In contrast to the lucid rationality of the modern glass tower, the new Austrian Cultural Forum, at 11 East 52nd Street, projects the idea that serious disturbances may lie beneath a relatively smooth appearance. Call this a psycho-building: Every skyline goes a little crazy sometimes.
A federal court in New York ruled on April 12 that the US government may seek to confiscate an Egon Schiele painting claimed to be stolen property illegally imported into the US. The court rejected every argument made by the Leopold Museum in Vienna and the Museum of Modern Art in their efforts to dismiss the case brought by the family of Lea Bondi Jaray, an Austrian Jew who fled the country when the Nazis invaded. It is the second such case allowed to go forward by US courts.
Don't believe what you hear about the emergence of a consensus on the future of Lower Manhattan, argues Herbert Muschamp. According to the New York Times's architecture critic, the agreement represents a somewhat circumscribed point of view: that of New York's largest corporate architecture firms and the politically connected real-estate-development industry they serve.
A painting of a black square was dropped from a Russian auction over the weekend after the Culture Ministry declared it a “state cultural monument”. The 1913 painting by Kasimir Malevich had been expected to fetch millions of dollars for a bankrupt Russian bank, Inkombank.
When Rem Koolhaas recently visited Philadelphia to deliver a lecture, he went to see Robert Venturi's famous 1964 Chestnut Hill house, now considered a landmark of twentieth-century architecture. Today, Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, the authors of Learning from Las Vegas, are often criticized, but Koolhaas remains an admirer. “Their interests were really revolutionary. It's baffling to me that they are treated with such skepticism,” said the six-foot-six-inch Dutchman.
For the second time in three years, the Menil Collection has lost a director and named an interim chief to manage the museum and help find a replacement. The Menil board appointed James T. Demetrion, recently retired head of the Hirshhorn Museum, as temporary chief. Demetrion steps into the post vacated by Ned Rifkin—who, ironically, filled the post of Demetrion, his mentor, at the Washington, DC, museum.
Francesco Bonami's appointment as curator of next year's Venice Biennale has put an end to the controversy that has plagued the venerable biennial for months. Yet the speculation about Bonami's plans is only just beginning.
Damien Hirst's new project will use discarded carbon dioxide canisters to highlight the environmental impact of greenhouse gases.
An exhibition in Moscow reexamines the architecture of early-twentieth-century totalitarianism and discovers, among other things, that Stalinism and Fascism developed distinct styles.
National Public Radio announced today that it will be cutting jobs in cultural programming and shifting its resources to news and talk.
Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg just announced the cancellation of their New York sale of nodern art. Instead, the struggling house will hold the auction in London on June 24 at Claridge's.
Roy S. Berns, a color scientist named at the Rochester Institute of Technology, recently examined a painting by Vincent van Gogh called White Flowers, 1890, and discovered that they were actually red and pink. The color had faded with time.