Better late than never: for more than a year now the Louvre, the Paris museum at the heart of the bestselling novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’, is offering an interactive audio tour that re-traces the plot of the Hollywood adaptation of the book. French actor Jean Reno, who plays detective Bezu Fache in the film, narrates the guided tour. The museum, backdrop for some of the movie, charges 10 euros (£6.80) to hire the portable MP3 players. The audio tour is targetting US tourists, who make up 20% of the Louvre’s 7.5 million foreign visitors each year.

The tour has been produced by Soundwalk, a company that makes “sonic journeys” for New York and Paris. The company has said it is discussing deals to make tours for other museums that have been featured in films. However, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, which served as the mise-en-scène for the 2006 hit movie ‘Night at the museum’, thusfar cannot be experienced by means of an audioguide.

Read article ‘Louvre offers Da Vinci Code tour’ (BBC, May 15, 2006)
Go to website Da Vinci Code Soundwalk
Go to website Musee du Louvre
Buy the Soundwalk on iTunes

Gerhard Richter, Cologne cathedral (Photograph: Hermann Knippertz/AP)

He’s bonkers to criticise his new stained glass window for Islamic overtones - there must be something else going on.

The sacred precincts of Cologne cathedral have this month become the setting for an unholy row about modern art.

The city’s Catholic archbishop, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, is complaining about a stained-glass window created by the artist Gerhard Richter. The window, in the south transept of the building, is made up of roughly 11,200 coloured squares, creating a pixelated effect. It’s an appropriate monument for the computer age and many locals have welcomed the return of a bit of colour to this part of the cathedral. Since the second world war the gothic tracery had been filled with plain glass.

Not everone is happy, though. Richter, an elder statesman of the German art scene whose paintings sell for millions, was probably thought of as a safe pair of hands for the job. Choosing an abstract design must have seemed like a sure way to avoid controversy but, quite unexpectedly, comments from the cardinal have stirred interfaith tensions. He has said that the window’s lack of human figures is a nod to Islamic art and that it would be more suitable for a mosque than a church.

Read full article (Guardian Art & Architecture blog, September 5, 2007)

Olafur Eliasson’s, One-Way Colour Tunnel (Photo: Ian Reeves, courtesy SFMOMA)

For Take Your Time, a major new exhibition that opened September 8 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the internationally-celebrated artist Olafur Eliasson changed out the gallery lights, put mirrors on the ceilings, created a small fog bank, filled a room with a pool of water, and turned a skywalk into a trippy disco kaleidoscope, all in an effort to tinker with the way we experience space and light, and how we navigate the world. Open through February, the exhibition travels to New York’s Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 in April, then to the Dallas Museum of Art in November 2008.

Eliason became famous as an artist in 2003, when 2 million people visited The Weather Project, a giant installation at London’s Tate Modern that created an artificial sun from 200 yellow sodium lamps.

But, explains SFMOMA curator Madeleine Grynsztejn, Eliasson’s work is never mere special effects. Like a DIY guru morphed into an international art star, Eliasson likes to show the mechanisms behind his artwork. “The revelation of his process is part and parcel of the work,” says Grynsztejn. “It’s equal parts ‘wow’ and ‘a-ha.’”

Read full article (Wired, September 7, 2007)
The Guardian on Take Your Time
Take Your Time at SFMOMA

Overwhelmed by the globetrotting needed to keep up with the new museums opening every year? Well, put on your track shoes. Keep up the pace.

The ribbon cuttings this season begin at the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, finally opening after a decade of delays. Bernard Tschumi’s delicate exercise in blending contemporary architecture into a weighty historical context carries a political message from the Greek government. It is an argument for bringing home the Elgin Marbles.

In Washington, Norman Foster’s handsome new courtyard addition to the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art, part of the Smithsonian, is to be unveiled in November. The courtyard’s lacy new glass-and-steel canopy is meant to give a touch of elegance to the Greek Revival setting.

The Broad Contemporary Art Museum, Renzo Piano’s building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is scheduled to open in February. Though not as adventurous as an earlier proposal by Rem Koolhaas, Mr. Piano’s sparkling new structure, to be accompanied by a renovation of the existing 20-acre museum campus, should add light and clarity to its currently motley collection of six buildings.

Read full article (New York Times, September 9, 2007)

Visitors wandering through the Richard Pousette-Dart exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum seem oblivious to the scaffolding and hard hats in their midst. But for the people behind the scenes, the work unfolding within the museum’s curved white walls is as engrossing as the art displayed on them.

For the last three years a team of engineers, conservators and architects has been studying the guts of the Guggenheim, mapping out a thorough but respectful renovation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling building on Fifth Avenue, completed in 1959. Although it was clearly in serious need of renewal, with cracks in its facade, a decaying sidewalk and outdated mechanical systems, experts wanted to make a comprehensive diagnosis before determining the best course of treatment.

Now they have a plan — already in action — and the end is in sight. The work is expected to be completed by summer 2008. “It’s taken us three years to get to the point where we’re actually intervening,” said Pamela Jerome of Wasa Studio, the preservation architect on the project.

Read full article (New York Times, September 10, 2007)
Face-lift for an aging museum

An old episode from Charlie Rose from December 2, 1994, with “young architect” Rem Koolhaas and MoMA curator Terry Riley…

…and a more recent one with Rem Koolhaas, saying that “Europe is not a museum.”