The old shop of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The museum is closed for renovation and will reopen in 2009. (photo by _Art’s)

The new Stedelijk Museum on the Museumsplein in Amsterdam will not be complete until the end of 2009. But that hasn’t stopped people from taking guided tours. As Het Parool’s Astrid Melger reports, over three hundred local residents toured the construction site last week. Since only small groups were allowed at a time, visitors had to wait for up to an hour to get a peek at the new building. Despite the wait, locals were happy to be directly “involved” in the project. Stedelijk director Gijs van Tuyl promises that the 2009 opening will be accompanied by festivals. “Not just one,” said van Tuyl, “but several.” While the walls are still being built, the Warhol exhibition installed at the temporary space, Stedelijk CS, may be an example of shows to come.

 Taken from Artforum.com (November 19, 2007)

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will remain light gray.

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission decided today that the Guggenheim should maintain the same off-white paint shade that it has had since 1992, when a major expansion of the museum by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects was completed, rather than the original light yellow.

The spiraling museum on Fifth Avenue, a 1959 masterpiece by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, is in the midst of a $29 million renovation. As part of the project, conservators stripped away 11 layers of paint from the original building’s exterior and found that it was originally coated with vinyl paint in the brownish yellow shade known as buff. Some critics believe the more striking brown hue more closely matched the intent of Wright, who was not especially fond of the color white. But the original color was only used for a few years; since the early 1960s, the Guggenheim has been clad in various shades of off-white.

Read full article (New York Times, November 20, 2007)