Looking Around

Here’s a quick link to my piece in this week’s European and Asian editions of Time about Daniel LIbeskind’s new addition to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. (The piece isn’t appearing in the U.S. because I just wrote a fairly long one about Libeskind that appeared in Time last October, when his addition to the Denver Art Museum …

Illustration of the Nelson-Atkins Museum with Steven Holl’s addition — Courtesy Kansas City Area Development Council

A quick link to my piece in the new issue of Time about the fascinating Steven Holl addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. And a link here to a Time.com slide show with many more pictures.

The …

I think. I’ve been over to MoMA twice this past week for events connected to the Richard Serra retrospective that opens there on Sunday, first for the Serra dinner that the museum gave on Tuesday, then for the members’ preview last night. It happened that last night, as I was walking around in one of Serra’s massive new works, I had …

Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, California, June 21, 1975 — All pictures © Stephen Shore – Courtesy Aperture Foundation

I made it over to the International Center of Photography today to catch the Stephen Shore show that opened there a few weeks ago. Shore has been a favorite of mine since the mid-70s, around the …

Though in this case not to me. But in as much as we’ve mostly heard MASS MoCA’s side of the story with regard to their dispute with Buchel, this statement by the artist is of interest. He sent it last March to The Boston Globe‘s Geoff Edgers. Over the last few days Edgers has been reproducing it now on his blog, The Exhibitionist. …

Installation View of Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years at MoMA. Photo: Lorenze Kienzle

A final installment from my conversation two weeks ago with Serra as he was mounting pieces for his upcoming retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. (And a link to my piece about him in the new issue of Time and to a Time.com slide show about …

The Matter of Time (partial view), 2005/Richard Serra — Installed at Bilbao Guggenheim — Photo: Ander Gillnea/AP

I got the chance two weeks ago to watch Serra supervise the installation of some of the enormous pieces that will be the culmination of his upcoming retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Afterwards we …

Two interesting (and discouraging) recent articles about museum display practices and the fine line between visitor friendly and moronic. One from the UK, about the debate over there, the other from the Detroit Free Press, via, about plans by the Detroit Institute of Arts

This time it’s getting serious. For months, MASS MoCA has been fighting with the Swiss artist Christoph Buchel over the rising budget for a massive Buchel installation called Training Ground for Democracy that was supposed to open at the museum last December. (There’s an umlaut in Buchel, dear reader, but those take too long to apply …

The Lee-Chin Crystal/Daniel Libeskind — Photos courtesy of Royal Ontario Museum

In the ordinary course of my work I travel around alot to see new buildings and shows and to talk to the people involved, artists, architects, museum directors, curators and so on. Sometimes I just to check in with people and see what they’re up to. I …

As expected, people with disposable income disposed lots more last night at an art auction. This time it was Christie’s sale of modern and contemporary. Also as expected, Warhol’s Green Car Crash, (Green Burning Car I) was the big sale of the night. I’ve been entertaining myself this week leafing through Andy’s glyphic …

“I like money on the wall. Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you, the first thing they would see is the money on the wall.”
— Andy Warhol.

192 One Dollar Bills, 1962 /Andy Warhol

Good old Andy, as endlessly quotable as …

The verdict on Matthew Barney, just in from a Flickr site devoted mostly to street art. (A shout out to my art buddy and fellow journalist Carolina Miranda for spotting this.)

Gosh — was it Barney’s last movie that sent somebody over the edge? You know, that one where he and Bjork take out whale knives and slice each other into …