Still got it. A private, curator-led tour of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver is among the experiences now up for grabs on Gavel&Grand.
Did Santa (or UPS) fail to deliver for you this year? Still in search of a worthy cause for an under-the-wire 2013 charitable donation? Head straight to Gavel&Grand. The recently launched site expands Paddle8‘s online platform, rounding up philanthropic auctions that are studded with extraordinary experiences. Hurry to get your bids in for the Aspen Art Museum’s Freestyle auction, which runs through tomorrow evening on the site. The big-ticket items include a stay at a private chalet and a membership at The Caribou Club, but we’re coveting the Inez and Vinoodh commissioned portrait, private tour of the breathtaking Clyfford Still Museum, and a San Francisco art junket that promises an intimate look at Ai Weiwei‘s forthcoming Alcatraz Island installation.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…Fred Armisen dressed like Beau Brummel and helping people to overcome awkward situations. Don’t be confused by the period dress or 1990s-Canadian-sitcom-level production values, this modern-day superhero is Ambiance Man, a new series created by artist Alix Lambert for MOCAtv, the YouTube channel of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
“Ambiance Man is a series about a superhero who fixes what we really need fixed in our day-to-day lives,” says Lambert, who previously teamed with MOCAtv—and Sam Chou of Toronto’s Style5—for CRIME: The Animated Series. “While most superheroes are focused on preventing the end of the world, Ambiance Man is focused on transforming the moments that feel like the end of the world.” The 13-episode series also features Jack Black, Jibz Cameron, Peter Macon, and Atsuko Okatsuka.
Five artists have received a swell Christmas present [cut to photo of Richard Armstrong in a Santa suit]: a spot on the shortlist for the Hugo Boss Prize. Administered by the Guggenheim Foundation, the $100,000 prize is awarded every other year to an artist who has made an important contribution to contemporary art. Past winners include Danh Vo, Emily Jacir, Matthew Barney, and Pierre Huyghe. The finalists for the prize’s tenth incarnation are Paul Chan, Sheela Gowda, Camille Henrot, Hassan Khan, and Charline von Heyl. The winner will be selected by a jury chaired by Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector and announced next fall. In addition to a cool tetrahedral trophy (pictured) that resembles the coveted Triforce from The Legend of Zelda, the winning artist also gets a show at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2015.
Our hunch? The momentum, if not the medium (painting—this prize tends to favor conceptual types), is on the side of von Heyl, who recently pulled off a powerful triple play of shows at New York’s Petzel gallery, Tate Liverpool, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. She also happens to be the wife of Christopher Wool, whose work fills the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through January 22.
1. Building 88 Ways Looking to literally turn reality on its head, photographer Víctor Enrich challenged himself to digitally manipulate a Munich building into 88 different forms for a staggering series of photographs. Enrich is known…
Danish architects COBE and Transform have completed an aluminium-clad museum of maritime history in Norway with a zigzagging profile modelled on the shapes of local wooden buildings (+ slideshow).
Located south-west of Oslo in the harbourside town of Porsgrunn, the Maritime Museum and Exploratorium was designed by COBE and Transform to relate to the scale of its surroundings, which include a number of small wooden residences and warehouses.
Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj
The architects broke the volume of the building down into eleven blocks, with asymmetric roofs that pitch in different directions. Combined, these shapes give a zigzagging roofline to each elevation.
Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj
“We wanted to understand the area’s characteristics and then we wanted to strengthen it but at the same time create something new and contrasting,” said COBE founder and director Dan Stubbergaard. “The abrupt building structure of downscaled building volumes and the expressive roof profile are, for example, clear references to the area’s historic small wooden buildings, which all have their own particular roof profiles.”
Photograph by Rasmus Hjortshøj
“This interpretation of the area’s pitched roofs and small wooden building entities sets the final frame for a unique and characteristic contemporary building,” he added.
Aluminium shingles give a scaly surface to the outer walls and roof of the museum, and pick up reflections from the river that runs alongside.
Opening today, the museum’s exhibition galleries chart the town’s maritime history and tell the story of its dockyard industry.
A grand staircase leads visitors up to a large exhibition hall on the first floor, while smaller galleries and events rooms are housed on the ground floor.
Transform principal Lars Bendrup said he hopes that the building will help to revitalise the formerly industrial section of the town.
“Our general vision was to turn a backside into a frontside,” he said. “With the new museum, the town will now orientate itself towards the beautiful river that for much too long has been Porsgrunn’s industrial backside.”
Photography is by Adam Mørk, apart from where otherwise stated.
Here’s a project description from COBE and Transform:
Porsgrunn Maritime Museum and Exploratorium
Today is the grand opening of a new spectacular Maritime Museum and Exploratorium in the Norwegian town Porsgrunn. The building is designed by the Danish architects COBE and TRANSFORM, and has already, before the opening, become an architectural landmark of the town.
From backside to frontside
Porsgrunn Maritime Museum and Exploratorium is situated in the Norwegian town of Porsgrunn, 100 km south west of Oslo. The new museum will tell the story of the town’s dock yard industry and its maritime history, which has employed thousands of people from the whole region. In addition, the attractive location of the museum right on the riverside opens up an important process for the city concerning the future extensive urban renewal of the entire Porsgrunn Harbour area.
“Porsgrunn is an industrial town, which is reflected clearly in the museum’s surrounding context. It consists of small to medium sized industries in the shape of small characteristic wooden buildings. It was important to create a museum with a high level of sensitivity towards these surroundings, yet at the same time for the new Maritime Museum and Exploratorium to stand out as a spectacular contemporary building and become a landmark of Porsgrunn,” Lars Bendrup explains, owner of TRANSFORM, and continues: “Our general vision was to turn a backside into a frontside. With the new museum the town will now orientate itself towards the beautiful river, which for much too long has been Porsgrunn’s industrial backside.”
New meets old
The new Maritime Museum and Exploratorium is composed of eleven smaller square volumes, together amounting to almost 2,000 m2. Each volume has a different roof slant that assembled make up a varied roof structure. A characteristic aluminium facade, locally produced in Porsgrunn, not only holds the dynamic building structure together, but at the same time it reflects light and colours from the surrounding Norwegian mountain landscape.
Dan Stubbergaard, founder and creative director of COBE, elaborates: “It is a sensitive art adding new to old in a historic area. First of all we wanted to understand the area’s characteristics and then we wanted to strengthen it but at the same time create something new and contrasting. The abrupt building structure of downscaled building volumes and the expressive roof profile are for example clear references to the area’s historic small wooden buildings, which all have their own particular roof profiles. This interpretation of the area’s pitched roofs and small wooden building entities sets the final frame for a unique and characteristic contemporary building.”
He continues: “The goal was to create a house that not only understands and shows consideration for its surroundings, but also contributes with something radically new and different.”
Porsgrunn Maritime Museum and Exploratorium Porsgrunn, Norway Client: Telemark Museum Architects: COBE and TRANSFORM Engineers: Sweco Gross area: 2.000 m2 Construction period: 2011-2013 Total construction costs: 34 mio.
“The building is a naked structure; everything you see is at the same time carrying, so structural, and space-making, so spaces defining and containing,” Herzog tells Dezeen.
“There is no inside/outside, there is nothing that is masked, so everything you get is doing all you expect from architecture. In that sense it’s a very honest or very archaic architecture.”
Veranda – photograph by Iwan Baan
Herzog & de Meuron‘s Pérez Art Museum Miami opened to the public last week in downtown Miami and accommodates 3000 square-metres of galleries within a three-storey complex with a huge elevated veranda.
A car park is on show beneath the building, while a single roof shelters both indoor and outdoor spaces.
View from the veranda. Copyright Dezeen.
“Typologically you could say that this is a building built on stilts,” says the architect. “Layers end with a trellis-like roof and start with a platform which is also kind of a trellis, under which you can park your car and that also is open to the elements. Literally everything is visible, is part of the whole.”
Exhibition galleries – photograph by Iwan Baan
The architect describes how galleries were designed to open out to the veranda so that “landscape would walk inside the building”.
“We wanted to do buildings that are transparent or permeable, so that inside/outside would not be a strict barrier,” he explains.
Exhibition galleries – photograph by Iwan Baan
Exhibition galleries occupy the two lower floors of the museum and were organised to encourage a fluid transition between spaces.
“The special concept of the museum is this kind of sequence of spaces, which are more fluid,” says Herzog. “It’s a new kind of museum typology, which we believe was right to do here.”
Auditorium staircase. Copyright Dezeen.
The building also features an auditorium that doubles up as a connecting staircase.
Auditorium staircase. Copyright Dezeen.
“The auditorium staircase is an attempt to do more than just an auditorium – that would be a space that is closed and only used when there is a performance or conference – but to introduce it so that you have a grand stair leading people up to the main gallery floor,” says the architect.
He continues: “By means of curtains it can be subdivided, so it gives more opportunities to the curators and directors, and the people here.”
Jacques Herzog and Dezeen’s Marcus Fairs in a bay window. Copyright: Dezeen
Bay windows puncture the walls of the first-floor galleries and contain benches that visitors can use to take a break from exhibitions.
“This is to give the windows more than just the role of being a hole in the facade,” adds Herzog. “This again is a transitional element between inside and outside, inviting people to rest, sit and warm up a little bit.”
More than three decades after John Lennon‘s untimely death, a Bermuda museum remembers him with a stylized sculpture. Writer Nancy Lazarus takes a closer look.
The picturesque island of Bermuda is a long way and a far cry from the hectic urban settings of Liverpool, England where John Lennon grew up, and from New York City, where his life ended on December 8, 1980. The British musician and artist spent several months in Bermuda during his last trip abroad, and the island served as his muse. Bermuda pays special tribute with “Double Fantasy,” a sculpture dedicated last year in Lennon’s honor.
Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art commissioned local sculptor Graham Foster to create the six-foot Cor-Ten steel structure. The work shows a stylized double-sided profile of Lennon and his “granny” glasses with his Rickenbacker guitar, doves of peace, and the double fantasy freesia flower. At approximately 4,000 pounds, it’s a weighty piece, and sits on a raised flowerbed in a courtyard near the museum’s entrance. The sculpture is located in Bermuda’s Botanical Gardens, on the island’s south shore in Paget parish. continued…
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our first movie from Miami, Jacques Herzog of Herzog & de Meuron claims the Swiss architecture studio is trying to create a “new vernacular for Miami” that eschews sealed, air-conditioned buildings in favour of more “transparent or permeable” structures.
Jacques Herzog of Herzog & de Meuron. Copyright: Dezeen
“Very often, if you go to a place, you’re asked to do architecture that relates to that place, stylistically, or typologically or whatever,” says Herzog, who was speaking at the press preview of the new Pérez Art Museum in downtown Miami, which opened on Wednesday. “What would that be in Miami?”
“The most famous style or vernacular here is the art deco [buildings] on Ocean Drive, but this is relatively stupid architecture; it is just blind boxes, which have a certain decoration, like a cake or pastry, with air conditioning that makes a very strict difference between inside and outside.”
Ocean Drive, Miami
He continues: “This is very North American architecture that doesn’t relate to or exploit the amazing conditions that you find here: the amazing climate, the lush vegetation, the seaside, the sun. We wanted to do buildings deconstructing this, opening up these structures and making them transparent or permeable.”
Herzog gives the example of 1111 Lincoln Road, Herzog & de Meuron’s sculptural car park on South Beach, which was completed in 2010 and is open to the elements on all sides.
As well as providing parking spaces for 300 cars, the car park includes shops, bars and restaurants and hosts parties, weddings and other events throughout the year.
“It’s just a stupid garage,” he says. “But the new thing is that we made the building double height so it opens the possibility to have different floor heights and different rooms.”
“Parking cars [in this building] is an experience. We introduced shops and restaurants and little bars and other possibilities for people to hang out and use the entire building, not just to make a blind box for cars.”
Herzog & de Meuron’s Tate Modern in London and Parrish Art Museum on Long Island are two other examples of galleries that “give right answers to different places”, Herzog says.
Tate Modern in London by Herzog and de Meuron
“I compare it to cooking,” he explains. “We try to use what is available in every season or in a certain region and not to try to have an ambition to do something exquisite in a place where it wouldn’t make sense, but to fully exploit whatever is there.”
The Pérez Art Museum features large, over-hanging eaves to provide shelter from the sun and rain of Miami’s tropical climate, while suspended columns covered in vertical gardens by botanist Patrick Blanc hang from the roof to emphasise the building’s relationship to its surroundings.
“I think this museum is an interesting attempt [to exploit the natural climate in Miami],” Herzog says. “Somehow it introduces a type of building that could become a new vernacular for Miami.”
News: architect Norman Foster has presented plans to add a row of stone pavilions to the Norton Museum of Art in Florida as part of a major overhaul that will double the building’s gallery space.
Unveiled yesterday during the opening of the Art Basel and Design Miami fairs, the Foster + Partners masterplan seeks to restore the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach to its original axial arrangement by relocating the entrance to the west side of the building.
Three double-height pavilions will be constructed along this facade to accommodate a new auditorium, events room and grand hall, and will be sheltered beneath an overhanging metal roof that tapers gently upwards to reduce its visual impact.
Based on the concept of a “museum in a garden”, the renovated building will be fronted by a pool of water, while a new museum shop and restaurant will open out to a sculpture lawn on the south side of the building.
“Our approach is a celebration of the local landscape and architecture,” said Foster. “The gardens will be planted with native trees and flowers and the masterplan strengthens the elegant formation of the original museum, redefining its relationship with the city with a welcoming new street frontage.”
New buildings will be built from white stone to match the art deco-inspired architecture of the original building, which was designed by architect Marion Sims Wyeth and first opened in the 1940s.
“The project combines old and new and continues our explorations into the museum in a garden setting, which began with the Sainsbury Centre and has more recently embraced the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,” added Foster.
Public facilities will be able to function independently, creating opportunities for evening events outside of gallery opening times.
The architects have also developed a long-term masterplan for the site, which includes the possibility of adding two new gallery wings in the future.
Here’s a more detailed description from Foster + Partners:
Lord Foster presents plans for the transformation of the Norton Museum of Art
Three bold new pavilions, unified beneath a shimmering roof, herald the transformation of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach – host to the most important art collection in Florida. The masterplan, unveiled by Norman Foster in Miami today, allows the museum to almost double its gallery space and lays the foundations for future growth to become Florida’s leading cultural institution.
The first stage of Foster + Partners’ masterplan will establish its key principles: the sympathetic setting of a ‘museum in a garden’, with the original axial arrangement re-established to unify the visitor experience, and the creation of new public facilities. The museum will become a focus for the community with event spaces separate from the Art Museum, strengthening its role as a cultural destination for Florida.
The Norton Museum was founded in 1941 by Ralph Hubbard Norton and his wife Elizabeth Calhoun Norton and was laid out by the architect Marion Sims Wyeth as an elegant series of Art Deco inspired single-storey pavilions around a central courtyard. Subsequent expansion has broken the symmetry of the original east-west axial arrangement, and the creation of an additional car park to the south of the museum has led to the relocation of the main entrance to the side of the building. The new masterplan restores the clarity of Wyeth’s plan by reinstating the main entrance on a new street frontage on South Dixie Highway to the west – visitors will once again be able to see through the entire building via a new, transparent grand hall and refurbished glass and iron courtyard doors.
The new entrance is signalled by three new double-height pavilions, unified with the re-worked existing wing by a shared palette of white stone. The pavilions house a state-of-the-art auditorium, event space and a ‘grand hall’ – the social hub of the museum. The design also includes a new museum shop and a new restaurant with al-fresco garden seating which, like the new pavilion spaces, can operate independently of the museum to activate the campus throughout the day and at night.
A metal roof canopy floats above the pavilions and projects to shade the entrance plaza. The structure is gently tapered to visually reduce its profile, while providing stability to withstand hurricane winds. The canopy’s gentle lustre is designed to cast diffuse patterns of light in an abstracted reflection of people and flowing water below. Linear pools create a tranquil setting for the entrance plaza, masking the sound of traffic, which is visually set apart by a hedge. A curved opening in the roof accommodates the branches of a mature ficus tree and a further light well above the lobby illuminates and defines the new entrance.
The overall proposals reinforce the concept of the museum within a garden. Taking advantage of the Florida climate, the landscaping of the gardens and central courtyard incorporates native trees and flowers to provide shaded walkways, and the former parking lot is transformed into a new sculpture lawn. The borders of the museum’s expanded grounds are defined and integrate a row of houses at the perimeter of the site as an artist’s residence and studio, guest house and research facilities. The new sculpture lawn will provide an open-air venue for ‘Art After Dark’, the Norton’s popular programme of film screenings and events, and is bordered by a glass circulation gallery, connecting the interior with the lush green setting.
The masterplan enables the development of the Norton to be implemented over time, beginning with the reconfiguration and extension of the existing museum to create the landmark Dixie Drive pavilions and the new public amenities within a lush garden setting. This will include two new galleries with state-of-the-art environmental systems, a sculpture gallery and a new education centre. S
Subsequently, it will be possible to build two new wings for galleries to the east as part of the long-term masterplan.
The Keith Haring Foundation is continuing its support of New York’s New Museum, pledging $500,000 to support and name the museum’s school, teen, and family programs. The gift follows the foundation’s 2008 grant of $1 million to establish a fund for school and youth programs at the New Museum and to name the Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement—a post currently held by Johanna Burton.
In other New Museum news, #ArtsTech Meetup founder Julia Kaganskiy has been named director of the institution’s new incubator for art, technology, and design. The initiative, slated to launch in summer 2014 in the building adjacent to the museum, will be a educational and professional workspace: “a dynamic 24/7 center where creative start-up entrepreneurs and artists will form a vibrant interdisciplinary community geared toward collaboration and innovation.”
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Five artists have received a swell Christmas present [cut to photo of Richard Armstrong in a Santa suit]: a spot on the shortlist for the Hugo Boss Prize. Administered by the Guggenheim Foundation, the $100,000 prize is awarded every other year to an artist who has made an important contribution to contemporary art. Past winners include 
The picturesque island of Bermuda is a long way and a far cry from the hectic urban settings of Liverpool, England where John Lennon grew up, and from New York City, where his life ended on December 8, 1980. The British musician and artist spent several months in Bermuda during his last trip abroad, and the island served as his muse. Bermuda pays special tribute with “
The 