BARCELO UNVEILS CEILING AT UN; INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM ACQUIRES SAARINEN HOUSE
The Associated Press reports that Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo unveiled his lavish, twenty-three-million-dollar ceiling painting at the United Nations yesterday, a project that has evoked controversy over its hefty price tag. In a ceremony with Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Ban Ki-moon, the UN’s secretary general, Barcelo gave the world its first glimpse of the sixteen-thousand-square-foot elliptical dome full of bright colors and torn aluminum. The most striking element may be the hundreds of small icicle-shaped pieces that dangle down from the ceiling. “On a day of immense heat in the middle of the Sahel desert, I recall with vivacity the mirage of an image of the world dripping toward the sky,” Barcelo says. “Trees, dunes, donkeys, multicolored beings flowing drop by drop.” The abstract artist used more than one hundred tons of paint with pigments from all over the world. The ceiling took over a year to produce, and Barcelo worked with architects, engineers, and even particle-physics laboratories to develop the extra-strength aluminum for the dome. But the project has come under fire, and not for its unconventional aesthetics. The Spanish Foreign Ministry says the government is funding 40 percent of the costs, with the rest footed by private-sector donors. Of the public money, $633,000 comes from a budget for overseas development aid and international organizations like the UN. Spain’s conservative opposition Popular Party complained that this means money was diverted from projects to alleviate poverty and boost health care in poorer countries, but the ministry insists the funding for Barcelo’s work was separate.
In other news, from the Indianapolis Star_, the Indianapolis Museum of Art has acquired another major work of art: the Miller House and Garden in Columbus. Known as one of Indiana’s most significant architectural sites, the house and garden will undergo a major renovation and eventually be opened to the public. Yesterday, IMA officials announced the donation by the family of J. Irwin Miller, who served as president and later chairman of Cummins Corporation, and his wife, Xenia Simons Miller. The benefactors also have pledged five million dollars toward a planned eight-million-dollar endowment for the house and surrounding grounds. Built in 1957, the roughly seven-thousand-square-foot Miller House is considered one of the finest examples in the nation of the modernist movement, with an open layout and flat roof above glass and stone walls. It was designed by Eero Saarinen, with landscaping by Daniel Urban Kiley and interiors by Alexander Girard, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000. Among its striking features are a sunken-level square conversation pit bordered on all four sides by cushioned seats and floor-to-ceiling living-room bookcases. The seven-bedroom home was built to showcase Mrs. Miller’s contemporary and Impressionist art collection. Will Miller, one of J. Irwin and Xenia Simons Miller’s five children, called the house “a very warm, wonderful place to grow up,” saying, “This house, it was 24/7—winter, summer, spring. It’s a real home that people lived in and spent their lives in.” Miller said they chose the IMA to be stewards of the house because of its track record of maintaining the Lilly House and its development of the forthcoming Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, both on the museum’s 152-acre campus.
