Hasta La Ideas The Adventures of Star Wars Figurines in Nature Archives

Aug 29

Museum of Arts and Design to Host ‘Fashion in Film’ Festival

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Stills from Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Magoo? and The Eyes of Laura Mars, two of the films that will be screened during “Fashion in Film.” (Images courtesy Museum of Arts and Design)

On the glitter-encrusted platform heels of the Museum of Arts and Design‘s David Bowie retrospective comes Fashion in Film, a three-day celebration of fashion, design, and style on the silver screen. The New York institution has partnered with Vanity Fair and the Film Society of Lincoln Center on a long weekend (Setember 9-11) of screenings, panel discussions, and receptions that will keep the Fashion’s Night Out momentum going through next Sunday. The singular Simon Doonan has co-curated the screening program, which includes iconic favorites (William Klein‘s Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Magoo?, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) as well as new releases, including the world premiere of Jan Sharp‘s new Rick Owens [claps gleefully] documentary, Rick, Michele, and Scarlett, and a look inside the elite ateliers of Hermès. On Sunday afternoon, Doonan will chat with the likes of designers Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra, Matt “Valentino: The Last Emperor” Tyrnauer, and the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Valerie Steele about how film inspires fashion. Tickets for the chic film series are going fast. Purchase yours here.

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Aug 29

NASA’s Office of Inspector General Issues Report on Why/How Certain Museums Were Selected to Receive Retired Space Shuttles

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Remember back at the start of the year when it seemed liked every science museum in the country was vying to get NASA to give them one of the four Space Shuttles the government agency was retiring? The campaigning to get one had reached a fever pitch by April, eventually all culminating with NASA’s live webcast where they announced the winners (the National Air and Space Museum got the Discovery, the Enterprise will make the move from the Air and Space to the Intrepid Museum in New York, with the remaining two shuttles will go to the Kennedy Space Center and the California Science Center in Los Angeles). Some of the other serious contenders, like the Museum of Flight in Seattle and the Adler Planetarium in Chicago wound up getting smaller consolation-esque prizes, like shuttle flight simulators. Now months later, with the joy and disappointment settled among the respective museums, NASA’s Office of Inspector General has released its full overview of where everything went and how each institution was selected. It’s a dense, 27 page document, but if you have the time, well worth the read to understand how much back and forth goes into a decision like this (there are three pages alone about picking the date to announce when they’d make an announcement). In the end, the report finds that while “agency staff made several errors during the evaluation process of prospective Orbiter recipients,” ultimately “NASA complied with federal law and was not improperly influenced by political considerations.” Perhaps most interesting among those “errors”, the report finds that NASA “did not provide applicants with all the information that would have been helpful to formulate realistic plans”; information such as that there was a 19-ton and $20 million difference between two of the shuttles, something a competing museum probably would have liked knowing about when submitting a proposal.

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Aug 29

Germany’s Museum for Arts and Crafts Picks Good Time to Launch Apple-Heavy Industrial Design Exhibition

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From the MoMA to California’s Computer History Museum, there have been any number of museums eager to remind you that they have a collection of Apple products on display, following the business world-rattling news last week that Steve Jobs had resigned from his CEO post at the company. While we’re sure that there are a handful of other museums already planning a quick Jobs-based retrospective, like has been happening all over the internet, perhaps no cultural organization opened an exhibition at the right time as Hamburg, Germany’s Museum for Arts and Crafts. Entitled “Stylectrical: On Electro-Design That Makes History” and opening over the weekend, the exhibition focuses on industrial design, with more than 300 pieces on display. As good time fortune goes, TUAW reports that “over half of those are Apple products,” with an apparent emphasis on the working processes of the company’s resident reclusive design guru, Jonathan Ive. And speaking of Ive, over the weekend, there were a number of pieces written (here’s one from Bloomberg) about how it’s now the company’s top designer’s job to become Apple’s “technology visionary” and “fill [the] gap” now that Jobs has left. Our big, sigh-fueled response was: “Wasn’t this fairly self-explanatory to being with?” followed by a healthy and pronounced, “Well, duh.”

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Aug 25

Douglas Druick Takes Over as New Head of the Art Institute of Chicago

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You might recall that, in the middle of May, longtime head of the Art Institute of Chicago, James Cuno, landed an even more high-profile job, heading west to take over as president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. He made the move and officially started in the new position as of the first of this month, and in the interim, the Art Institute was on the hunt for his replacement. They’ve finally made their pick and announced that Douglas Druick, an employee at the museum for over a quarter of a century and chair of two its curatorial departments ( Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture and Prints and Drawings), will take over in the lead role immediately (pdf). Here’s his statement about the new top gig:

“It is an honor to be selected as the Art Institute’s next director,” said Druick. “It is especially meaningful to me as it has been my professional home for more than 25 years. I am excited and eager to immerse myself in this role and become even more deeply involved with the museum and its work. I have served this institution for more than two decades because I have the greatest respect for it and believe it to be one of the finest museums in the world. To now be asked to lead the Art Institute is a great privilege.”

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Aug 24

Claudia Gould Named Director of Jewish Museum

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As the International Center of Photography begins its search for a new director, the Jewish Museum has found its next leader in Claudia Gould, who since 1999 has served as director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Gould has been named Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director of the Jewish Museum, the institution’s board of trustees announced today. She succeeds Joan Rosenbaum, who will retire at the end of this month after 30 years at the museum’s helm.

“Claudia Gould will lead the Jewish Museum into this next phase,” notes the press release announcing her appointment. Among her achievements at the ICA: tripling its exhibitions and staff, doubling its attendance, and reaching the final stage of a successful endowment campaign, all while mounting exhibitions of work by everyone from Lisa Yuskavage and Charles LeDray to Jurgen Bey and Maira Kalman (the extraordinary survey “Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)” recently completed its run at the Jewish Museum). Before joining the ICA, Gould served for six years as executive director of Artists Space in New York and was previously curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. “Claudia’s expertise in contemporary art and culture will bring great vitality to the Jewish Museum’s mission to engage the public in enjoyment, understanding, and preservation of Jewish culture, and arts,” said Robert A. Pruzan, chairman of the board of trustees. “As someone especially conversant in all the ways that museums reach and ignite interest of the public today, Claudia will help the Jewish Museum continue to engage our existing audience and speak to ever broader and more diverse new audiences, including younger generations of museumgoers.”

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Aug 22

Post-MoMA Sale, American Folk Art Museum Considering Closing, Donating Collection to Other Museums

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At last we left the American Folk Art Museum in New York, back in early summer, it had been partially saved by the crippling debt that had long weighed it down by selling one of the central causes for said debt, the Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects-designed tower it had built just several years prior, to the Museum of Metropolitan Art for $31.2 million. That influx of money was intended to not only lift the burden of building ownership entirely, but leave the museum with a bit extra to start fresh in their new home, a much smaller space in the city’s Lincoln Square neighborhood. However, apparently even that plan might not be enough to save the museum. The NY Times reports that the “financial picture has grown so bleak” that now the Folk Art’s trustees are thinking about closing it down permanently and donating its entire collection to a number of other museums. The paper reports that staffers are fighting to keep the museum alive, but it might already be too late, with its leaders already in talks with both the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian. How exactly it got from being saved by the sale to MoMA to once again preparing to call it quits under dire circumstances is unclear. For now, all the museum has said is that it’s looking into options.

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Aug 20