Hasta La Ideas

This 1999 photo taken on the shores of Italy’s Lake Garda will be shown in “Martin Parr: Life’s a Beach,” opening tomorrow at Aperture Gallery. (Photo: Martin Parr/Magnum Photos)

A man recently arrived at a Manhattan federal building to apply for a passport, became agitated, and ended up trying to hide from authorities–in the ceiling. Securing a passport to the arts is much easier–and comes with minimal risk of being arrested and taken to Bellevue for psychiatric evaluation–thanks to The New Yorker. The magazine and its promotions department are gearing up for the eighth annual Passport to the Arts gallery crawl, evening cocktail party, and silent auction (to benefit Creative Time) this Saturday, May 4. A $55 ticket gets you a “limited-edition passport” that each of the 19 SoHo and Chelsea galleries on the self-guided tour will stamp with a replica of a featured work of art. And with a list of participating galleries that includes Jack Shainman, Aperture, and ClampArt, this year’s Passport to the Arts promises to be quite a trip.

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Do you yearn to watch a documentary about the Chelsea Hotel (once home to the likes of William Burroughs, Dennis Hopper, and Patti Smith) in the shadow of the Chelsea Hotel? Learn about the history behind design classics such as the Harley Davidson and the London Underground map? Or just watch a strung-out David Bowie (circa 1974) discuss mime, costumes, and the invention of characters such as Ziggy Stardust? Well, you’re in luck, because all of that and more is on the agenda for the SVA BBC Design Documentary Film Festival on Sunday, March 17. Now in its second year, the day-long event offers up a slate of groundbreaking BBC films that have seen scant screen time in the United States. Curated by the all-seeing Steven Heller along with D-Crit faculty member Adam Harrison Levy, the festival includes post-film chats with veteran BBC creative director Alan Yentob. The $15 run-of-the-festival tickets are going fast, so grab one here.

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X marks the spot. The identity for the new event was created by Base New York.

The Bloomberg Administration has been busy pumping up the NYC tech scene and fashion industry, and now it’s focusing on design of all disciplines with NYCxDESIGN, a collaboration among the City Council, Mayor’s Office, City agencies, and a steering committee of 33 design stars ranging from MoMA’s Paola Antonelli to AIGA/NY President Willy Wong. The inaugural twelve-day event, smartly sandwiched between Frieze and ICFF, kicks off on May 10 with happenings that will showcase NYC designers and more, from design-centric institutions and retailers to curators and educators, with the goal of driving economic development.

According to the Center for an Urban Future, NYC is home to more design firms than any other city (L.A. comes in a rather distant second), and the May event will seek to attract even more designers and manufacturers to the city, generate new sales and export opportunities for local designers, and increase design-based tourism. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is setting her sights even higher. “NYCxDesign will help demonstrate that New York City is the design capital of the world,” she said in a statement. London, Milan, and Paris–consider yourself warned.

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New York’s Grand Central Terminal turns 100 this month, kicking off a year of tributes to the beloved “cathedral of transit” that escaped demolition in the 1970s by way of a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Sam Roberts offers a historical and cultural perspective in Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America, newly published by–of course!–Hachette’s Grand Central imprint. Centennial souvenirs can be found at the post office, where the USPS is now offering its Grand Central Terminal Express Mail stamp, featuring Illinois artist Dan Cosgrove‘s illustrated update (note the man with the roller suitcase) to Hal Morey‘s famous sunlight-streaming-through-the-clerestory-windows photo of the 1930s. The top of the stamp art includes the edges of the terminal’s famous sky ceiling, painted with a mural of constellations and figures of the Zodiac (fun fact: the constellations were accidentally painted backwards on the ceiling, so don’t rely on them for celestial navigation). And mark your calendar for March 25-31, when Nick Cave brings dancing horses to Grand Central. The artist will trot out an equine twist on his Soundsuits in a project co-presented by Creative Time and MTA Arts for Transit.

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The fashion world was rather slow to board the digital bandwagon, but we’ve come a long way from conversations about fashion and technology that began and ended with Hussein Chalayan‘s famous table skirt. Now anyone can purchase (and sometimes rent!) last season’s Naeem Khan at a hefty Gilt discount and pre-order next season’s Eddie Borgo baubles (from Moda Operandi), while emerging designers are flourishing everywhere from Etsy and ModCloth to Fab and AHAlife. With New York Fashion Week approaching, Hearst is seizing the app-frenzied moment for a Fashion Hackathon.

Beginning on the morning of Saturday, February 9, participating developers and designers (register here) will get to spend 24 hours coding away in the company’s breathtaking Norman Foster-designed midtown HQ to create “innovative fashion-focused apps and programs on API platforms from sponsors,” which include Hearst brands (your ELLE, your Harper’s Bazaar…), Amazon, Facebook, and Google. The grand prize winner, as determined by a judging panel of Hearst execs, tech industry gurus, and VCs will receive $10,000 and an internship opportunity. Surprise guest appearances–fingers crossed for that table skirt or better yet, a fresh-from-the-shows Glenda Bailey brandishing a tablet–are promised.

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