrid phones. About half of them were exhibited at the Mapping festival which took place a few weeks ago in Geneva. That’s where i started to talk with some of the members of DISNOVATION.ORG….

Shanzhai Archeology – Research Database – beta. Photo: DISNOVATION.ORG

Hi Maria, Nicolas and Clément! How did you go about hunting for those curious handsets? And then how did you manage to ship them to Europe where they are illegal?

For 3 years, we’ve been collecting rare devices online (mostly on Taobao and Alibaba) and in underground Chinese malls. We then stored them at Clement’s and Yuan family in Qingdao, China. The tricky part started when we had a show in France (for the Biennale Internationale Design of Saint-Etienne), and we had only a few months to bring all the phones from China to Europe where they cannot be legally imported. Many phones feature copies of brand names (SVMSMVG, MORIOROIA), sometimes of multiple brands (PCRSEHE and PORSCHE on the same phone). Most of them would never pass EU, UK or USA safety or branding requirements. They are simply not allowed go through customs. You can actually purchase stickers to pretend they are compliant with the rules, but this is probably not a good idea :)

Shanzhai Archeology, Stickers collection, 2015

Besides, since April 1, 2016 you’re not supposed to travel with lithium-ion batteries, shipping them overseas from China is now forbidden. We thus had to spend hours on the phone with border control, trade administration offices, customs, and various mail services in both countries. Basically, no official solution exists for electronics traveling as artworks. You’re just not supposed to carry a non-compliant device anywhere in Europe or USA. In the end, we did everything illegally / a-legally. We transported them one by one in planes, we asked family and friends to smuggle them, we had them shipped in slow Chinese post parcels, or broken down into parts and without battery in DHL parcels. So far, we’ve received 80 to 90% of our collection. We also learned a lot about the customs system in the process.

Shanzhai Archeology. Photo: DISNOVATION.ORG

Shanzhai Archeology – Research Database – beta. Photo: DISNOVATION.ORG

Could you tell us about some of these curious models?

For the Shanzhai Archeology research, we identified a series of phones manufactured in Shenzhen. Each of them combines several functions. They are hybrid objects that reflect very specific uses and are accompanied by stories and narratives.

The Buddha Phone is presented like a “virtual prayer room” – it is equipped with a touch that loads a kind of private, virtual and customizable altar. It is supposed to help Buddhists perform their rituals when they are away from home. You can simulate the burning of incense, replicate purification rites or play music to help you meditate wherever you are.

The Sound System Phone: China has a long tradition of phone for pensioners. The buttons are bigger, the sound is louder and it offers shortcuts for “sonny”, “daughter-in-law”, etc. One of pensioners’ favourite activities (along with mahjong) consists in dancing on public squares. It’s called guangchang wu. The sound system phone was conceived to broadcast loud sound outdoors. It integrates a small support to make it stand in front of the dancers. It also comes with several gigabytes of old-fashioned communist songs that Chinese pensioners are particularly keen on. The dances usually take place in the evening, in small rural villages which often lack street lighting. The phone thus features a powerful torch to ensure a smooth return home after the dance.

Square dance in a Chinese village

The Power Bank Phone: Ghana is currently going through a major power grid crisis: blackouts in the city can last for 36 hours on end. As a result, a significant business activity has grown around the sale of portable USB chargers that can charge electronic devices or even power bulbs. The Power Bank Phone, designed for this particular market, combines a 10000 Mh USB charger, an LED flashlight, and 3 sim card slots to connect the entire family or to take advantage of promotions offered by different operators.

DISNOVATION.ORG (With Clément Renaud & Yuan Qu), Shanzhai Archeology. Photo: DISNOVATION.ORG

The Prisoner Phone: marketed as “the smallest in the world”, this phone is made of 99% plastic, meaning that it will be barely detectable during checks in prison, it is easy to conceal and transport, especially via drones or carrier pigeons. It is also equipped with a “voice changer”.

The Taser Phone: marketed as a self-defense weapon, especially in case of snatching, the taser-phone is illegal in many countries. It is routinely seized at French customs.

DISNOVATION.ORG (With Clément Renaud & Yuan Qu), Shanzhai Archeology. Photo : Sébastien Moitrot

Does the little booth you built to display the phones echo the ones you saw in China?

Yes, the kiosk compiles distinctive elements we spotted in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Hong-Kong. For Shanzhai Archeology, we wanted to insert these telecommunication devices into their original context. Our inspiration were street vendors as well as the ‘malls’, those gigantic covered marketplaces where you can find small shops selling phones, gadgets and electronic components. We also kept a record of the names of the shops, in particular the ones where we bought the phones. This kiosk is called 手机百货 (shouji baihuo), a name used by hundreds of shops in China. Its very standard aspect and the adoption of common brands is a nod: we copy what works. One of the main inspirations for this booth is the Huaqiangbei hub in Shenzhen where you can buy most of the electronic accessories that are shipped from China to be exported. Huaqiangbei counts several thousands phone booths. However, you can find a smaller version of this type of hub in other Chinese cities. We are only presenting one of them, as a conservation copy.

DISNOVATION.ORG (With Clément Renaud & Yuan Qu), Shanzhai Archeology. Photo: Sébastien Moitrot

Shanzhai Archeology – Research Database – beta. Photo: DISNOVATION.ORG

And finally what made Shenzhen such a relevant city to investigate for the project?

It is the geographical area where most of the world electronics are produced and assembled.

We focused on the “phone” object as it plays a key role in the larger history of technological hybridization. More precisely, in the history of technological production that defies Western norms and standards. This project is an entry point to other technological imaginations, miles away from the black tactile rectangle (which has become the representation by default of the mobile phone).

Besides, Shenzhen is at the center of attention at the moment, it is THE place to buy electronics or get them manufactured. All kinds of “makers” and entrepreneurs flood the city. The place is changing very quickly, it is moving from the status of factory of the world to the one of world capital of design. The transformation of the city also involves the rewriting of its history, and more generally the history of the ‘Made in China’. Shanzhai products are gradually disappearing from the market, to be replaced by more standardized, more profitable, more globalized ones. In Shenzhen, the shanzhai has reached an almost mythical status, because of the role it played in the history of the city. We also need to keep in mind that the production of these weird phones involves a particularly complicated social reality, with farmers working in factories, often in objectionable conditions. We plan to resume this on-site survey before the Chinese industrial transition has completely erased all traces of this history and replaced it with a more homogenized discourse that focuses solely on design and on the iteration between product and market. With Shanzhai Archeology, we hope to capture and communicate the real history of the production of these hybrid objects.

Thanks Maria, Nicolas and Clément!

from We Make Money Not Art http://ift.tt/2rFgAdI via IFTTT

[caveartfair]

Artists Participating in the 57th Venice Biennale Revealed—and the 9 Other Biggest News Stories This Week

Catch up on the latest art news with our rundown of the 10 stories you need to know this week.

01  The list of 120 artists participating in the 57th Venice Biennale’s international exhibition has been released.

(via the Venice Biennale)

The names of the artists that will be featured in the exhibition “Viva Arte Viva” curated by Christine Macel were quietly posted to the event’s web page this week. This year’s show is aimed at highlighting “the role, the voice, and the responsibility” of the artist in a precarious global political moment, Macel has said. To that end, Macel, who is artistic director of this year’s Biennale and chief curator at the Centre Pompidou, has assembled a diverse range of artists, spanning influential figures like Senga Nengudi, Olafur Eliasson, Anri Sala, and John Waters as well as prominent young artists like Rachel Rose and Guan Xiao. The featured artists hail from 51 different countries, with individuals from Antigua and Barbuda, Kiribati, Nigeria, and Kazakhstan all making first-time contributions.

02  Art therapists are divided over Second Lady Karen Pence’s support for their profession.

(via the New York Times)

Mrs. Pence announced her intention to use her newfound prominence to shine “the spotlight on the mental health profession of art therapy” on her Whitehouse.gov web page. She was an elementary school teacher for 25 years, and is an artist specializing in watercolors, according to her web page. But art therapists, whose work uses art to help patients express themselves nonverbally, disagree over whether to embrace or reject Mrs. Pence’s support. Some point to administration policies that will adversely impact their patients. “You can’t shine a spotlight on art therapy without being accountable to the real danger our clients currently face,” one therapist told the Times. But the American Art Therapy Association, an industry group, said in a January newsletter that the association is “enthusiastic about Mrs. Pence’s commitment to our profession.”

03  Some within the Metropolitan Museum of Art are questioning if director Thomas Campbell has put the future of the institution in jeopardy.

(via the New York Times)

Campbell is facing a growing deficit and mounting pressure from his staff amid a series of buyouts and layoffs, and, most recently, the announcement that plans for a renovated modern and contemporary wing are to be postponed. Some workers at the Met, speaking anonymously to the New York Times, have charged Campbell with a failure to effectively lead the institution and bolster morale in a period of turmoil that has seen the turnover of three quarters of the museum’s curatorial staff. Among their grievances is the contention that the museum has overspent on its digital department and on the new Met Breuer building, in an effort to cultivate a younger audience and plant a stake in the modern and contemporary art world. Curators and conservators also recently submitted a letter to the museum’s leadership to protest compensation cuts. The museum’s chairman and a trustee have spoken out in support of Campbell, who has personally conceded that change is needed. “I myself need to evolve my thinking and my interactions,” he told the Times. “We’ve identified those issues and taken steps to move forward in a very collective manner.”

04  Art Basel’s parent company MCH group has taken a stake in ART DÜSSELDORF in a move to create a new dominant Rhineland fair.

(Artsy)

Art Basel’s parent company, the MCH Group, announced on Thursday that it has acquired a 25.1% stake in art.fair International GmbH, the Cologne, Germany-based owners of ART DÜSSELDORF. The fair’s inaugural edition will take place in November at Düsseldorf’s skylit Areal Böhler. Ambitions for the new fair are high. “ART DÜSSELDORF will become the leading regional art fair in Germany, the Benelux region, and the Rhineland,” said MCH Group Managing Director of Design & Regional Art Fairs Marco Fazzone. The regions have among the highest concentration of art collectors globally. A representative for MCH Group later confirmed that this does indeed put the Düsseldorf fair in contention with established art fairs in the region like the 51-year-old Art Cologne and Art Brussels, which was founded in 1968. The representative added that the Düsseldof fair is, however, “interested in friendly, neighborly relations.”

05  In a significant discovery, archaeologists have excavated a new cave linked to the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.

(via NPR)

The cave had previously been mapped, but a more detailed examination yielded evidence of objects that were used to carry and house the scrolls—ancient documents that have been mined for insights on the Hebrew bible and the origins of Christianity. Previously, the scrolls had been linked to 11 different caves in Qumran, but this latest discovery adds a 12th to that list. The latest finding didn’t result in the uncovering of an actual scroll, however archaeologists were still buoyant about the discovery. “We ‘only’ found a piece of parchment rolled up in a jug that was being processed for writing,” said Oren Gutfeld of The Hebrew University, adding that “the findings indicate beyond any doubt that the cave contained scrolls that were stolen.”

06  Sotheby’s has filed a lawsuit against dealer Mark Weiss and collector David Kowitz over an Old Master painting linked to an ongoing forgery scandal.

(via the New York Times)

The case, brought in the High Court of England, centers around a disputed Frans Hals painting. Sotheby’s says that forensic tests by the firm Orion Analytical, which the auction house recently aquired, have conclusively determined the work is a fake. Kowitz and Weiss sold the work, Portrait of a Man, through the auction house in a private sale in 2011. Since then, there has been a widening forgery scandal around many supposed Old Masters paintings that turned out to be fakes. The Hals is among them; Sotheby’s called it “undoubtedly a forgery” and refunded the buyer. To come to this conclusion, Orion took 21 paint samples across the painting and found pigments of modern origin, thus not available at the time that Hals was working. Weiss remains unconvinced, however, alleging that the auction house denied his own experts access to the work, and stating that he “intends to contest the claim vigorously.”

07  An American hedge fund manager has refused to sell a painting to London’s National Gallery, citing the pound’s slump.

(via The Art Newspaper)

The London museum offered £30 million for the rare portrait by Jacopo da Pontormo to J. Tomilson Hill, a New York-based hedge fund manager. The sum matches the price Hill paid two years ago and comes after then-Minister for Culture Ed Vaizey put a temporary export ban on the painting in December 2015 to allow a U.K. buyer time to match Hill’s purchase price. The National Gallery scrambled to raise the funds, getting grants from national arts organizations and the U.K. Treasury. Since that time, however, the value of the pound has dropped sharply against the dollar, making the same sum in sterling now worth $10 million less. Hill said the National Gallery should make up this $10 million loss. The Guardian reported his rejection of the offer could mean he will not obtain an export license, meaning the painting would stay in the U.K.

08  As the recipient of this year’s Genesis prize, British artist Anish Kapoor vowed to donate his $1 million award to aid refugees.

(via The Guardian & The Art Newspaper)

In a statement, Kapoor urged the Jewish community to “condemn the exclusionist policies and politics of the government that claims to represent us.” He continued: “I am an artist, not a politician, and I feel I must speak out against indifference for the suffering of others.” The Genesis prize, described by Time magazine as the “Jewish Nobel,” is awarded annually to an individual who is preeminent in their field and has demonstrated a commitment to Jewish values; last year’s winner was Grammy-winning violinist Itzhak Perlman. Kapoor has spoken out about the refugee crisis before. In 2015, he joined forces with Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei (whose recent work has also explored the plight of the displaced) to participate in an eight-mile “walk of compassion” through London in solidarity with refugees worldwide. Another British artist, Tracey Emin, announced this week that she will help sponsor a scholarship for a refugee student.

09  Attendance across several U.K. national museums dropped by roughly three million people, according to government data.

(via The Art Newspaper)

The information comes from a report published by the U.K. government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which funds 15 free museums across the country. The report found that visitors to these institutions numbered 47.6 million from April 2015 to March 2016, a decline from 50.7 million during the same period last year. The British Museum, which reported the highest total attendance, saw a slight bump in visitors from 6.7 million to 6.9 million. The National Gallery saw a decrease in attendance of students aged under 18—a drop the museum attributed to over 100 days of strikes impacting the museum. These figures come after the Louvre in France also saw a significant drop in attendance, though that decrease was chalked up to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. Regardless, attendance is a limited metric for a museum’s performance, as counting the number of people walking through the door does not indicate how satisfied visitors are with their experience or what they learn.

10  More than 375,000 images of artworks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection are now available for free download with no copyright restrictions.

(via the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

This announcement comes as part of the museum’s Open Access initiative, through which it has partnered with organizations including Wikimedia, Creative Commons, and Pinterest to make its collection more accessible. Visitors can now sift through images at their leisure—the Met suggested several thematic groupings to start, from cats to works saved by the Monuments Men. Although hundreds of thousands of images from the New York institution have been available online since 2014, these were previously restricted to non-commercial and scholarly use. “The Met has given the world a profound gift in service of its mission: the largest encyclopedic art museum in North America has eliminated the barriers that would otherwise prohibit access to its content, and invited the world to use, remix, and share their public-domain collections widely and without restriction,” said the CEO of Creative Commons, Ryan Merkley, in a statement. To facilitate continued efforts in broadening access, the museum has also hired its first “Wikimedian-in-Residence,” Richard Knipel, who will work to integrate these public domain images into Wikimedia Commons.

—Artsy Editors

Cover image: Rachel Rose, Everything and More, 2015. Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

from Artsy News

[juliandmouton30]

"The architecture of the Americas is not white"

The Pacific Standard Time exhibitions in Los Angeles show that arts and culture from south of the border have shaped an architectural identity for the region that is much more interesting than what's found in the Northeast US, says Aaron Betsky.

As a longtime denizen of the Southwest (if California, in addition to Arizona, counts), I feel myself part of another culture than that of the more eastern parts of the United States. The landscape here is fundamentally different, but so is the quality of the place humans have built on that land.

To put it simply, everything here is as much Mexican, and thus Spanish, as it is English. The spaces we inhabit look south as much as they are the result of the westward movement of Northern Europeans. They are not white in colour or inhabitants, and their shapes are quite simply different. The architecture of the Americas is not white. It is a mix that gives force and diversity to our lives.

Despite what some demagogues would tell you, borders are, after all, political constructs. We know this in architecture. Design works from and in a particular area, defined by geology, climate, and local traditions, but is also part of a global flow of culture. So it is with the border between the United States and the states to the south.

The artificiality of how politicians apportion place has been in evidence for several years now in the exhibitions that have been part of the biannual Pacific Standard Time (PST) event. This is a group of presentations the Getty has sponsored all around Southern California to promote the notion that the West Coast of America has been shaped by the continual flow of ideas and images moving up and down the Pacific Coast, as well as those that have spread across the North American Continent.

Several of the exhibitions in the latest edition of PST, which opened this fall, are magnificent in their celebration of the complex relation between the various countries and cultures. They also feed the current debate about appropriation, by showing just how beautiful and important the results of adopting and adapting forms and images developed by other people can be.

At the Getty Research Institute, in two rooms off to the side of the museum's grand sequence of galleries, The Metropolis in Latin America 1830-1930, mines the institute's archives to show that metropolitan life shared characteristics from New York to Havana to Buenos Aires.

The message there, at least to me, is that when you get to cities over a certain size, it matters little where they are. They conform to the same grid, even if its proportions might be different depending on whether they were French, Spanish, or Hapsburg in their origins. That organising field pushed up into first hotels, office buildings, department stores, and apartment buildings, then, once the intensity of activity downtown became great enough, into skyscrapers.

The West Coast of America has been shaped by the continual flow of ideas and images moving up and down the Pacific Coast

The forms the major civic and private buildings took reflected whatever was the universal style at the time, whether beaux-arts classicism or high modernism, while the underlying structure became ever thinner and more flexible.

Put Francisco Mujica's The City of the Future: Hundred Story City in Neo-American Style of 1929 – the exhibition's show-stopping image – next to Hugh Ferris' Metropolis of Tomorrow of the same year, and you see the same creation of human-made mountain ranges, even if Mujica's sports vague memories of Mayan or Aztec detailing.

At the Riverside Art Museum, Myth & Mirage: Inland Southern California, Birthplace of the Spanish Colonial Revival (I contributed an essay to the catalog) shows how the various attempts to create an authentic style for California melded into the Spanish Colonial Revival in the Inland Empire, and how that style then became the tide of red-tile roofs that engulfed the landscape.

The flexible use of historical sources proved capable of giving image and shape to hotels such as the Mission Inn in Riverside, fast food restaurants such as Taco Bell, and hotel chains such as La Quinta, as well as homes that you can now find as far afield as China and, yes, Guadalajara.

The core of this PST edition is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which has done the most credible job of being reflective of the population it serves of any major museum in this country.

Two exhibitions in particular, Home – So Different, So Appealing (which unfortunately opened and closed at the edge of the PST framework), and Design in California and Mexico 1915-1985, manage to show how ingrained a common sense of place and culture have become both north and south of the United States border.

The motifs and attributes developed in the jungles of Yucatan and the plains of Mexico worked as well for houses in the Hollywood Hills

The latter exhibition traces the ways in which California (both Baja and El Norte) has looked to the heritage of the Spanish occupation of its land for more than two centuries before it became part of the United States in 1848.

It uncovers an interesting, though not quite acknowledged aspect of that appropriation: just as the English created an empire that sucked up Indian, Chinese, African, and Middle Eastern artefacts and used them to inspire art and design, so the Spanish controlled an empire in the Americas whose heritage became fair game for use by former members of that realm once it broke up.

Thus Mexican artists rediscovered their Mayan, Aztec, and Olmec roots, sensing how its forms worked with the land they occupied, but the forms also inspired architects and designers in California. It turned out that the motifs and attributes developed in the jungles of Yucatan and the plains of Mexico worked as well for houses in the Hollywood Hills (Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House) and movie palaces, as they did for housing the pavilion of Mexico City at various World's Fairs, starting with Paris in 1899.

The core of the exhibition shows the forms developed for haciendas and missions by the Spanish, using native materials and traditions mixed with the memories and techniques they brought with them from Europe, that is, in turn, at the heart of the shared legacy.

It is particularly wonderful to see these forms not only develop into lavish houses on both sides of the border, but also become progressively more modernist in the designs of Irving Gill, George Washington Smith, and Luis Barragán.

Design in California and Mexico's real revelation lies in its collection of craft, from the socialist bench Xavier Guerrero and Amado de la Cueva created for the Casa Zuno in Guadalajara, to the spread of the sling chair from Mexican houses to the American suburbs.

A new kind of culture is rising into a terrible beauty in which we all eat tacos and live in Spanish Colonial Revival homes

Mexican silversmiths, having learned from the Spanish and from native craftspeople, influenced their American counterparts, who brought in motifs from Native American tribes, while graphic designers in Mexico City picked up on the vibrant colours of California's brand of modernism in that field, which itself had been influenced by designers such as Alvin Lustig's and Charles and Ray Eames' travels to the south.

Some of the images are whimsical: you cannot beat the clips of Raquel Welch dancing a vaguely Carribean, vaguely Martha Graham dance in front of both the pyramids of Teotihuacan and sculptures by Mattias Goerritz.

On a more serious note, the net sculpture Ruth Asawa created in 1961 for Buckminster Fuller based on techniques she learned while studying in Mexico, show the power of learning, assimilating, and taking further the traditions of several places at the same time.

Similarly, Diego Rivera's Pan American Unity fresco of 1940, now in the San Francisco Art Institute, depicting San Francisco as the kind of metropolis, born in Spanish colonialism and on a landscape long inhabited by Native Americans, that has emerged all over the two continents.

The spaces of the American Southwest and Latin and South America are not just multicultural places, but spaces in which a new kind of culture, born in violence and injustice, but rising into a terrible beauty in which we all eat tacos and live in Spanish Colonial Revival homes while surfing the World Wide Web, has created a reality that is, I would daresay, more exciting and more comfortable then what has emerged in the frozen plains in these two continents' northeast quarter.

Aaron Betsky is president of the School of Architecture at Taliesin. A critic of art, architecture, and design, Betsky is the author of over a dozen books on those subjects, including a forthcoming survey of modernism in architecture and design. He writes a twice-weekly blog for architectmagazine.com, Beyond Buildings. Trained as an architect and in the humanities at Yale University, Betsky was previously director of the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006-2014) and the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2001-2006), and Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1995-2001). In 2008, he also directed the 11th Venice International Biennale of Architecture.

The post "The architecture of the Americas is not white" appeared first on Dezeen.

from ifttt-furniture https://www.dezeen.com/2017/10/24/aaron-betsky-opinion-pacific-standard-time-exhibitions-los-angeles/