A friend just sent me this picture; forgive me for posting it, but I so rarely like pictures of myself. This is the Pritzker Prize dinner at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in June 2014.
The new exhibition at the Met pairing works of fashion with works of art in other media is nothing short of thrilling. Congratulations to the curators and to the designers of the exhibition, Peterson Rich Office. I’m not especially interested in fashion, but these pieces, seen up close, are highly architectural.
I have drivcn past the new LACMA many times, but I haven’t been inside the galleries. People who have been say they’re adequate.
I suppose that’s good news. But do adequate galleries justify the demolition of several buildings by William Pereira, one of L.A.’s most important mid-century architects, and the expenditure of $800 million on their replacement? And what about the vast amount of carbon released into the atmosphere when a building this big is made of concrete? There’s no way to recover that carbon, the millions of dollars, or the Pereira buildings, so the galleries had better be spectacular, not adequate.
With $800 million LACMA could have scattered 20 satellite museums around the Los Angeles basin, bringing art to people who can’t, for any number of reasons, visit the Zumthor mothership on Wilshire Boulevard. That would have been a great use of the money.
After missing several press events, I finally made it to the Studio Museum in Harlem. (For those who don't know, I can only visit museums when there’s someone to push my wheelchair.) It was a terrific couple of hours. I've disliked the museum’s dark, brooding facade since it was completed several years ago. But I also dislike the exterior of the new Princeton University Art Museum by the same architect, David Adjaye. And that one is stupendous on the inside. The Studio Museum isn't stupendous, but like the Princeton museum it's full of really nice spaces that interlock in unexpected ways, in this case via a large atrium that makes the disparate galleries feel connected and brings light to every part of the building. But the nicest thing about the visit was (as it should be) the art on the walls, which made me want to return several more times. My favorite show is the survey of works by the museum’s artists in residence. There have been two, three or four of them for each of the last 58 years, meaning there are about 180 artworks in this one exhibition. Many, by artists I hadn’t known about, are powerful or beautiful or both. Go!
