The Piazza Augusto Imperatore in Rome and its modern neighbor, the Ara Pacis Museum, at center, designed by Richard Meier. (Photo: Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times)

The International Herald Tribune has a remarkable story on Rome’s new mayor who recently announced his intention to tear down a museum designed by U.S. architect Richard Meier. He was referring to the so-called Ara Pacis museum that was built to house the Ara Pacis, a 2,000-year-old Roman altar, and opened its doors in the ancient centre of the Italian capital in 2006. Consisting of a glass, marble and steel rectangular shaped structure, the museum was praised by many as a welcome addition to Rome’s more traditional architecture.

But at a news conference, as he outlined his plans for Rome, mayor Gianni Alemanno threatened that: “Meier’s building is a construction to be scrapped”. Alemanno, who last week became the first right-wing politician elected Rome mayor since Mussolini’s time, is among those critics who thought the classical Ara Pacis should never have been housed in such a modern structure.

And he’s is in good company. around the time of the opening in 2006, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff of The New York Times wrote an almost hostile review of the building and its architect:

Mr. Meier’s building is a contemporary expression of what can happen when an architect fetishizes his own style out of a sense of self-aggrandizement. Absurdly overscale, it seems indifferent to the naked beauty of the dense and richly textured city around it.

And he even went as far as comparing Meier to Mussolini:

” While Mussolini’s architects can be faulted for trying to reshape the city’s history for their own propaganda aims — and to satisfy the egomaniacal drive of a despot — the museum reminds us that vanity is not unique to generals or politicians.”

Next year it will be exactly 100 years ago that Futurist leader Marinetti called for the destruction of the past as entombed in museums, and one century later his intellectual heirs in Italy might bring his words into action..

The Italian (graffiti-)artist Blu, specializing in murals and urban design like the one in Palestine that is shown above, has been commissioned by Tate Modern to create a wall drawing on the facade of the museum’s iconic turbine hall.

Tate Modern is to get a summer facelift, with a group of the world’s most acclaimed street artists being asked to produce work for the building’s Thames-side facade. The works, which will adorn the river-facing wall of the building, and will be created by six artists including Blu from Italy (Bologna), JR from France (Paris) and Sixeart from Spain (Barcelona).

The outdoor exhibition, entitled Street Art, will be displayed between May and August. Each artist will get an area of about 15×12 metres for their work.  This is the first time work has been commissioned for the building’s iconic external wall. In addition, visitors can also take part in an urban trail to discover street art near Tate Modern on the Street Art Walking Tour by picking up a street guide when they visit the museum.

Read more: BBC News | The Guardian | Londonist | Tate

PermMuseum XXI
Artforum reports that the PermMuseumXXI museum center has finally announced the winning architectural firms in the competition for a new building for Perm Art Gallery, a museum in Russia slated to focus on the twenty-first century.

Winning design by Bernaskoni (Source: ArchCenter / PermMuseum XXI)

 The architectural firms Bernaskoni (Russia) and Valerio Olgiati (Switzerland) are the joint winners of the design competition. Zaha Hadid, based in London, was awarded the third prize. It took the jury, led by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, two days to decide how to distribute 240.000 dollar prize money among the winners.

Serpentine Pavilion 2008
Frank Gehry’s plans for the Serpentine Gallery’s 2008 pavilion have been unveiled, reports Artdaily. Gehry said: “The pavilion is much like an amphitheater, designed to serve as a place for live events, music, performance, discussion, and debate.”

Model of Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2008 designed by Frank Gehry © Gehry Partners LLP 2008 

The highly articulated structure – designed and engineered in collaboration with Arup – comprises large timber planks and multiple glass planes that soar and swoop at different angles to create a dramatic multi-dimensional space. The pavilion will be the architect’s first built structure in England and his first time collaborating with his son Samuel.

In a public address Nicholas Penny, the new director of the National Gallery, said that the museum will no longer show blockbuster exhibitions and will focus on its duty to display art with which the public is unfamiliar rather than yet another parade of a famous artist’s greatest hits.

“The responsibility of a major gallery is to show people something they haven’t seen before,” he said. “A major national institution should be one that proves a constant attraction to the public. What is important is encouraging historical and visual curiosity in the general public.”

Read full article (The Times, February 27, 2008)

Scene from the trailer for ‘Script’ at the Centraal Museum in the Dutch city of Utrecht, which mixes history, fashion and interiors within a continuous filmic experience.    

Presenting masterpieces from the history of fashion and interiors within a continuous filmic experience, the permanent display ‘Script’ at the Centraal Museum in the Dutch city of Utrecht, mixes historical dresses and contemporary fashion by designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood with cabinets and sofas as well as modern furniture by Gerrit Rietveld. Costume dramas from the last twenty years are the inspiration for film-sets displays, resulting in a new interpretation of the museum’s unique period rooms.

In the films that are the starting point for ‘Script’, furniture and fashion represent important historical and cultural developments. Within ‘Script’ highlights from the museum’s Rietveld collection are placed within an extraordinary modernistic environment. ‘Script’ is designed by designers Concern and Darlaine Heitinga and not only situates highlights from the collection within film sets, it also invites the visitor to step inside various sets and be photographed. Visitors can assume a role in such cinematic classics as the silent movie ‘Man with a Movie Camera’, the costume drama ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and the science-fiction film ‘Blade Runner’.

 Scene from the the science-fiction film ‘Blade Runner’, which was used as one of the sources of inspiration for ‘Script’

Watch the trailer
Visit the Centraal Museum website

Since this week, the Whitney Museum of American Art branch at Altria, located on Park Avenue at 42nd Street in New York, has ended its operations. Comprising a 5,200-square-foot sculpture court and a 1,000-square-foot gallery, the branch consisted of a large gallery space and a sculpture court and ran nearly the full block. In 25 years, the Altria branch has presented 110 exhibitions and hundreds of performances and events in midtown Manhattan.

The Whitney Museum of American Art branch at Altria closed this week.

The idea for the Whitney at Altria originated in the mid-1970s, when Altria embarked on the development of a new corporate headquarters by the architect Ulrich Franzen. At the time, the city was in the midst of a severe fiscal crisis and many major corporations were leaving New York. A city incentive allowed for the allocation of extra floors in new buildings that included an interior public space.

Altria was the first to use this incentive to create a cultural facility.The branch opened in April 1983, after construction was completed of the Altria (formerly known as Philip Morris Companies) headquarters building at 120 Park Avenue. It was an unprecedented project, marking the first time a corporation included a museum as an integral part of its offices and fully funded the activities within this space. Altria is now undergoing a corporate restructuring and, as a result, moving its headquarters out of Manhattan.

Accoring to the the New York Times the Whitney is not looking for a new location to take the place of the Altria branch. “It has been fabulous, but the branch museums are a thing of the past,” the museum’s director Mr. Weinberg told the newspaper. “They’ve pretty much run their course.”

Guggenheim Las Vegas opened in 2000 and was closed down in 2003.

Several incidents at the Guggenheim Museum have made it painfully clear that a museum’s dreams of empire one day have to face reality. Hardest hit have been the museum’s off-site ventures, which in a more boastful period were the stuff of the Guggenheim’s far-flung ambitions. First to close was the SoHo branch, which shut its doors in 2001, despite all the neighborhood’s visibility and the attention-getting shows of important artists as Gary Hill and Bill Viola. And for lack of funding the Guggenheim Las Vegas, a soaring exhibition hall at the the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino, was abruptly closed down only 15 months after its spectecular opening.

At the same time, however, the European branches of the museum in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin are performing very well and other museums are planning to open satellite venues, including Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Centre Pompidou in Metz and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Download press release (Whitney Museum of American Art, January 23, 2008)

After two years of construction, the new extension of the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen is ready to open on January 26. With this new extension, an exhibition space that consists of 5,000 meters squares, the Danish museum will be twice as large as it is now.

The original building, which opened in 1996, was designed by architect Søren Lund who won the commission while still a student. Despite praise for the design and high visitor numbers (995,000 in 2006), the building’s concrete walls and irregular shapes have proved unwieldy when hanging temporary exhibitions, a problem which the extension is meant to address.

While Søren Lund remained a consultant on the E6m ($8.8m) extension, the principal design was undertaken by architects C.F. Møller. The costs were split one-third to two-thirds between the Copenhagen local government and the museum’s own fundraising.

The new exhibition halls have been given very clean lines and are laid out as four large, white rooms in dynamic contact with each other. (Image: C.F. Møller)

Read more (The Art Newspaper, January 24, 2008)

Cecilia Bartoli during the presentation of her Maria Malibran Museo Mobile

This year a “mobile museum” is accompanying the concert tour by Cecilia Bartoli, one of the most successful singers in the international opera and concert halls. The Museo Mobile is dedicated to Maria Malibran, an exponent of bel canto at the start of the 19th century. An articulated truck has been especially converted to house Bartoli’s personal collection of artefacts. Cecilia Bartoli has curated the exhibition to give her concert audiences the chance to enter the extraordinary world of Maria Malibran and to bring a further dimension and context to the music.

The exhibition is presented by the Cecilia Bartoli Music Foundation and truck company MAN. With her foundation Cecilia Bartoli has been conducting music archeology by researching numerous archives and collections relating to the legendary operatic star Maria Malibran (1808-1836), thus assembling an informative exhibition on show in an elaborately designed specialty vehicle. The vehicle comprises furniture and costume jewellery which belonged to Malibran and rare music manuscripts, letters, newspaper articles, pictures and other documents of this then world renowned singer.

The travelling exhibition will visit all the cities where Cecilia Bartoli sings and will be open to the public – for free – outside or near the major concert venues of each city.

Go to Maria Malibran Museo Mobile website
Read article (The Independent, November 21, 2007)
Watch Cecilia Bartoli talking on Maria Malibran on YouTube

Germany has inaugurated a new museum at the site of the Nazi concentration camp where diarist Anne Frank died. The new exhibition centre at Bergen-Belsen, in the north of Germany, highlights the fates of those who died at the camp during World War II. Among the exhibits are the drawings and diaries of Jews imprisoned there, plus video statements by survivors.

Liberated by Allied troops in 1945 and later razed, Bergen-Belsen began life as a prisoner of war camp. From 1943 until the end of the war it was a concentration camp for Jews, gypsies and homosexuals, with an estimated 125,000 people held there.

Read article (BBC, October 28, 2007)
Go to website Bergen Belsen Memorial

Daniel Libeskind’s design (l) for a glass roof for Berlin’s Jewish Museum (r)

The Art Newspaper reports on the new design by architect Daniel Libes­kind for a glass roof ­covering the u-shaped courtyard of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, for which he also made the exuberantly zig-zag shaped and much talked about extension that officially opened in 2001.

Inspired by Sukkah, the temporary huts in which the Israelites dwelled during their 40-year exodus from Egypt, the structure consists of free-standing tree-like steel pillars that support a glass canopy. The pillars spread out to form a latticed web across the ceiling while a glass façade extending from the front of the Old Building turns the courtyard into an enclosed space for museum events.

Go to website Jewish Museum Berlin