“Syria artist sets Guinness record with Damascus mural”

“Syria artist sets Guinness record with Damascus Mural”

VIA AFP

Damascus (AFP) – A Syrian artist has set a Guinness record for the world’s largest mural made of recycled materials, aiming to inspire hope and creativity in his war-ravaged country.

 Guinness World Records announced on its Facebook page that Moaffak Makhoul and his team completed the mural in Damascus in January, two months shy of the third anniversary of the grim conflict in Syria.

“The largest mural from recycled material measures 720 square metres (7,749.98 square feet),” it said on its Facebook page.

Guinness said it was “created from manufactured waste by Moaffak Makhoul and a team of six Syrian artists in Al Mazzeh, Damascus.” (more…)

Will Washington Get a Women’s History Museum?

Will Washington Finally Get a Women’s History Museum?

By Julia Halperin via “The Art Newspaper”

Meryl Streep personally pledged $1m to the planned museum last year. Photo: Annie Liebovitz

A long-stalled campaign to build a national museum for women’s history in Washington, DC, has gained new momentum. Key elected officials, including Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader of the House of Representatives, and Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader, pledged their support this week for legislation to help create the museum.

The bill’s list of cosponsors has nearly doubled in the past four months, to 85, and a vote is expected to take place later this year. A record number of women serving in Congress—98, up from 91 last year and 24 in 1983—also gives the legislation’s chances of success a boost. The latest version of the bill is designed to calm the complaints of Republicans, who blocked an earlier proposal in 2010 because they feared a new museum would cost taxpayers too much money. The estimated $500m institution will be financed entirely through private funds; a non-profit organisation started to raise money for the museum has already collected $18m, according to The New York Times, and the actress Meryl Streep personally pledged $1m last year. But the project still needs Congressional approval to be built on federal land in downtown Washington, DC.

READ MORE

Art in Architecture: Salamanca Cathedrals

There are two famous cathedrals in Salamanca, Spain–the first is the old portion first built in the 12th century and  renovated in the 14th century.  Within are dozens of antique works of art depicted throughout the tower.  

This smaller tower was then built on out in the 16th and 18th centuries into the New Cathedrals that still stand there today.  Because the Cathedrals were built and renovated so many times, they reflect centuries of architectural styles and are an amalgam artistic history. 

by Laurenz Bobke

“First Look Inside Expanded Harvard Art Museums”

“First Look Inside Expanded Harvard Art Museums”

by Greg Cook via “The Artery“

“Light is one of the most important materials of architecture,” Renzo Piano said at a talk at Harvard University in 2009. Light and transparency—one of the ways he makes light part of his architecture—are primary themes for the suave, celebrated Italian architect.

“Transparency is still a very important quality of urban life,” he said at that Harvard talk. “Urbanity comes because the buildings talk to the street.”

These notions are evident in his designs for the newly renovated and expanded Harvard Art Museums between Quincy and Prescott streets in Cambridge. On Tuesday the university announced plans to reopen the complex on Nov. 16.

Since the project began with the closing of the institution’s Fogg Museum and Busch-Reisinger museums in 2008, he’s taken the iconic Italian Renaissance-style courtyard at the heart of the 1927 Fogg, which has been protected with listing on the National Register of Historic Places since the 1980s, and extended it upward and crowned it with a futuristic-looking, steel and glass pyramid that floods the five-story-tall space with sun.

Piano first made his mark as a post-modern punk with his designs for Paris’s Pompidou Centre in the 1970s, which seemed to expose all the guts of the museum  . . . .”

“Queens Museum to open Indian art exhibition next year”

“Queens Museum to open Indian art exhibition next year”

Via “American Bazaar“

“NEW YORK: The Queens Museum has announced that it will open an entire exhibition entitled “After Midnight: Indian Modernism to Contemporary India (1947-1997)” in January 2015, which will highlight important works of art and track the growing modernity of India during its first 50 years of independence.

Malini Shah, Sudhir Vaishnav, Sunil Modi and other community members along with Tom Finkelpearl, President and Executive Director, Debra Wimpfheimer, Director Stategic Partnerships, Hitomi Iwasaki, Director and Curator and Manjari Sihare Curatorial Manager.

In a statement, the museum explained that the timeframe was chosen because its beginning and end dates are significant checkpoints in Indian history. The year 1947 is obviously important because it is when Indian gained independence from the British, but also because it saw the birth and rise of the Progressive art movement in India. The year 1997, when India turned 50, was marked by “economic liberalization, political instability . . . .”