Displaying items by tag: architectural

Tucked beneath the trees in the center of MetroTech Commons in Brooklyn is L.A.-based artist Sam Falls’s “Untitled (Maze),” a sprawling architectural plan of a sculpture that invites spectators to step inside its walls. It’s part of his “Light Over Time,” a series of works commissioned by the Public Art Fund. Falls, known for boundary-pushing paintings that incorporate sunlight, rain, and other elements into their production process, has built some of those same climatological concerns into this new public work. The sides of each aluminum panel are painted differently, with one surface lacking a protective UV finish; this means that, over the sculpture’s lifespan, the way the light hits the piece will cause it to change and break down in subtle ways. (Just don’t hold your breath — a good five years of light exposure are needed before the process begins, Falls said.)

In the first exhibition of its kind in 50 years, the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, is presenting the exhibition "A Rich and Varied Culture: The Material World of the Early South." The show, which features more than 400 objects drawn from the Colonial Williamsburg collections, will include a dozen categories of media and represent four geographic regions of the South -- the Chesapeake region, the Carolina Low Country, the Backcountry South, and the Gulf Coast. Works from 10 other institutions and 14 private collections will also be exhibited.

Together, furniture, paintings, prints, metals, ceramics, mechanical arts and arms, architectural elements, archaeological objects, rare books, maps, costumes, accessories and musical instruments will tell the story of the region’s population from the 17th century through 1840 as it expanded westward and southward toward the frontier. Each of the works on view has undergone exhaustive research, which has yielded some unexpected findings. For example, a painting of Frances Parke Custis, on loan from Washington and Lee University, was revealed to be the work of the Brodnax Limner, a little-known artist who worked in Virginia during the 1720s.  

Ronald L. Hurt, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s vice president for collections, conservation, and museums and its Carlisle H. Humelsine Chief Curator, said, “The early American South has long been depicted as a society that produced almost none of the objects used by its substantial populace. However, the opposite is true. Southern artists and artisans generated a vast body of material in virtually every medium. The abundance and diverse cultural resonance of these goods will be powerfully conveyed by the objects assembled for this exhibition.”

"A Rich and Varied Culture: The Material World of the Early South" was entirely funded by Williamsburg residents, Carolyn and Michael McNamara. The exhibition will be on view at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum for five years, until 2019.

The Middlebury College Museum of Art in Middlebury, VT is currently exhibiting a selection of rare watercolors and drawings of Vermont by the American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Best known for his depictions of urban and rural life in America, Hopper’s paintings of Vermont are not widely known and many of them have not been on public view in nearly 50 years. Edward Hopper in Vermont, which was assembled from museums and private collections, marks the first time Hopper’s Vermont works have been displayed together in their home state.

Hopper, and his wife Jo, a fellow artist who was also his model, muse, and lifelong travel companion, made five trips to Vermont during the summers between 1927 and 1938. Hopper’s early paintings from these trips depict Vermont’s most recognizable scenery – rolling green hills dotted with bright red barns and dramatic distant peaks. His later paintings focus on the White River Valley and its vast meadows, wide pastures, and everyday roadside scenes. These works are a departure from Hopper’s usual style as they lack any architectural form or signs of human presence.

Edward Hopper in Vermont will be on view at the Middlebury College Museum of Art through August 11, 2013.

After news spread that New York’s Museum of Modern Art planned to tear down the former home of the American Folk Art Museum on West 53^rd Street in Manhattan, opponents launched a petition asking MoMA officials to reconsider the decision.

The petition was launched by New Haven, CT resident, Robert Bundy, and has accrued over 2,000 signatures. In a letter written to MoMA’s director, Glenn D. Lowry, and the museum’s chief architecture curator, Barry Bergdoll, Bundy asks that MoMA preserve the building rather than raze it, which he claims would be an architectural loss for the city of New York.

The building in debate was designed by notable New York-based architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to house the Folk Art Museum. The project was completed in 2001 but after falling into financial turmoil, the Folk Art Museum decided to sell the building to MoMA and move to a smaller location.

The decision to level the structure, which features a sculptural bronze façade, is part of MoMA’s overarching expansion plans. Officials claim that the former Folk Art Museum building doesn’t mesh well with MoMA’s neighboring sleek, glass façade. The Folk Art building is also set back slightly from MoMA making expansion logistics more complicated.

In Bundy’s letter he writes, “We ask that the Museum of Modern Art reconsider its position and save the former American Folk Art Museum. The destruction of the building will result in MoMA no longer being regarded as a protector and promoter of the arts.” The petition can be found on change.org’s website.