Roundup: Koolhaas shows toilets and Marina Abramovic does something
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Jailed Romanian hackers, Rem Koolhaas’ (intriguing) toilet show, a possible new museum for downtown L.A., Marina Abramovic does something and trying to protect Detroit’s art collection. It’s all in this week’s Roundup:
- “Guccifer,” the hacker who shared George W. Bush’s paintings with the world, has been sent to jail by a Romanian court. No word if all the critics who’ve written about Bush’s work will also be punished.
- Detroit’s bankruptcy has the city’s creditors eyeing the priceless art collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts as a source of revenue, but the museum and others have fought to keep the collection intact. Now the automakers have stepped in, pledging $26 million in donations to keep the collection at the museum, as have the Mellon Foundation and the Getty Trust, who are pitching in $13 million.
- The new director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences really likes Renzo Piano’s proposed alien barnacle.
- Because what downtown L.A. really needs is contemporary art: Apparently architects Tom Wiscombe (Tom Wiscombe Architecture) and Tom Gilmore (Gilmore Associates) are at work on a plan for contemporary art space in L.A.’s Bank District. There doesn’t appear to be any word on what the art would consist of, who would curate it, or what the general program would be, but whatever it is, I’m sure all the neighborhood’s condo-dwellers will feel super cultured for having it around. (Artnet.)
- Rem Koolhaas is displaying toilets at the Venice Architecture Biennale – and it actually looks all kinds of interesting. The architect tells the Guardian that our cities are all becoming alike, something that surely has nothing to do with the phenomenon otherwise known as the globe-trotting architect.
- From the Department of UGH: The Frick, one of New York City’s most amazing jewel-box museums wants to expand … with a heinously derivative six-story tower. My colleague, Christopher Hawthorne, is not a fan.
- Annals of city planning: The case for tearing down park-and-ride lots. Interesting read.
- Sort of related: How renters are ending up in the suburbs.
- Art critic Jen Graves has an epic analysis of Seattle’s new Sculpture Park addition, a blind-mute woman that fills everybody with “calm.”
- Marina Abramovic starts her performance about nothing, which sounds like something: a meet-and-greet with Marina.
- “The experience was like being put in a room with some creepy uncle’s capsized box of teener porn.” — Critic Christian Viveros-Fauné on Larry Clark’s latest. It only gets better from there.
- Actors must be “fit socialist warriors in mind and body,” and other tenets from Kim Jong Il’s film writings — which inspired Australian director Anna Broinowski to make an actual film using these guidelines. Love everything about this story.
- Carlo McCormick has a tasty roundup of books devoted to everything from skateboard graphics to Sun Ra poetry.
- Group Pokémon and other crazy online phenomena: A fascinating piece about Twitch, a site where you can watch people play video games.
- Salvador Dalí’s bikinis. (h/t Weisslink)
