(The concept for the memorial, which would include images of Eisenhower's adult achievements.)
"Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to himself as “a barefoot boy” in 1945 when he returned home victorious to Abilene, Kan., after World War II. And it was in that image that the architect Frank Gehry found inspiration for the design of the official memorial to Eisenhower for which groundbreaking is expected this year on the Washington Mall."
"With plans for a proposed mega Walmart store in Midtown moving forward, reality sets in for many art fair organizers who will have to start looking for new venues once the project breaks ground.
Scope Art Fair, Red Dot, and Art Asia, three Art Basel Miami Beach satellite fairs that last year took place on land where Walmart is planing to build its new store, are confident they’ll be able to set up camp on the lot this year too. After that, they’ll have to start searching for a space somewhere else."
Karim Masri, Meir Teper, Tony Shafrazi, and Gianni Nunnari check out Keith Haring’s Untitled (1988) at the VIP Preview at the Miami Beach Convention Center for Art Basel Miami Beach 2011Just how overheated was the atmosphere at this past December’s edition of Art Basel Miami Beach? Start with the record-size crowd of 50,000, including an opening-night vernissage crush that had the Beach’s fire marshal in a panic, hollering, “Nice and easy! Nice and easy!” as he forced hordes of VIPs to march single-file into the Miami Beach Convention Center, like so many kindergartners in high heels. Gaze over the swarm of Hollywood A-listers who winged into town, from Michael Douglas and wife Catherine Zeta-Jones to Sean Penn and Will Smith, turning Basel’s week of velvet-roped parties into a tropical take on the Sundance Film Festival.
Then add the sudden transformation of louche celebs into discerning cultural mavens: If the sight of Sean “Diddy” Combs dropping $70,000 at the fair on one of British neo-feminist Tracey Emin’s sculptures wasn’t jarring enough for you (Emin’s solo exhibition at North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art is already scheduled for 2013), there was New York Yankee A-Rod trading in his baseball bat for curatorial duties, having a set of It boy Nate Lowman’s “bullet-hole” paintings installed in his waterfront Miami Beach home (including inside his indoor batting cage, naturally), while a who’s who of visiting Basel-ites ooh-ed and ah-ed over his burgeoning art collection.
Not least, there was a dizzying array of, ahem, art-themed corporate product launches: a pop-up shop hawking a new line of Dior handbags customized by German abstract painter Anselm Reyle? Why not! Perrier copresenting a night with drag queen-cum-videographer Kalup Linzy and post-punkers TV on the Radio? Sure! A poolside fête with alt-rockers Soulwax, courtesy of LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Maybach autos, and… the Kingdom of Morocco? “The same publicist who brought us Maybach was working with Morocco,” LA MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch helpfully explained to The Wall Street Journal. “Everybody wants to connect with contemporary art.” Well, pass the lamb tagine.
Maybe it’s best not to overthink this blurring of art and commerce, as evidenced by the spirit inside the Basel booth of Leipzig, Germany’s Eigen + Art. There, a woman stood transfixed before Neo Rauch’s Die Jägerin, a fiercely imposing, nearly eight-foot-tall, bronze statue of a female falconer readying for battle. “Where will this go?” she asked earnestly. It seemed like a fair question—sporting a fearsome necklace of four disembodied heads, the statue seemed best suited for display inside Qaddafi’s revolutionary palace. “Where will it go?” thundered back gallery head Gerd Harry Lybke. “To whoever gives me $850,000!”
"Miami Beach, FL, On Sunday, January 29, 2012 the Bass Museum of Art celebrated the opening of its Lindemann Family Creativity Center with an inauguration ceremony and ribbon cutting followed by its monthly IDEA@thebass family day."
Mike Kelley, the multi-media post-Conceptual artist with a punk rocker sensibility, was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles, the Gagosian gallery, which represents him, confirmed. He was 57. Sgt. Robert Bartl of the South Pasadena police department told the Associated Press that the death was an apparent suicide, but would not provide further information. (NY Times)
Ideas for a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood by the Adrienne Arsht Center look good on paper but so far lack funding and land.
Want to know where investors are placing some of their biggest bets? Look on their walls.
Art prices swelled last year, lifting sales at Christie's International PLC to $5.7 billion last year, up 14% from the year before. The London-based auction house said on Tuesday that the total includes $4.9 billion in auction sales and $808.6 million in art sales it brokered privately, as galleries typically do. The private-sale total doubled from a year ago, it added.
On Sunday, January 29, 2012 the Bass Museum of Art will introduce the Lindemann Family Creativity Center. The museum will commemorate the opening of the center with an inauguration ceremony and ribbon cutting at 12:30 p.m. followed by family activities from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. as well as a fortune telling by artist David Rohn, also known as “The Amazing Ultran. read more
