Displaying items by tag: Preservation

The monolithic concrete that forms some of our most creative 20th-century architectural heritage is in danger of disappearing. Brutalism, that heftily named form of modernism that favors right-angles and a palette with the colors of a storm, is facing demolition and decay around the world, whether the Birmingham Central Library in England demolished this month, or Chicago’s Prentice Women’s Hospital torn down last year.

Another $150,000 in federal funding has been procured for a New York historic site where previously unknown wall paintings by a famous 19th-century artist have been uncovered.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer announced this week that the Institute of Museum and Library Services has approved the additional grant for the home of Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole.

The Getty Foundation has announced a second round of grants for its Keeping It Modern conservation initiative, funding the study of exceptional architecture including Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill., and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius' residence in Lincoln, Mass.

Grants totaling more than $1.75 million have been awarded to 14 buildings, built in the 20th century in eight countries including India and Brazil....

The Institute of Contemporary Art received permission Tuesday night to demolish three homes in a historic district in order to build a sculpture park, but some conditions placed on the approval may make the decision unpalatable.

Miami’s Historic and Environmental Preservation Board voted 3 to 2 to allow the museum, which is located in the Design District, to tear down the homes behind the building on parcels in the southern edge of the Buena Vista East Historic District.

A group of 54 artists and other art worlders has signed a letter asking Mayor de Blasio and Meenakshi Srinivasan, chair of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, to deny the Frick Collection’s proposed plan for expansion.

“Those of us in the art world who cherish the unique and tranquil ambiance offered by the Frick are urging the Frick to withdraw its proposed plan and consider alternative methods of expansion that would preserve the character essential to its appeal,” says the missive, which is signed by gallerists Paul Kasmin and Irving Blum, filmmaker Sophia Coppola, and artists Jeff Koons, Chuck Close, John Currin, Brice Marden, Frank Stella, Cindy Sherman, Deborah Kass, Cecily Brown, Lisa Yuskavage, Rudolf Stingel, and Sarah Sze, among others.

At the 11th hour, a British heritage organization has renewed a bid to save a major Brutalist building from destruction. Twentieth Century Society filed a report with English Heritage last week arguing for the preservation of Robin Hood Gardens, Dezeen reported. The Alison and Peter Smithson–designed social housing project in East London is slated to be torn down and replaced by a new residential development.

Built in 1972, the prefabricated concrete building is considered one of the prime examples of Brutalist architecture in the UK.

Of all the design arts, those dealing with elaborate gardens are the most ephemeral -- dependent as they are on the changing seasons and the boom-and-bust cycles of the economy.

From the Colonial era to present day, New England's great gardens always have been linked to the value of the land from which they spring. Over the years, many have been subdivided for building and housing developments or paved over for parking lots.

The region's rich garden-design history is the subject of "Lost Gardens of New England," a traveling exhibition from the nonprofit Historic New England preservation organization. The exhibit opened Sunday, March 1, (and runs through July 31) at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London.

Officials at the Frick Collection knew their plan to build a six-story addition to a beloved, landmark, jewel-box museum would draw detractors. But leaders of that Fifth Avenue museum say they didn’t expect it to get so intense so fast.

Since the museum announced its expansion in June, more than 2,000 critics of the plan have signed a petition put together by a consortium of preservation groups that have created a website and given themselves a name: Unite to Save the Frick.

Now, the group says it has found evidence that the museum, whose plan needs city approval, is going back on a promise made in its original landmark review roughly 40 years ago to make permanent a garden by the noted landscape architect Russell Page that is to be destroyed in the expansion.

The Reina Sofía will assume the technical direction, research management, preservation and dissemination of the archive for a period of ten years, with the option to fully acquire the collection down the road.

The New York Studio School’s Whitney Studio in Greenwich Village has been designated a “National Treasure” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, according to an announcement from the organization today. The building was constructed in 1877 as a carriage house but was converted by art patron Getrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1907 into a studio and salon.

The Whitney Studio’s ornate interior was designed by Robert Winthrop Chanler, whom Whitney commissioned in 1918. Today, the structure and its decorative elements are badly in need of repair and restoration, with the New York Studio School estimating the cost of the project at $2.2 million.