The Dutch Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), headed by architect Rem Koolhaas, has been commissioned to oversee the transformation of an early 20th-century industrial complex in Milan into the Fondazione Prada’s (Prada Foundation) new headquarters. An auditorium, a tower and an exhibition building will be added to the seven existing structures and courtyard, creating a total of 188,000 square feet of space for shows, including an innovative hybrid storage and- display area (see picture below). Strangely enough, one of the images that were released by Prada and OMA, resembles a widely discussed work by the American artist Tom Sachs.

Two years ago Fondazione Prada hosted a large-scale solo-show with works by the artist who repeatedly uses the Prada brand as the target for his artistic attacks. In 1998 he created his highly controversial Prada Deathcamp, a miniature replica of a concentration camp made from Prada’s distinctive navy blue hatboxes and emblazoned with the company logo (see picture below). The piece even included an entrance gate inscribed with the ominous motto’ Arbeit macht frei’ (that for Sachs, perhaps, equates to an advertising slogan?) and a model of the ‘incinerator’ from the Treblinka Nazi death camp.

According to the artist, however, Prada Deathcamp had nothing to do with the holocaust, but was instead intended to be a denouncement of the way shopping had been turned into a new form of religion. In an ironic twist of history, the very place where Sachs showed his “piece of resistance” will now be transformed by the architect who prophesied that “shopping is arguably the last remaining form of public activity”.

Design for Prada Foundation’s new headquarters by OMA

Prada Deathcamp (1998) by the American artist Tom Sachs

Italian bishops and government representatives think Kippenberg’s ‘Zuerst die Füße’ is provocative.

A one-metre high sculpture of a crucified frog, holding a mug of beer and an egg, at a modern art museum in Italy has stirred controversy in the predominantly Roman Catholic city of Bolzano. ‘Zuerst die Füße’ by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger is part of an exhibition at Bolzano’s Museion, which opened last May.

Kippenberg, who died in 1997 aged 44, was a painter, sculptor and photographer. Several exhibitions of his work have been held posthumously, including a show at the Tate Modern in London in 2006. His alter ego “Fred the Frog”, who appears on canvas and in sculpture alike, is at the same time a comic stand-in for Jesus, and as a spoof on all religious fervor. In this case Fred the Frog is hammered (literally and figuratively) to a crucifix with a beer stein in his hand.

No matter his cult hero status, the controversy around his sculpture continues unabated. As Der Standard reports, Franz Pahl—an elected government representative for the South Tyrol regional government—is continuing a hunger strike to protest the work’s continued exhibition at the museum’s new facilities According to the newspaper, Pahl promises to end his strike only when the sculpture is removed.

Read more on Artforum.com

Museums are at the frontline of hostilities against works of art. Last sunday, a £6,000 sculpture on display at the Royal Academy in London, was smashed. A visitor fell into a cordoned-off area, knocking the work to the floor where it broke into hundreds of pieces. The 9ft ceramic sculpture, called Christina, was one of five by Costa Rican artist Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez on display at a show that was curated by artist Tracey Emin.

Before the fall … Tracey Emin stands in front of Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez’s artwork Frauleins Christina, Panthea, Zenobia, Semiramis and Guinevere at the Royal Academy. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty

In London and beyond, the incident has again raised the uncomfortable question of providing security for priceless art in public settings. Over the years a price has been paid for accessibility. In January 2006 a a man tripped over his shoelaces at the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge and smashed a magnificent Qing dynasty vase. And during the 70’s and 80’s a series of violent attacks on works of art took place.

One of the most scandalous attacks occurred in 1972, when a Hungarian man attacked Michelangelo’s ”Pieta” in St. Peter’s Basilica, striking it 10 times with a hammer. In 1975 Rembrandt’s ”Night Watch” was slashed with a bread knife at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Acid was thrown at another Rembrandt, ”The Danae” at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1985.

In 1986, a tall, brown-haired man walked into the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and repeatedly slashed ”Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III,” (see below) a masterpiece by the American artist Barnett Newman. He served five months in jail and three months on parole. However, in 1997 he returned to the museum and slashed another work by Newman with a small knife.

Barnett Newmans restored ‘Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III’ at the Stedelijk Museum.

Examples of damage caused by museum visitors, both accidentaly and purposely, are few and far between. Works of art stand a far greater chance of being destroyed at the hands of curators, picture handlers or cleaners. Most of the major museums have had to issue shame-faced apologies for breakages at one time or another.

In 2001, a delicate shell-shaped glass sculpture by the US artist Dale Chihuly, valued at £35,000, was smashed by a contractor setting up for an evening function at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Four years ago, a rubbish bag which formed part of an installation by Gustav Metzger, entitled Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art, was innocently gathered up by a cleaner at Tate Britain and thrown into a crusher.

Earlier this year, National Gallery handlers dropped a painting by the Renaissance artist Domenico Beccafumi. Made on a panel composed of three planks of timber, the painting broke along a joint. And at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York earlier this month, a security guard found a 15th-century terracotta relief sculpture of Saint Michael the Archangel by the Italian artist Andrea della Robbia on the floor; it had apparently come loose from its wall-mounted frame during the night. The masterpiece survived miraculously, but apparently not all museums have a guardian angel to protect their precious belongings.

Italian Renaissance sculptor Andrea della Robbia’s “Saint Michael the Archangel” fell off a wall at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and was damaged.

Read more in The Guardian, July 28 and July 30, 2008.

The National Library of Ireland is offering a virtual tour of the exhibition “The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats” on the award-winning Yeats Exhibition homepage.

The notebook of one of Ireland’s most famous poets is one of thousands of objects in an exhibition titled “The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats” at the National Library of Ireland. Next to its display case the entire notebook has been digitally reincarnated. With the stroke of a finger on a touch screen, a visitor can flip through pages written 100 years ago and summon an image of this letter, or any other entry.

The exhibition is more like a life-size, walk-through Web site than an ordinary museum show. With audiotapes, four short films and software that brings light and breath to aging manuscripts, it amounts to a digital resurrection, allowing Yeats to stride again along the hinge of the 19th and 20th centuries. You can also take a virtual tour of the exhibition by visiting the award-winning Yeats Exhibition homepage.

At its core the exhibition offers Yeats’s papers not as relics but as living documents. The visitor sees a manuscript of “Sailing to Byzantium”. Next to the display a digital tutorial shows how he kneaded the words and notions of the poem. Only in later drafts did he find a streak of lightning to open the poem: “That is no country for old men.” Elsewhere software developed by the British Library allows visitors to page through digitized manuscripts.

The exhibition has been described in The Irish Times as “one of the most important literary exhibitions yet staged internationally”. It opened in 2006 and will run until January, then move to the United States if the library can find a suitable host.

Read more (International Herald Tribune, July 21, 2008)

Kiasma’s miniramp opened to the public in june as part of URB 08

Kiasma is the sympathetic museum of modern art of Helsinki, built 10 years ago by architect Steven Holl. It has a remarkable position on one of the two main axes of Helsinki, near central station, Stockmann department store and mbar, hang out for skaters, hackers and (non-)hipsters. With 200.000 visitors annually, Kiasma is the most popular museum of Finland. With numerous skaters, goths, young tourists and drunk teenagers crowding the adjacent grass, it is also one of the coolest museums of Europe.

Kiasma celebrates urban culture by hosting the URB festival. Already in its ninth year, national and international makers of urban culture and art are presented in and outside of the museum, as installation, performance, website, workshop etc. This year URB will take place concurrently with Kiasma’s tenth-year anniversary exhibition, The Fluid Street.

One of the installations is the miniramp that opened to the public in June, with activities including skating, competitions, and skate lessons. The closing of the skating season, in turn, will be celebrated in typical Finnish style: sauna, ‘olut’ and skating on September 21st. The ramp has been created in cooperation with the Finnish Skateboarding Federation, and the ramp itself has been designed by Antti Yli-Tepsa. For those who cannot visit Helsinki this summer: the ramp will be back next summer.

‘Restoration Rocks’: jewelry collection with fragments of Guggenheim Museum’s iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building encapsulated in glass.

Always dreamed of owning an architectural masterpiece? Since last April the Guggenheim Museum in New York is offering Restoration Rocks, a special edition jewelry line that incorporates actual historic fragments of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Guggenheim Museum. The jewelry line is sold exclusively at the Guggenheim Museum’s retail store and on its website, in anticipation of the museum’s 50th anniversary in 2009.

Designed and fabricated by California-based jewelry artist, Cara Tilker, the collection features nine different designs including earrings, pendants, bracelets, a ring, and cuff links. Lightweight concrete and Gunite remnants, set aside during the 2007 restoration process from the building’s walls, are presented in resin and sterling silver settings. The Restoration Rocks jewelry will be limited in quantity with retail prices ranging from $125.00 to $4,350.00.

As the original landmark building of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, approaches its fiftieth anniversary in 2009, aspects of its facade and rotunda structure are carefully restored. (Photo: David Heald)

Visit the Guggenheim Podcasts page to download an audio file about the exterior restoration. Learn more about the exterior restoration and on the Exterior Restoration page. The Building page provides a brief history of the Frank Lloyd Wright-building. Shop online for merchandise inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s landmark building.

Read New York Times articles from 1991 and 2008 on the museum’s renovation.

I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid serves as the museum’s entrance since 1989.

TIME Magazine writes about the revival of the world’s most renowned museum under the reign of Henri Loyrette, its ambitious director. Armed with a vision of the Louvre as a beacon of culture that is both accessible and global, he has set in motion a dramatic opening up to the outside world. So far, that includes signing a controversial deal to create a Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi, and staging exhibitions of the museum’s treasures in places like Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Kobe, Valencia and Macao.

The Abu Dhabi Louvre project is underway with this design by French architect Jean Nouvel. (Courtesy Jean Nouvel)

He helped organizing a charity auction and a Duran Duran concert held under the Louvre’s landmark glass pyramid:

Most controversially, Loyrette has also invited contemporary artists to exhibit at the Louvre and even decorate it — provoking howls of protests from French detractors. An exhibition by Belgian artist Jan Fabre that was held earlier this summer in galleries containing Dutch and Flemish masterpieces a gigantic. The show included an self-portrait as an earthworm wriggling on upended gravestones and sharing a space with 21 Rubens depictions of Marie de Medicis.

Fabre’s controversial new work, Self-Portrait as the World’s Biggest Worm, is not to everyone’s taste.

Read and see more

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi during his last election campaign.

Silvio Berlusconi has threatened to withdraw planning permission for a new contemporary art museum and commercial development in Milan designed by Daniel Libeskind after the US-based architect described the Italian Prime Minister as a “xenophobe” and called his policies “repulsive”. According to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Berlusconi objects to this design because it is not manly enough and communicates a sense of impotence. In an interview with the same newspaper, Libeskind hit back: “In Fascist Italy, everything that was not ‘straight’ was considered ‘perverse art’.

Berlusconi is notorious for his manipulation of the press, but Libeskind’s own populist appeal is also legendary. The small, fast-talking architect always draws a crowd on the international lecture circuit and he even appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. However, it remains to be seen who will really prove to be manly enough to end this childish quarrel. Vittorio Sgarbi, a former culture adviser to the city of Milan, told the Italian periodical Il Giornale dell’Arte: “I don’t think the Prime Minister will let him proceed with his skyscraper or his museum unless he apologises.”

Libeskind’s design for a curving skyscraper (middle) in Milan is not manly enough, says Berlusconi (Photo: EPA)

Read more:
The Independent
The Art Newspaper

Rembrandt’s ‘Anatomy lesson of Dr. Deyman’ (fragment) is one of the famous works of art in the digital collection of Amsterdam’s Historical Museum.

Amsterdam’s Historical Museum finally realized an online catalogue, which provides a systematic index with information about over a thousand paintings dating from before 1800, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Saenredam and Steen. Launched today, the website already looks rather out-of-date. Nonetheless, a wide range of information is provided about each painting: artist, title, date, material, measurements, inscriptions, location (on display or in storage), provenance, bibliographical references and a selection of (recent) exhibitions.

Visitors can refine their search results and can choose from a list of fixed catagories or can simply rely on the director’s choice. In terms of user generated content the website lacks the social tagging functionalities that have fundamentally democratized such progressive institutions as the Brooklyn Museum in New York or Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. But before the museum loses itself in technological trickery it can take the next small step by making the online cataloque bilingual.

Go to website Amsterdam Historical Museum

Turkish novellist Orhan Pamuk (Photograph: Eamonn McCabe)

The Nobel Prize laureate Orhan Pamuk has canceled an exhibition of his “Museum of Innocence” at Frankfurt’s Kunsthalle Schirn. As the Frankfurter Rundschau’s Claus-Jürgen Göpfert reports, the exhibition was due to open on October 14, just in time for the city’s renowned international book fair, where Turkey is this year’s special guest. At the Schirn exhibition, the novel was to function as the exhibition catalogue; Pamuk will still read excerpts from the book at the fair.

The “Museum of Innocence” is a collection of everyday objects and curiosities that Pamuk has amassed over the years. Moreover, it’s also the title of the Turkish writer’s latest novel, which places the collection at the center of a love story that takes place in Istanbul in the 1970s and ’80s. According to Bloomberg, Pamuk was inspired by the Gustave Moreau Museum in Paris, based in the 19th-century painter’s home. Pamuk is building the museum in Cihangir, an upscale neighborhood in central Istanbul.

Read more
Artforum.com