Hasta La Ideas

Taking a page from the playbook of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, which a year ago announced that Jeffrey Deitch would be exiting his various projects to come west and lead the institution, London’s financially shaky Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) has appointed veteran art dealer Gregor Muir as executive director. He succeeds Ekow Eshun, who resigned last summer. Muir has spent the past six years as director of Hauser & Wirth London, organizing gallery exhibitions in London, Zurich, and New York with artists such as Francis Picabia and Louise Bourgeois as well as emerging artists including Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, Anj Smith, and Monika Sosnowska. And he is no stranger to the museum world. He spent three years as Kramlich Curator of Contemporary Art at Tate and before that led Lux Gallery, which he founded in 1997. It was around this time that Muir curated a few exhibitions for the ICA, including “Assuming Positions” (1997) and “Liar” (1994). “He brings to the ICA many years of experience from both public and private sectors at a time when knowledge of both is so important,” said Alison Myners, chair of the ICA’s governing board, in a statement announcing the appointment. “Gregor will once again place artists at the heart of the ICA, making it a forum for new ideas and discussion, exciting audiences and restoring the ICA as a destination.” His first day on the job is February 7.

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This past fall, you might remember, was a bit rocky for the museum industry in New York. First, the state’s plans to pass a bill making selling pieces or collections of art in order to pay for anything but more art, particularly by government-funded museums, would be illegal, failed to pass through the senate. This was likely due to pressure put against its passing by the big, New York City-based museums who publicly stated on a number of occasions their distaste for regulation and promised they could police themselves just fine. If you were in support of the failed bill, things got even worse when the New York Board of Regents allowed emergency regulations surrounding museum deaccessioning to expire. This concerned many, as it was a sign that the flood gates for art sales could potentially now be open. Though that didn’t seem to happen en mass, at least on the record, the Regents caught a good deal of heat for it. Now, some months later, they appear to be attempting to regroup and figure out the controversial issue-at-hand. Judith H. Dobrzynski of Real Clear Arts reports that the Regents have recently formed a 16 member advisory committee who will look into how the state should handle museum deaccessioning. The list of members include lots of directors of museums across the state, as well as a couple of more high-profile museum types, including Martin Sullivan of the National Portrait Gallery, who was recently/currently mired in a controversy of his own. So what will come of the committee? That’s anyone’s guess. But given how tumultuous 2010 was for the state, it’s sure to be interesting to watch pan out.

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A big get for the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. The airplane that was headed to that city back in early 2009, but instead decided to take a dip in New York’s Hudson River, is finally going to arrive at its destination. After working toward an agreement for the past two years, the museum has struck up a deal to purchase the US Airways Airbus 320 plane, reportedly beating out other museums, including the Smithsonian. The aviation museum, located near the Charlotte airport, wouldn’t say how much they paid for it, but did tell the Charlotte Observer that the city had helped secure the deal, hoping that it would boost tourism. Here’s a bit of what they have planned for exhibiting the plane:

Plans for an exhibit are still evolving. [Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon] has his own vision of the plane resting in a pool of water.

“Potentially,” he said, “(you’d) have the opportunity one day to actually walk out on the wings of this plane and look down as if you’re actually on the Hudson River itself.”

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Beijing architects MAD have unveiled their design for a 200m-long, icicle-shaped museum in Harbin, northeast China.

The museum, which will be dedicated to Chinese wood sculptures, is the first of a trio of cultural buildings in the city designed by MAD.

Construction work on the museum is already underway and an opera house and a cultural centre, both designed by MAD, will also be built in Harbin.

Harbin is capital of Heilongjiang Province in northeast China and is best known as home of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, which takes place each year in January.

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Here’s some info from MAD:

MAD designs China Wood Sculpture Museum in Harbin

Beijing, January 08, 2011 – MAD today unveiled their new museum for Chinese wood sculptures in Harbin. As the main city of Northern China, Harbin is in the process of defining itself as a regional hub for the arts at a time when the historic city is rapidly expanding.

Inspired by the unique local winter landscapes, the museum is a contrast between the elegance of nature and the speed of daily life. Its 200 meter long body is shaped as a frozen fluid that reflects and explores the relation between the building and the environment.

The interior of the museum combines two different exhibitions connected by a centralized entrance which both separates the two museums while simultaneously joining them, achieving a symbiotic relationship. Skylights flood daylight into the voids adjacent to the galleries, creating optimum viewing conditions and scenic moments in and around the building.

MAD was commissioned to design three cultural building in 2009; the structure of the museum was recently completed while the design for an opera house and cultural centre is to be finished in February.

About MAD – Beijing based MAD is dedicated to innovation in architectural practice. As a leading voice in the new generation of design, MAD examines and develops unique futuristic solutions, exploring a renewed understanding of nature and advanced technology. MAD defines architecture as a man-made symbiosis, in harmony with nature, giving people the freedom to develop their own independent urban experience.

The work of MAD has been exhibited worldwide. Most recently founding Architect Ma Yansong was awarded with a RIBA International fellowship, making him the first Chinese architect to receive this prize.

MAD currently has 9 projects under construction including: the Absolute Towers near Toronto and the Erdos Museum in Inner Mongolia, the Sinosteel International Plaza, a 358M high-rise building in Tianjin, and the Urban Forest Highrise in Chong Qing.

Now the the Smithsonian‘s National Portrait Gallery fiasco seems to be moving out of the spotlight, the LAMOCA‘s pulled-art issues are still continuing to make news. Following new director Jeffrey Deitch‘s decision to paint over a mural the museum itself had commissioned from the Italian street artist Blu, claiming they were worried that it would upset its neighbors, art supporters have come out to protest the move, and even Deitch himself has been lampooned as a censoring dictator. This week, a number of people showed up at the wall for another protest, bringing with them a laser-based graffiti device, which allowed people to temporarily paint messages on the now all-white wall. Here’s a clip explaining the controversy and some footage from Monday evening’s event:

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