SINGAPORE MUSEUM HONORS ARTIST; HADID AND VAN BERKEL TO DESIGN CENTENNIAL PAVILIONS IN CHICAGO

The Straits Times reports that a gallery at the Singapore Art Museum has been named the Wu Guanzhong Gallery, after the renowned China artist who donated one hundred and thirteen paintings worth $73.7 million to the museum. The donation is the biggest ever to a Singapore museum and comes from an artist whose work sells for millions of dollars at auction. Visitors can see all the works at an exhibition called “An Unbroken Line: The Wu Guanzhong Donation Collection,” which runs until August 16 at the museum. The pieces span the artist’s practice over five decades from 1957. Wu’s works will be displayed at the National Art Gallery in Singapore when it opens in 2013.

In other news, Blair Kamin reports for the Chicago Tribune_ that two internationally renowned architects, Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel, who heads the Amsterdam-based firm UNStudio, will design temporary pavilions in Chicago’s Millennium Park to serve as focal points for next year’s region-wide celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Burnham Plan, the visionary document that changed the face of Chicago. It’s unclear how these two paragons of the avant-garde will come to terms with the late Chicago architect and planner Daniel Burnham, a committed classicist who sought to transform rough-edged Chicago into a civilized Paris on the Prairie. “We just decided we were going to go for top-flight designers and open it up, rather than make it seem like we’re just harking back to the past,” said George Ranney, cochair of the Burnham Plan Centennial Committee, a group of civic leaders that is coordinating the efforts of 250 Chicago-area civic groups to celebrate the plan and envision the region’s future.