Hasta La Ideas

Landscape architecture and urban design firm OLIN Studio prides itself on creating “timeless spaces that promote social interaction and enhance life.” And that’s just what the Metropolitan Museum of Art is aiming for as it embarks upon a multi-year effort to redesign and rebuild the four-block-long outdoor plaza that fronts its landmark Fifth Avenue façade. A search committee of museum trustees and leadership selected OLIN from a field of more than 30 leading landscape and building architects from around the world. While based in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, the firm has completed a long list of projects in New York, including the redesign of Bryant Park and the development of Battery Park City, as well as work for the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Jewish Heritage. OLIN has spent much of 2010 collecting awards for its work on Kroon Hall, the new energy-efficient home of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

“Monumental” is how Metropolitan Museum director Thomas P. Campbell describes the renovation project, which was formally approved by the museum’s board of trustees last week. The initial phase of design work has been funded by a grant from David Koch. OLIN will lead the effort to reconceive the entire plaza space, including its fountains and accompanying plantings, all of which were installed in 1970. The uses of the plaza have changed over the years—vehicles, for example, are no longer allowed to drive around the fountains—suggesting the need for a new design program, according to a statement by the museum. The new project also calls for improving access to the Museum’s two subsidiary, street-level public entrances, but not to worry, Gossip Girl fans: the redesign will not affect the Museum’s beloved front steps. “The Met’s Beaux-Arts façade is one of the great architectural treasures in America, and this initiative represents an important opportunity to create a truly dynamic space around this remarkable building,” noted Campbell. “The steps of the Met have long been a beloved part of our visitors’ experience here, and we look forward extending the vitality of that iconic area to the surrounding plaza.”

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Three cheers for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, which has chosen to devote its big spring exhibition to the extraordinary designs of the late Alexander McQueen. On view from May 4 through July 31 of next year, “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” will trace the designer’s career from his 1992 Central Saint Martins postgraduate collection (famously purchased by Isabella Blow) to his final designs (shown posthumously in March), along the way exploring how McQueen challenged and expanded our understanding of fashion beyond utility to a conceptual expression of culture, politics, and identity. The opening of the exhibition, to be sponsored by the Gucci Group-owned Alexander McQueen brand, will be feted on May 2 with the annual Costume Institute benefit gala, co-chaired by Colin Firth, Stella McCartney, and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Gucci Group head François-Henri Pinault and wife Salma Hayek will serve as honorary chairs.

“Alexander McQueen was best known for his astonishing and extravagant runway presentations, which were given dramatic scenarios and narrative structures that suggested avant-garde installation and performance art,” said Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton in a statement released today. “His fashions were an outlet for his emotions, an expression of the deepest, often darkest, aspects of his imagination. He was a true romantic in the Byronic sense of the word—he channeled the sublime.” Not the easiest thing for an exhibition to capture, but the Met has tapped Sam Gainsbury and Joseph Bennett, the production designers for McQueen’s fashion shows, as creative consultants. They’ll also be working with Raul Avila on the design of the gala. Meanwhile, Bolton plans to feature approximately 100 examples of McQueen’s work in the exhibition. Look for iconic designs such as his bumster trouser, kimono jacket, and origami frock coat to be spread among thematic arrangements that will include “The Savage Mind,” “Romantic Gothic,” and “Romantic Nationalism.”

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Technology and fine art collide in a device bringing museums to the elderly

A Texas-based project, For Love & Art helps the elderly living in hospices enjoy fine works of art during their last days through digital photos. A partnership between art galleries and museums brings thousands of pieces of fine art to Digital Foci‘s eight-inch high-resolution digital LCD notebooks for viewing by those who are no longer able to travel.

Already NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Washington D.C.’s The National Gallery of Art have joined the ranks of image contributors, but organizers are looking to expand the 1000-piece collection.

Dallas’ Touching Our World Foundation is asking for people to donate and spread this program to other hospices. As our population continues to gray, it’s important to think about art and design in the golden years whether it be a quirky paint-dipped cane or a sober assessment of design for future retirement complexes.

Looks from the Tokyo Fashion Festa, presented at the Fashion Institute of Technology in advance of the “Japan Fashion Now” exhibition, on view through April 2, 2011 at the Museum at FIT (Photos: UnBeige)

Whether you can distinguish a Shibuya denizen from an Akihabara type at 40 paces or still can’t quite get your head around those wide-eyed manga cuties, you’ll be fascinated by the proceedings of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Japan Fashion Now Symposium. The two-day confab, which takes place tomorrow and Friday at FIT, will delve into the astonishingly diverse sartorial world featured in the museum’s current exhibition exploring the evolution of contemporary Japanese fashion from Rei Kawakubo and the avant-garde gang to gothic-punk-Lolita styles and Cosplay. “Japan continues to be on the cutting-edge—maybe even the bleeding edge—of fashion,” says Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at FIT and curator of the exhibition. “Some of the most interesting designers—including menswear designers—combine avant-garde and sub-cultural styles. Equally significant is the Japanese obsession (not too strong a word) with perfecting classic utilitarian garments, such as jeans and work wear.” Symposium attendees will settle in a series of presentations and conversations that focus on everything from the Tokyo shopping scene (in a talk by Tiffany Godoy) and Japanese men’s fashion magazines (Masafumi Monden) to the “perverse cuteness in JapaneseGirl culture” (Laura Miller) and artist Yoshitomo Nara (Miwako Tezuka). Pre-registration for the symposium is now closed, but our friends at FIT assure us that you can sign up on-site.

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If you were left disheartened to learn that Las Vegas’ Liberace Museum has now closed, but felt that you could possibly continue on so long as you would be able to visit a Wayne Newton museum once it was finished building, well, we have some news for you that you’re probably not going to want to hear. This week, an advisory board in the Vegas suburb of Paradise, where Newton lives, recommended that the the singer’s request to have the property he’d picked out for the museum be turned down once it reaches the county commissioner. The Las Vegas Sun reports that the board’s issue over the project was the traffic that it would create in an area that is largely zoned for residential use (the museum would also be offering tours of Newton’s home, which would require bussing large amounts of visitors back and forth between the two places). While the board’s decision doesn’t mean that the museum won’t get built, it’s a large hurdle for Newton’s attorneys to now try to overcome. So for those of you so excited by the prospect of a museum dedicated to Mr. Newton, prepare to stay on the edge of your seat for a while.

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