Subject: Haddid in Millenium Park Chicago

Hello Sal,

 

Here is a bit more that will be happening in Chicago when the Modern Art Wing opens.

 

Vince

 

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« Zaha Hadid on her Millennium Park pavilion and the Burnham Plan: 'The client became the people' | Main | What are your nicknames? »

Originally posted: April 7, 2009

Watch out, Bean: Two new pavilions heading to Millennium Park to celebrate 100th anniversary of Burnham Plan

Move over, Bean, you’re about to get company. Seeking to spotlight the 100th anniversary of the document that changed the face of Chicago, celebration organizers brought out the bling Tuesday night and unveiled designs for two temporary pavilions in Millennium Park by internationally-renowned architects. The pavilions, which will open June 19, promise to join with the Art Institute of Chicago’s soon-to-debut Modern Wing to give five-year-old Millennium Park a fresh shot of energy. And like Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate (a.k.a. “The Bean), they are sure to inspire a raft of nicknames—like, say, “the Arrowhead” or “the Roof.” Designed by Zaha Hadid of London (her pavilion design, above) and Ben van Berkel of Amsterdam (his pavilion design, below), the privately-funded pavilions will be the focal point of the region’s celebration of the 1909 Plan of Chicago, also known as the Burnham Plan. But befitting these tough economic times, they offer bling on a budget. Each will cost about $500,000, plus donated materials--spare charge compared to The Bean’s $23 million tab. “It’s like Vera Wang doing Kohl’s clothing,” said Joseph Rosa, the Art Institute of Chicago curator who worked with the architects, referring to the high-end fashion designer’s collections for the department store. Hadid, the first and only woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, calls for a tapering, aluminum-framed pavilion clad in an elastic, silvery-gray tent fabric with oblong slits for skylights (left). Visitors will be able to walk through ground-level openings in the structure and watch video art about the Chicago area’s past and future projected on fabric walls. The Amsterdam-based Van Berkel has shaped an open form in which a flat canopy will soar outward from three scoop-like supports that rise from a broad platform. Plywood with a high-gloss white paint will wrap the pavilion’s steel frame and will be splashed with colorful nighttime lighting. Openings in the scoops will offer peek-a-boo views of nearby skyscrapers (below). “We make a canopy with a quality of being more than a canopy,” Van Berkel said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Amsterdam. The designs were greeted with applause when they were made public Tuesday at the Claudia Cassidy Theater of the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. Co-hosting the event with the non-profit Friends of Downtown was Ald. Brendan Reilly, in whose 42nd Ward Millennium Park is located.  Having fought unsuccessfully last year to prevent city approval for the Chicago Children's Museum's plan to build a mostly-underground home in Grant Park, Reilly stressed that the pavilions would not be permanent. "I can't underscore that enough--these will be temporary," he said, sparking applause from the crowd, which numbered more than 125. The pavilions, which will be open to the public at no charge, were commissioned by the Burnham Plan Centennial Committee, a group of civic leaders that has orchestrated scores of programs to mark the 100th anniversary of the Burnham Plan, which was co-authored by Chicago architects Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett. The plan played a major role in reshaping the cantankerous, disorderly city Chicago had become at the turn of the last century. It endowed the city with a host of significant public works, from its nearly-continuous chain of lakefront parks to Navy Pier, North Michigan Avenue, the Michigan Avenue Bridge (plan for Michigan Avenue, at left) and double-decked Wacker Drive. "What really differentiated the 20th century from the previous century--for civic projects--is that the client is no longer just one patron. The client became the people. Burnahm's Plan of Chicago reflected this," Hadid said in an email Tuesday. But it is not easy to make people care about a 100-year-old plan, even one this influential, or to get them to stop and think about today’s regional planning issues, like traffic congestion and suburban sprawl. That is the pavilions’ charge: To prod Chicago and its suburbs to move boldly forward through a mix of entertainment and exhortation. To be built on the south end of the Chase Promenade, the north-south walkway that bisects Millennium Park, the pavilions will sit close to—and will closely follow the May 16 opening of--the Art Institute of Chicago’s Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing, located across Monroe Street from the park. (Hadid’s pavilion will be closer to the museum, with Van Berkel’s closer to The Bean.) For more than four months, then, visitors to Millennium Park will be able to see a gallery of works by three Pritzker Prize-winning architects in close proximity—Hadid’s pavilion, Piano’s wing (and a still-under-construction pedestrian bridge linking the wing with Millenium Park), and the Pritzker Pavilion and BP Bridge, both by Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry. “It’s quite a summer,” said John Bryan, co-chair of the Burnham Plan Centennial Committee. All architecture buffs, he said, “should descend on Chicago to see what’s going on.” Panels that explain the Burnham Plan’s impact on the region will be displayed near the pavilions on the Chase Promenade. The pavilions will remain in place through October 31. Once the display is complete, Hadid’s pavilion can be taken apart and rebuilt at another site. The Burnham Plan Centennial Commitee would like to auction it off, according to a spokeswoman. Van Berkel’s pavilion, on the other hand, is to be demolished and recycled. It would have cost an extra $200,000 to allow the pavilion to be rebuilt elsewhere, said Rosa, the Art Institute curator. Protecting the fabric exterior of Hadid’s pavilion from vandals is sure to be a concern, especially after vandals scratched names in the polished surface of The Bean last winter. But Millennium Park’s security guards, who already monitor the Bean and its other works of public art, will keep watch over the new pavilions, organizers said. “They have had remarkably little vandalism in the park,” said Emily Harris, executive director of the Burnham Plan Centennial Committee

From: Sal Reda <salvatorereda@gmail.com>

Date: March 13, 2009 11:07:51 AM PDT

To: Sal Reda <salvatorereda@gmail.com>

you have to see this..... make sure you watch the first 10 minutes john stewart makes some great points on mass media and the market followers of market shows (i watched it twice!)

Sal,

I've read recently that the art fairs are being abandoned. Matthew Marks is not doing the Armory Show, for example. They have four gallery spaces that stretch nearly an entire NYC block, and when the recession is over they will have more space most likely, since they are rich and will be able to buy the now much cheaper buildings. People without money will not be able to do this no matter how cool or smart they are. Most of the top LA galleries are not doing any NYC fair next month, and LA Art in NYC is canceled for this year, yet the Armory Show is going to be bigger than ever this year, with a full second Pier for Modernism galleries. Yet I've also read about a handful of new galleries in NYC being opened by wealthy people, and then of course there is the 9 story gallery being built in the Bowery, that will have moveable floors to adjust to different gallery heights. There is also the world's first all glass condo being built in downtown NYC right now. And their are now over two dozen Japanese noodle bars in the East Village. No where else could support such playful experiences.

If I look back to 1997, when China Art Objects was the best young gallery in LA, I remember both their endless publicity and their great success, even after Giovanni passed away. Yet I also remember when Peres Projects opened in Chinatown. Peres had much deeper and far greater connections than CAO, and since he was rich and had been to Basel since he was a child, he knew the whole artworld without having to go to art school. His family sold Picasso's in Spain as well as other old masterworks, so he could easily have moved from being a lawyer to being a secondary market dealer. What has happened since PP arrived in LA is that he has created a tremendous global brand, which gets international press coverage, none of it coming out of LA. His artists are not better than CAO's, but he has unbelievable resources and has positioned his galleries in LA, NYC, Berlin and Athens to deal directly with collectors who will place the works in museum collections. CAO still has one space. Only the most powerful galleries are in a position to demand and cause their artists works to be placed in the world's most important contemporary museums and private collections. CAO does this too but is no longer getting much press nowadays whereas PP is the party of the hour of the week and of the month and of the moment. The are the only LA gallery other than Steve Turner Contemporary to cook food and offer good strong drinks at their free bar, the other galleries offer bad beer or nothing at all.

By comparison, in NYC in the Soho 80's, when I was a painting student at Pratt, the rich galleries en mass flew cheese and wine in from Paris, had varieties of beer, food, etc., and we young art students would eat dinner at these places and take a few beers home for the weekend. That has never happened in LA even when times were incredible for art money. Even after NYC completely collapsed after Black Monday in 1987, with the collapse of the art market in 1990, it was NYC that came roaring back and Chelsea alone had far more galleries than all of NYC did during the 80's. The major gallery exhibitions in 1980's Soho were event scenes, with Leo Castelli and Mary Boone galleries being cavernous platforms of total cultural spectacle. 

Since Peres and galleries like PP are still rich, (he could sell one of his family's Picasso's and have more money to play) it will be pretty difficult to catch them even if the market collapses. Yet I do believe like you that there will be some fresh faces out there who will have their day in the sun. 

The other thing that concerns me is travel. Trustafarian artists have always had art parties with their counterparts in Mexico and beyond, which was a way of separating out those who have from those who don't. Far more importantly is the fact that during the 1990's, most of the world's most important museum shows were not in the US, but were reported in US art magazines. This means that most American artists were again reduced to reading about art as versus directly experiencing it. There is no doubt in my mind that this will again be the case for American artists who do not travel frequently to see the current major contemporary shows, whether they be in London, Paris, Berlin or somewhere more far afield. 

You saw the link I sent to you about the Cassandra cinema apartment complex opening in Williamsburg. There is no such showcase anywhere else in the US. 

What has been happening in LA recently are lots of one week and one night shows in non gallery spaces. While this is a form of fun art activity, it does not compare to the Berlin scene, which is taking over warehouses and other buildings and having all night art parties, something that most American artists know nothing of if they are not living in New York. When you add to this the incomparable culture cornucopia that is Berlin, no wonder why even Quentin Tarrantino is holding court in that city.

Whatever happened to the New Art Examiner magazine in Chicago and that city being the alternative to New York?

all for now

Vince 

From: vincent johnson <lanyartiststudio@gmail.com>

Date: February 23, 2009 12:06:12 PM PST

To: Diane Hunsaker <dh@birdmarella.com>, Salvatore Reda <salvatorereda@gmail.com>

Subject: Las Vegas Art Museum closing next week

CULTURE:

Las Vegas Art Museum closing next week

Museum officials hope to reopen when economy turns around

Steve Marcus

"Smoke Signal, Rope Umbilical" is acrylic on canvas by Wendell Gladstone that is part of "L.A. Now," an exhibit of emerging artists' work that opened in December at the Las Vegas Art Museum.

By Kristen Peterson

Fri, Feb 20, 2009 (5:20 p.m.)

Sun Archives

• Beyond the Sun

• Las Vegas Art Museum

The Las Vegas Art Museum is closing its doors.

The museum will close Feb. 28. Staff and board members say the museum will remain an entity and keep its name so that it can possibly reemerge when the economy improves. Members and docents were notified this afternoon.

"We've tried everything to keep this afloat. It's just a challenging time," says Patrick Duffy, president to the museum's board. "The economic climate has eliminated several of our donations and or reduced them significantly."

The decision comes less than three months after executive director Libby Lumpkin resigned because the board announced that budget cuts would affect salaries and result in possible layoffs.

Lumpkin joined the museum in 2005 and with the board took the institution from a community art center to a contemporary art museum, featuring exhibits that included "Southern California Minimalism," including work by Robert Irwin, John McCracken and James Turrell; a Frank Gehry exhibit; and "Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art from the Neon Homeland."

"Las Vegas Diaspora" featured the work of artists who had studied at UNLV with Dave Hickey.

It's current exhibit "L.A. Now," curated by art critic David Pagel, features work by Los Angeles contemporary artists.

The museum formed 59 years ago as an art league. In 1974 it became a fine art museum and in 1997 it moved into the Sahara West Library on 9600 W. Sahara Ave

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February 23, 2009, 10:46 am

Las Vegas Art Museum to Close

By Dave Itzkoff

Las Vegas Art Museum Christine Nguyen's "Emergence of the Kelp Deer" is one of the featured artworks at L.A. Now, an exhibit cut short by the closure of the Las Vegas Art Museum.

The Las Vegas Art Museum has joined the growing roster of cultural institutions that have suspended their operations in the face of a weakening economy; it will close on Saturday, The Las Vegas Sun reported. The museum, which since 1997 has operated from the city's Sahara West Library, lost its executive director, Libby Lumpkin, in December; she resigned when the museum's board said that its budget cuts would result in reduced salaries and possible layoffs. Under her tenure the museum has featured exhibitions on Frank Gehry and the Southern California artists Robert Irwin, John McCracken and James Turrell. But the president of the museum's board, Patrick Duffy, said the museum had seen a substantial decrease in donations amid the financial downturn. "We've tried everything to keep this afloat," Mr. Duffy said, according to The Sun. "It's just a challenging time."