Dan Flavin untitled (to Tracy, to celebrate the love of a lifetime), 1992
Can you imagine? How I wish I was at the Guggenheim when this was up.
Side note: talk about the most romantic title ever. Am I right?
hyde or die
Not content with having one of the most iconic buildings in the world, northern Spain may now be gaining a rival to its Frank Gehry-designed beacon. The Museo Guggenheim Bilbao is completing feasibility studies for a satellite near the historic town of Guernica, just 40km east of Bilbao. Local and provincial authorities in the Basque Country anticipate that the new museum would extend the so-called “Bilbao effect”—the economic windfall catalysed by Gehry’s celebrated original—to a pristine but underdeveloped coastal region. The Biscay Provincial Council has allocated E1m to fund the environmental and economic analyses, and pledged €100m for construction, about half the estimated cost. But the Basque Country government, whose financial participation is crucial for the project to move forward, is reluctant to undertake the expansion amid the current economic crisis.
The proposed 200-acre site—currently owned by the Spanish bank BBK—is on the west bank of the Urdaibai estuary, a Unesco biosphere reserve a short distance from the Bay of Biscay. Juan Ignacio Vidarte, the director of the Guggenheim Bilbao, notes that land-use restrictions and conservationists have encumbered development. “It’s an area I would not call depressed, but certainly I would call it stagnant,” he told The Art Newspaper, adding that the proposed museum “could bring together culture and nature in a way which could be compatible with the preservation of the environmental quality of the space”. via…
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Golden), 1995
This was just installed last Friday at the Guggenheim in New York.
It will be up through January, at which point I will cross my fingers that it will come to California somewhere. Preferably within driving distance.
Online forum ArtBabblehas museums riding the digital wave with original video contributions:
The site features exclusive content from visual heavy hitters such as the Museum of Art & Design and Art Institute of Chicago, as well as a platform for user-generated discussion. Visitors can watch lectures from the 2009 International Design Symposium, scope demos of the art-installation process, and previewArt:21, all providing a diverse bird’s-eye view of the world of contemporary art. via…
Oooh, custom videos…
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Google today announced the launch of Design It: Shelter Competition, a global, online initiative that invites the public to use Google Earth and Google SketchUp to create and submit designs for virtual 3-D shelters for a location of their choice anywhere on Earth. The competition opens today, June 8, 2009, Frank Lloyd Wright’s birthday; closes to submissions on August 23; and ends on October 21, the 50th anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum’s opening, when two prizes, a Juried Prize and a People’s Prize, will be awarded. via…
Guggenheim wins Webby for best cultural website or something…
It’s not that I’m jealous per se, it’s just that I know I wasn’t in the running to begin with and I feel a little excluded…like when the Vanity Fair “Best Dressed” list comes out.
Anish Kapoor Memory 2008
This work was commissioned for the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. I am absolutely enamored with it. It looks like what you would get if you turned one of his more reflective “beans” inside out.
The website says “Memorythus remains situational. It is relativistic, phenomenological, and ultimately unclaimed. As we attempt to catch glimpses of the sculpture’s exterior shell and interior belly, the present quickly becomes the past.” Which I think translates into “I can’t wrap my head around it and I am a little high so I will project my aging and receding hairline on to this piece while I munch on something covered in mayonnaise.” Just saying.*
*Don’t even get me started on the magazine I received in the mail today from Deutsche Guggenheim, they were asking a prominent art collecting couple what they would rather have a sorcerer grant them. Not kidding. I was embarrassed for them.
Cy Twombly Hero and Leander (To Christopher Marlowe), 1985
Reason #238 to win the lottery: So I can book a ticket to Spain and visit this retrospective at the Guggenheim-Bilbao and afterwards also buy the catalog!
