ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

Six museum (re)openings keep art fresh this Spring

MSNBC / April 6th, 2010

New or newly expanded museums around the country this spring will showcase everything from Tiffany lamps to Wyeth paintings, as well as some cutting-edge new architecture to house it all. “Wyeth: An American Legacy, Treasures from the Farnsworth Art Museum” and Japanese woodblock prints are on ...

Japanese firm wins prestigious Priztker prize

Curbed / March 29th, 2010

The Japanese duo Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in SANAA, were honored Sunday with architecture's highest award. Their much-talked-about New Museum on the Bowery in New York is one recent, notable project. LA Times critic Christopher Hawthorne described their best buildings as ...

U.S. picks "blastproof" glass cube design for new embassy

Bloomberg / February 23rd, 2010

Kieran Timberlake, the Philadelphia architecture firm noted for such projects as Yale's Sculpture Building & Gallery, has been chosen to design a new (and very expensive) U.S. embassy in the U.K. With a billion-dollar budget, the 12-story, cube-shaped building is not without critics who ...

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art expansion plans on fire

San Francisco Gate / February 23rd, 2010

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom orchestrated a deal for SFMOMA to take over property housing an aging, architecturally-challenged fire station. The museum would raze the building for a planned expansion, in part, to showcase the renowned collection of modern and contemporary art on long-term ...

Financial fortunes rise for Boston's Gardner Museum

Boston Business Journal / February 22nd, 2010

Rich in works by Old Masters and American impressionists, the palazzo-like Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum says its investment portfolio closed out the year valued at $161.6 million — some 53 percent higher than at the end of June, the close of its last fiscal year. A rise in the stock market and ...

Destination City: Explore Savannah's historic homes, squares and gardens

MSNBC / October 29th, 2009

Founded in 1733, Savannah, Georgia, originally had 24 squares. It's a remarkable feat of preservation that 22 are still in existence. Surrounded by stately homes and beautiful gardens, they form the heart of a two-and-a-half-square-mile historic district with more than 2,000 historic or ...

On the Rise: MoMA gets 82-story tower approved

Associated Press / October 28th, 2009

The Museum of Modern Art's proposal for a Jean Nouvel-designed skyscraper has cleared its final hurdle. The New York City Council voted Wednesday to approve the plan for a 1000-foot mixed-use tower on West 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The museum will gain approximately 40,000 ...

Great Houses of New York: River House, the Best Address

Huffington Post / October 22nd, 2009

Author Michael Henry Adams takes readers on a trip to Manhattan's fabulous River House overlooking the East River. Surmounted by a ballroom in the tower's graceful cupola was once a most palatial apartment occupied by the family of sportsman and publisher, Marshall Field, III. Field's English ...

Rediscovering Julia Morgan: California's first female architect

Huffington Post / October 18th, 2009

The first woman admitted into the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Julia Morgan, designed an astounding 700 buildings during her career. What makes Ms. Morgan's life truly groundbreaking was that she was also California's first female architect. Author John Mark Wilson has written a tribute to her entitled ...

Castle Available: Nicolas Cage unloads historic property

Daily Mail / October 15th, 2009

He is one of Hollywood's most bankable stars, but it seems Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage's Midas touch doesn't extend to his own finances. The actor faces claims for millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. Cage, 45, is selling his vast property portfolio, and the latest to be unloaded is Midford Castle, ...

Museum Sleep-over: Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater now open to overnight guests

Reuters / September 24th, 2009

MILL RUN, Penn. - Fans of Frank Lloyd Wright's house Fallingwater have long been able to visit the architect's modernist masterpiece as a museum, but soon they can enjoy the house almost as if they were living in it. A new Insight Onsite program allows guests to lounge about reading, enjoy a ...

He Helped Focus LA's Modern Image: Julius Shulman memorialized

LA Times Arts / September 21st, 2009

Over the weekend, architects, photographers, curators, historians, family members and a few celebrities paid tribute to the man who helped shape LA's architectural image. Before his death in July, photographer Julius Shulman was the greatest living symbol of the idea that Los Angeles and its ...

Rants against Landmarks: FOX's Glenn Beck turns into an art critic

UnBeige Mediabistro / September 3rd, 2009

Everyone's favorite screamer Glenn Beck last night decided to expose the fascist/communist art at Rockefeller Plaza in New York. He explained that NBC, the Rockefeller family, and everyone else who happens to pass by the building is a raving communist and/or fascist (probably both). View the ...

Old Style Syria Made New; Historic preservation versus the bottom line

CS Monitor / August 31st, 2009

Damascus is rediscovering its architectural gems, but hasty restoration puts history at risk. Layers of civilization are slowly peeled back to reveal such historic treasures as colonnaded Roman roads and late-Ottoman era houses, three of which are being restored as a boutique hotel for $20 ...

The Guggenheim At 50: A Legacy Spirals On Fifth

NPR 1 / August 5th, 2009

A half-century ago, an eye-popping object landed on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It looked like it had dropped from outer space, and was treated as such. It was the Guggenheim museum, and today, tourists come from around the world to marvel at it.

Eric Owen Moss wants to piece together L.A.'s fragments

LA Times Arts / August 2nd, 2009

(Los Angeles) The architect hopes his latest projects will help bring the city closer to a new vision. The neighborhood around the office of Eric Owen Moss feels first like Mayberry, then a bit like "Killer of Sheep." And just after the block of tree-shaded single family homes runs into a ...

With British Museum Plans Canceled, Richard Rogers Loses Second Big Project to Anti-Modern Forces

UnBeige Mediabistro / July 28th, 2009

  Starchitect Richard Rogers seems neck and neck in competition with Frank Gehry for popular architect most raked over the coals in 2009. Last week, Rogers was back on top with the news that an unprecedented two of his projects had been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize. But now the bad ...

Highbrow guides to historic sites rewritten to woo masses

London Times / July 25th, 2009

ENGLISH HERITAGE is to rewrite guides to its properties to ensure they can be understood by visitors with the reading age of a 10-year-old. For example, the description of an item as “Jacobean” might be changed to “made in the reign of King James I”.