Looking Around

I’ve got my bottle of water, my carry on bag and my government-issued photo ID. That can only mean one thing. I’m back on the road again, so won’t be blogging again til next Tuesday. Meanwhile, here’s a shamelessly self-serving link to my review of the Boston MFA Hopper show in the new issue of Time.

Just a few more quick thoughts on the Louise Nevelson show that just opened at the Jewish Museum in New York.

The lead catalogue essay by Brooke Kamin Rapaport, who organized the show, makes a lot of Nevelson’s practice of redeeming junk she found in the street by incorporating it into her art. But for some reason Rapaport doesn’t …

Sky Cathedral Presence, 1951-64 — Collection Walker Art Center Minneapolis

I got an early look last week at the Louise Nevelson retrospective at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan. Nevelson was already 60 when she had her breakthrough in the 1959 MoMA show Sixteen Americans that also featured Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg and other …

With Elizabeth II all the rage in the U.S. this week — look, she looks just like Helen Mirren! — the time is right for a quick check of news from the U.K.

And the news is — the four nominees for the Turner Prize were announced yesterday.

But the problem is — I doubt that the Turner carries much weight for most Americans. A …

Sam Wagstaff & Robert Mapplethorpe by Francesco Scavullo — © Francesco Scavullo Editions

Over the weekend I caught a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival of Black White + Gray , a debut documentary by James Crump about Sam Wagstaff, the wealthy curator and photo collector who was mentor and lover to the photographer Robert …

Or at least my last word. For now. Or until my review of the Boston MFA’s Hopper show appears next week in Time.

While going through the show last week I was always aware of Hopper’s dark foliage, his way of indicating trees with a feathery mix of green and black, which makes the woods seem both beckoning and mordant. A few of the …

While making my way through the catalogue for the Edward Hopper show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts I came across a reproduction of this Caillebotte in Judith Barter’s essay on Hopper’s Nighthawks

Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877/Gustave Caillebotte — The Art Institute of Chicago

Barter cites the Caillebotte to contrast the position …

Room in New York,1932 /Edward Hopper — Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, University of Nebraska-Lincoln UNL-F.M. Hall Collection

I headed up to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts last week to catch an early look at the Edward Hopper retrospective that opens there on May 6. ( I’ll have more to say about it in an upcoming …

This morning, a few days after touring Frank Gehry’s new IAC headquarters on the lower west side of Manhattan…

IAC Headquarters/Frank Gehry — Photo: Albert Vecerka/ESTO

…. I was walking along 57th Street on the upper east side, where Christian de Portzamparc’s LVMH headquarters (from 1999) is located.

LVMH …

Last January, when I went out to see the new Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, I also got an early look at what was then the nearly completed new addition to it’s parent institution, the Seattle Art Museum, which is actually a few blocks away. At the time I wrote mostly about the fascinating sculpture park, but with the addition having …

The IAC Headquarters/Frank Gehry — All Photos: Albert Vecerka/ESTO

I got a tour earlier this week of Manhattan’s first Frank Gehry building, the IAC headquarters, a 10-story undulating mesa — actually, it’s an office building — on the lower west side of Manhattan. I first got a glimpse of this project, which was commissioned …

I’ve been on the road since yesterday. Back to the blog tomorrow, Friday. Meanwhile you can check out a new architecture toy. The American Institute of Architects has set up a new layer in Google Earth that lets you “visit” digital recreations of the buildings featured on their recent list of the 150 American buildings, bridges and …

I grabbed lunch today with Rob Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art and director of the upcoming Venice Biennale, the first American invited to fill that job. (For the record, there was an earlier Biennale directed by an Italian who became a U.S. citizen just before it opened.) The Biennale, of course, is run along the lines of a …