Hasta La Ideas

The first time many of us had heard about the under-construction Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art was its involvement in the controversy over Fisk University trying to sell off their large collection of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings to the new museum. After that situation was cumbersomely hammered out, Crystal Bridges was perhaps more on the radar, what with its massive Moshe Safdie-designed complex and that Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, was behind it all. Now it’s come out how much money is being spent on creating the Bentonville, Arkansas museum. The museum announced last week that the Walton Family Foundation has contributed a whopping combined $800 million to help bring it to life. Here’s a bit about the breakdown of the donation from the Arkansas Times:

Of that, about $350 million will go to an endowment to meet operating needs, which are expected to run $16 to $20 million a year. $325 million will go to the general endowment and $125 million will go for future capital needs.

Reportedly, all of this is in addition to the funding Ms. Walton has privately put into the project. Crystal Bridges is set to open in November of this year, so if you were thinking of visiting northern Arkansas sometime soon, late-fall might be your best bet.

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Still from Christian Marclay’s “The Clock” (2010). Photo: Todd-White Art Photography. (Courtesy White Cube, Paula Cooper Gallery, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Those who didn’t have time to catch Christian Marclay’s 24-hour chronological odyssey, “The Clock” (2010), when it debuted stateside earlier this year at New York’s Paula Cooper Gallery are in luck: the critically acclaimed video work has been acquired jointly by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the National Gallery of Canada, the institutions announced this week. One of the five other editions was snapped up last month—for a reported $467,500—by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“The Clock” is a particularly (you guessed it!) timely acquisition for the MFA, which in September will unveil the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, a seven-gallery showplace housed in the museum’s fully renovated I.M. Pei-designed building. Marclay’s work will have its Boston premiere on September 17 and 18, when the MFA hosts a 24-hour celebration of the new wing. “This first screening of ‘The Clock’ will be an unforgettable way to mark a new era and historic moment for the MFA’s contemporary art program,” says Jen Mergel (pictured at right), the museum’s Robert L. Beal, Enid L. Beal, and Bruce A. Beal Senior Curator of Contemporary Art. Mergel made time to answer our questions about the work, the acquisition, and how two institutions share a video (an armored truck is not involved).

How would you describe “The Clock” to someone who hasn’t seen it?
I’d have to describe what Marclay does as an artist to explain what “The Clock” is as an artwork. With his background as a pioneering DJ, Marclay samples and splices popular recordings into smart, resonant, profound new sequences of image and sound. For “The Clock” Marclay assembles thousands of film and TV clips that include watches, clocktowers, sundials, alarm clocks, countdowns, and more into a 24-hour cycle of footage that, scene by scene, breaks films’ narrative time but keeps the local time on screen, in sync with the local time zone wherever it is shown. So in “The Clock,” when a famous actor in a sci-fi clip launches a rocket at 11:59, another in a western meets for a duel at high noon, and another in a thriller catches a train at 12:01, you can be sure that these scenes and all of the clips in between will always accurately match the passage from a.m. to p.m., wherever it is shown.

So what is “The Clock”? It’s fair to say it’s a paradox: it’s both a working timepiece and a time capsule, it at once breaks chronology to redefine chronology, and it takes time as it gives time. It’s a space where worlds collide but never meet as they keep marching forward.
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Dutch studio MVRDV have won a design competition to build a Comic and Animation Museum in Hangzhou, China, formed of eight giant balloon-shaped forms.

Each balloon will contain a different function within the museum, including two exhibition spaces that will display cartoons, comics and animations.

The permanent exhibition space will spiral out of its chamber and on through the building to connect with three auditoriums and a comic book library.

Where balloons touch an opening is created internally, allowing views between spaces.

More projects by MVRDV on Dezeen »
More museums on Dezeen »

Here are some more details from the architects:

MVRDV win competition for China Comic and Animation Museum, Hangzhou

Hangzhou urban planning bureau has announced MVRDV winner of the international design competition for the China Comic and Animation Museum (CCAM) in Hangzhou, China. MVRDV won with a design referring to the speech balloon: a series of eight balloon shaped volumes create an internally complex museum experience of in total 30.000m2.

Part of the project is also a series of parks on islands, a public plaza and a 13.000m2 expo centre. Construction start is envisioned for 2012, the total budget is 92 million Euro.

Comics and animations have long been considered a form of entertainment for the younger generations but develop more and more into a sophisticated art form. The initiative for a museum especially for this relatively recent art form creates a platform which will unite the worlds of art and entertainment. By using one of the cartoon’s prime characteristics – the speech balloon – the building will instantly be recognised as place for cartoons, comics and animations. The neutral speech balloon becomes 3d.

The 30.000m2 are distributed over eight volumes which are interconnected allowing for a circular tour of the entire program. Services such as the lobby, education, three theatres/cinemas with in total 1111 seats and a comic book library occupy each their own balloon. If two balloons touch in the interior a large opening allows access and views in-between the volumes. The balloon shape allows for versatile exhibitions, the permanent collection is presented in a chronological spiral whereas the temporary exhibition hall offers total flexibility. Amsterdam based exhibition architects Kossman deJong tested the spaces and designed exhibition configurations which appeal to different age groups and allow large crowds to visit the exhibition.

One of the balloons is devoted to interactive experience in which visitors can actively experiment with all sorts of animation techniques like blue screen, stop motion, drawing, creating emotions etc. The core attraction of this space is a gigantic 3D zoetrope. The routing of the museum permits short or long visits, visits to the cinema, the temporary exhibition or the roof terrace restaurant. The façade of the museum is covered in a cartoon relief referring to a Chinese vase. The monochrome white concrete façade allows the speech balloons to function: texts can be projected onto the façade. The relief was designed in collaboration with Amsterdam based graphic designers JongeMeesters.

Most of the 13.7 ha site is occupied by a new park on a series of islands in White Horse Lake. Reed beds are used to improve the water quality. Boat rides offer an added attraction. A separate expo building of 25.000m2 will house large fairs and the annual China International Comic and Animation Festival (CICAF). In-between expo and CCAM a public plaza will be the centre of this festival which is the county’s largest cartoon and animation event and has been held annually in Hangzhou since 2005.

Hangzhou is a metropolis with 6.4 million inhabitants 180 km southwest of Shanghai. The Museum will become a new focal point on the less populated southern side of Qiantang river. The CCAM will consolidate the city’s leading position as China’s capital of the animation industry. The new Museum will be the icon of a larger development, the Comic and Animation Centre. It comprises a series of hill-shaped buildings containing offices, a hotel and a conference centre of which the first phase is close to completion.

See also:

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Rotterdam Market Hall by MVRDV	Gwanggyo Power Centre by MVRDV	House of Culture by MVRDV

Still Got It: A rendering of the Clyfford Still Museum, designed by Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works Architecture.

Who do we love? Clyfford Still! When do we love him? Every day, of course, but our obsession affection will surely reach a new high on November 18, when the Denver museum devoted to the late artist opens its doors (you may recall our excitement over the December 2009 groundbreaking). Of course, before one arrives at the entrance of the cantilevered two-story concrete building, designed by Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works Architecture, there’s the grove of trees and landscaped forecourt to delight in. “The sequence from city, to park, to building creates a ceremony of repose that prepares the visitor for a personal and very physical relationship with this incredibly important body of drawings and paintings—whose power and presence are revealed in natural light for the first time,” says Cloepfil, who conceived the 28,500-square-foot building as “a nearly geologic experience.”

The big news here, of course, is that the majority of the museum’s approximately 2,400 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures—a mind-boggling 94% of Still’s total creative output—has never been on display. The inaugural exhibition will fill the nine second-foor galleries with 100 works (including the only three Still sculptures in existence), exploring Still’s early arrival at complete abstraction as well as the ongoing significance of figuration on his later work. Can’t wait ’til November? Get to Denver for next Wednesday evening’s sneak peek inside the Clyfford Still warehouse. A live broadcast from the top secret East Coast location will be streamed for an audience at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, where we’re hoping the scientifically inclined staffers can make arrangements for a webcast.

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