Hasta La Ideas

One sign that a design has reached iconic status is that it can be found in the collection and the executive offices of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Such is the case with Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s “Clouds” for Kvadrat, the three-dimensional, modular tiles that evoke plush barnacles by way of Buckminster Fuller (and, at least until the recent renovations got underway, adorned the workspace of Cooper-Hewitt director Bill Moggridge). The Bouroullecs are reuniting with the Danish textile company for a collaborative project at next month’s London Design Festival.

The Victoria & Albert Museum, which serves as the hub of the nine-day festival, invited the Bouroullecs to choose any space for their installation, and they opted for the Raphael Gallery. Home to the tapestry designs, or cartoons, commissioned by Pope Leo X for the Sistine Chapel, the famed gallery will host “Textile Field,” an installation that will cover approximately 2,500 square feet of the gallery floor. “We conceived an expansive, colored foam and textile piece to produce a sensual field on which to comfortably lounge while meditating on the surrounding Raphael Cartoons,” said the Bouroullecs in an e-mail. The installation will be on view from September 15 through September 25, and the brothers will join Kvadrat CEO Anders Byriel for a free talk about the project on September 19 at the V&A.

(Photo: Studio Bouroullec)

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After September 1st, don’t expect to just waltz into the Museum of Modern Art, plop down a twenty dollar bill, and expect to start milling about all that art. Instead, you’ll need to pony up an additional $5, as the MoMA has announced it will be raising its admission fee by 25% (pdf), up to $25 for a regular ticket. Seniors and students aren’t getting a break either, as those rates will be bumped up by $2 as well. Here’s their explanation for the increase:

Since the last increase in admission prices, in 2004, the Museum has faced escalating costs in virtually all aspects of operating the Museum. As a private, non-profit institution that does not seek government funding for general operations, MoMA depends to a significant extent on earned revenue. These carefully considered increases in admission prices will help ensure that the Museum is able to maintain financial stability and a balanced budget, which in turn will allow the Museum to continue providing outstanding exhibitions and programs to a diverse audience of some 2.8 million visitors per year.

The MoMA also just recently dropped $31.2 million for the building that formerly housed the American Folk Art Museum, which likely hit the books pretty hard, given that it wasn’t a planned expansion. And in response to this price increase, Bloomberg followed that fairly familiar path by sharing the annual salary MoMA director Glenn Lowry rakes in ($1.6 million when all paychecks, bonuses and perks are added up), perhaps to make the increase go down a little less smoothly.

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What’s the best possible way to get people worked into an angry froth? Easy. Just combine one part religion and one part World Trade Center site and sit back and watch it lather itself. As you might have read, in quieter, more peaceful times, a steel T-beam found in the wreckage after September 11th that had been preserved and placed in St. Peter’s church because it resembled a cross, was quietly being lowered into the soon-to-open and already extremely popular National September 11th Memorial and Museum. After that everything went south. A group called American Atheists have called for its removal, filing a lawsuit (pdf) that argues that “government enshrinement of the cross was an impermissible mingling of church and state” and that they “not allow the many Christians who died get preferential representation over the many non-Christians who suffered the same fate.” This, of course, is the sort of thing that outrages the sorts of people who get outraged about such things. Chief among the critics of the critics has been the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), who has vowed to help fight off the lawsuit by “preparing a critical amicus brief to be filed in support of the Cross memorial.” As the Village Voice reports, the ACLJ was founded by Pat Robertson and was also “one of the groups who tried to block the Islamic center in downtown New York.” Hearing reference to that lengthy screaming match from last year, and now knowing who is already involved in the argument, you’re no doubt thinking, “Oh no. How long is this fight going to last?” which is exactly the same question we have. Our advice: settle in and get comfortable.

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More news from San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, following their brief and very well-handled scandal last week over a conservative security guard who told a lesbian couple to quit holding hands in a Gertrude Stein exhibit (the museum pulled another great damage control move this weekend with yesterday being their official “Hand Holding Day“). This time around, it’s nothing so dramatic. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the museum’s longtime director, Connie Wolf, has announced that she will be leaving at the end of the year to become the head of Stanford‘s Cantor Center for the Visual Arts. During Wolf’s tenure at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, she’d helped grow the organization considerably, perhaps most notably in raising $85 million to move the museum from a small 2,500 square foot building into the massive Daniel Libeskind-designed space it calls home today. At Stanford, she’ll be once again preparing to segue into a new building designed by a high-profile architecture firm, as the university announced back in April that it had hired Diller Scofidio + Renfro to build for it a new arts building. Wolf takes over at Stanford as of January 1st of next year.

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It’s been an awkward week for San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, to say the least. The SF Chronicle‘s C.W. Nevius broke the story that, over the weekend, a security guard at the museum approached two visitors, a lesbian couple, and asked them to stop holding hands. After they refused and “a small crowd began to form,” he attempted to usher them out, ultimately failing in his efforts. The whole thing was made all the more awkward because it took place in the Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories exhibit, which discusses the life and work of one of the nation’s most famous lesbian artists. Nevius’ story was brief, but it was just the sort of thing to catch fire and suddenly it had made the rounds everywhere online. The museum has been on damage control ever since, issuing a lengthy statement about how the guard acted alone, how supportive they are of the LGBT community, how sorry they are, and how this will never happen again. It’s was a solid, well-thought reply and because of it, the museum seems to have redeemed themselves in short order, with the blame squarely affixed to this lone, unidentified guard. Here’s a bit from their statement:

Consistent with the CJM’s zero tolerance policy, we promptly filed a formal complaint with the security services company which employs the guard in question. We informed the company that the type of behavior exhibited by the guard is contrary to the CJM’s policy and is unacceptable. We communicated explicit expectations that the guard never be assigned to the CJM in any capacity at any time. Moreover, the CJM required that the company instruct all security guards it assigns to the CJM on appropriate behavior toward Museum visitors and provide the CJM with a corrective plan of action. The company has assured the CJM that the guard in question has been reprimanded, and that going forwarded all of the company employees assigned to duties at the CJM will be required to attend a sensitivity training course that addresses how Museum visitors are to be treated.

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