Hasta La Ideas

In another museum-related visit back to days gone by, remember the rumor that London’s Design Museum was thinking about making a move to a new building? Well while you’ve been over here Americaning it up, there’s been movement and the museum has made it official, that they will be moving to West London, into that same rumored structure named the Parabola. To help speed things along as they’re planning out the new museum, all under the helm of Rem Koolhaas and his pals at OMA, they’ve decided they need a little help and have issued a call out to firms who can work alongside the starchitect in handling some shared work:

The Design Museum is seeking a design team, led by an architect and also comprising a structural engineer, an mechanical and electrical engineer, a construction design and management coordinator and a catering consultant to work on the museum fit-out within the Grade II*-listed building.

This work will include creating temporary and permanent exhibition spaces, education, event, catering and retail spaces, an auditorium and associated office storage, circulation, back-of-house areas, plant, and plant-related services.

Maybe one of the most high-profile gigs running in the UK right now? We’re expecting they’ll be swimming in proposals when the invitation closes early next month. The Design Museum itself is set to make the move as early as 2013, assuming everything goes as planned.

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Photographer Luke Hayes has sent us a selection of photos of the MAXXI_National Museum of the XXI Century Arts in Rome by architect Zaha Hadid. (more…)

While architects may be facing only a 50% chance at finding a regular paying gig these days, fortunately in New York there are a couple of charitable arms out there trying to help out. The L Magazine profiles the work of The Bronx Museum of Arts and the MoMA, run an exhibition featuring architects’ ideas for redesigning the Grand Concourse that runs through the borough, while the MoMA has opened up space at P.S.1 for research projects concerning “flood problems as a result of global warming” for the NY area. So while it’s not like the museum industry has faired much better since the economy’s fall, but it’s nice to see one group trying to help another, despite these trying times.

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In a kind of cultural patrimony twist on “You break it, you own it,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art today returned to Egypt an ancient Egyptian granite relief fragment that was identified by museum staff as part of a large shrine. The fragment was on loan to the museum from a collector and has never been on public display at the Met. It is inscribed with the name of Amenemhat I, who ruled Egypt from 1991 B.C. to 1962 B.C.

Putting the pieces together was Dorothea Arnold, chairman of the museum’s Egyptian art department, who matched the fragment with a photo of a red granite naos, a shrine used to house a statue of a deity, that was missing a corner of its base. The chipped naos in question is located in the Ptah Temple of the Karnak complex, near Luxor. “The fragment on loan to us looked like it might fit this larger work. With my colleague Adela Oppenheim, we found a publication which set out the inscription on the naos in Karnak and we compared that inscription with the inscription on the fragment—the pieces fit together perfectly,” said Arnold in a statement issued by the museum. “We decided that, in these circumstances, the appropriate thing to do was to alert the Egyptian authorities and to make arrangements with the owner so that we could return the fragment to Egypt.” And if we know Zahi Hawass, he’ll be waiting at the Cairo airport with balloons and a cake.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In a kind of cultural patrimony twist on “You break it, you own it,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art today returned to Egypt an ancient Egyptian granite relief fragment that was identified by museum staff as part of a large shrine. The fragment, which has never been on public display at the Met, was on loan to the museum from a collector who claims to have purchased it in the 1970s. It is inscribed with the name of Amenemhat I, who ruled Egypt from 1991 B.C. to 1962 B.C.

Putting the pieces together was Dorothea Arnold, chairman of the museum’s Egyptian art department, who matched the fragment with a photo of a red granite naos, a shrine used to house a statue of a deity, that was missing a corner of its base. The chipped naos in question is located in the Ptah Temple of the Karnak complex, near Luxor. “The fragment on loan to us looked like it might fit this larger work. With my colleague Adela Oppenheim, we found a publication which set out the inscription on the naos in Karnak and we compared that inscription with the inscription on the fragment—the pieces fit together perfectly,” said Arnold in a statement issued by the museum. “We decided that, in these circumstances, the appropriate thing to do was to alert the Egyptian authorities and to make arrangements with the owner so that we could return the fragment to Egypt.” And if we know Zahi Hawass, he’ll be waiting at the Cairo airport with balloons and a cake.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.