Hasta La Ideas

Although there had been some design hiccups and controversies along the way with the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, everything we’d seen down here in the lower 48 seemed great by us. So it’s with great sadness to report that the director of design for the upcoming games, Leo Obstbaum, suddenly passed away late last week at the much too young age of 40. Working with the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee, Obstbaum had overseen everything from the torch designs to the afformention troublesome mascots, and was preparing to soon unveil the designs of the event’s medals. Here’s a bit:

Vanoc CEO John Furlong looked shaken as he told a Vancouver Sun columnist about Obstbaum’s death at home.

He later paid tribute to the designer in an internal message to staff.

“Leo is everywhere you look, in every colour, every texture, in every little bit of Vancouver 2010. Leo led and influenced the design of some of the most iconic pieces of the 2010 Winter Games. His spirit and daring inspiration has touched absolutely everything and because of him memories of the Games will live on for generations. A true enduring legacy of what went on here in Vancouver.”

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Last week, we reported on Stirling Prize-winning starchitect Will Alsop announcing that he had decided to hang up his architecture career for the time being and focus all of his energies on painting (as an addendum, the Architect’s Journal put together this piece about Alsop’s frustrations with the industry). Perhaps it was realizing that art and frustration don’t always pay so well or that it’s nice to have something of a regular gig to keep the days structured, as Alsop has agreed to take a teaching position at Ryerson University in Toronto, in their architecture department. Here’s a bit about why he decided to make the move into education:

“Let’s put it this way,” says the unconventional architect/painter, “if Harvard were to ask me to do something, I’d probably say no.”

As the man who always cheers for the underdog explains it, “I like the graduate department at Ryerson because it’s fairly young, it’s only been around for a few years, and I like things that are new.”

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Quickly following up on two stories from earlier in the week, we first turn to Annie Leibovitz, who we told you on Tuesday was being sued for $24 million by Art Capital Group. We return to Bloomberg and writer Katya Kazakina who speculates that bankruptcy might be the only viable option the famous photographer has in getting out of the mess, explaining that fighting the suit out in court could lead to utter ruin, whereas bankruptcy could stave off Liebovitz’s creditors for a while, giving her time to sort things out. Kazakina also goes into some of the reasons why the photographer has gotten into said mess, with everything between housing renovations that turned sour to having to pay very high surrogacy fees for the births of her two children.

In far happier news, now that Zaha Hadid‘s Burnham pavilion has finally opened here in Chicago, Colleen Mastony has taken to Millennium Park to find out what the common man thinks of Hadid’s latest spacecraft. The verdict is nearly all positives among the seven people interviewed, except for an evil attorney from the suburbs who found the whole thing too hot inside, too bright to see any of the videos, and already “dirty and dented” (which was a comment made several times, even if the other interviewees rated the temporary structure positively). Also we learned that “The Egg” seems to be the most popular nickname given to this piece of Hadid’s work. Personally, we favored “The Dinner Roll” and “The Hornet” but you can’t have it all, right?

And with that, we collapse into a big pile of mush on the floor and pass you along to Stephanie. Whew.

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If you were looking to get into the pop-photography art market, now might be just the time to plop down a few bucks and buy an original Annie Leibovitz photo, if just to help out the financially-troubled artist, who seems to have seen everything go from bad to much worse. It’s become common knowledge now that the famous photographer had run into a bit of high-profile money troubles over these past few months, owing lots of money for taxes, mortgages, and other miscellaneous financial creditors. Now, as Bloomberg reports, the Art Capital Group has gone after Leibovitz, saying she has failed to follow an agreement she signed in order to receive a series of loans totaling around $24 million. So on top of dealing with her growing financial concerns and currently having to sell off the rights to her work, now she has Art Capital and their lawsuit to deal with, claims her representatives say are completely untrue:

“This is part of Art Capital’s continued harassment and attention-getting efforts,” the statement said. “There has been tension and dispute since the beginning. Annie is in the same shoes as many other people involved with Art Capital. For now, her attention remains on her photography and on continuing to organize her finances.”

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It’s been almost a year since we breathlessly relayed the news of Thomas “Tapestry Tom” Campbell‘s selection to succeed Philippe de Montebello as director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The former curator of European sculpture and decorative arts has now been at the top job since January, when he greeted the world via YouTube. So how’s it going? Rebecca Mead assesses the situation in “Renaissance Man,” a profile of Campbell that appears (alongside a terrific photo by Jason Schmidt) in the July 27 issue of The New Yorker.

In short, times are tough. The Met’s endowment has lost a third of its value since last July, donations are down sharply, and cost-cutting is the order of the day. Campbell describes his reaction to the recent exhibition of masterpieces acquired during the reign tenure of Montebello: “I thought, My God, especially with the economy going south, how am I going to buy anything?” But fear not, he’s looking on the bright side and thinking about signage and exhibition design—truly a man after our own hearts! Mead explains:

In fact, Campbell has been telling wary trustees that in disaster may lie opportunity: works of art may now make it to the market that might not have done so in happier economic times. Similarly, the dire financial circumstances of the museum will allow him to make some changes that he would have wanted to make anyway, such as reducing the number of special exhibitions, thus letting the staff spend more time rethinking how to present the permanent collection in a way that is friendlier to casual visitors. Mulling the merits of explicatory placards in each gallery is less glamorous than signing checks for masterpieces, but Campbell can become as consumed by a discussion of signage as an urban planner puzzling over traffic management.

Previously on UnBeige: