Architecture
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Cartagena: Conserving Cultural Heritage
A 500-year-old Urban Jewel in the Caribbean
By: - Sep 03rd, 2018The author recently visited Cartagena, Colombia. The city is a 500-year old urban jewel in the Caribbean with a wonderful scaled and visually vibrant Old Town (el Centro Historico). It is a wonderful destination on the western edge of the Caribbean. Planning of Cartagena both in terms of preservation and new development is a challenge, but climate change and rising sea levels is threatening its cultural heritage.
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Samara by Frank Lloyd Wright in Indiana
One of Some 60 Compact Usonian Homes
By: - Jul 04th, 2017Samara is one of Wright’s Usonian houses, affordable homes for middle-income families. There are about 60 of these houses in the U.S. and they are smaller and less grand than some of the famous Wright Prairie-style mansions like the Robie house or the Avery Coonley house in Riverside. But they are no less uniquely Wrightian and feature the architect’s special touches in design and functionality.
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July 22 for Naumkeag Garden Party
Yo Yo Ma Plans To Attend
By: - Jul 15th, 2017Celebrate the newly completed greenhouses in Fletcher Steele and Mable Choate's historic and recently renovated gardens at Naumkeag in Stockbridge, Massachusetts from 4-7pm on Saturday, July 22nd.
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Naumkeag 'Free Fun Friday' Is Today
Bring The Family To Stockbridge
By: - Aug 11th, 2017On Friday, August 11th, the Trustees of Reservations and Naumkeag, located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts host a free day of fun and education for the entire family.
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Room With a View and an Elephant
RMA’s Soft Thresholds is an Exhibition About Boundaries.
By: - Nov 29th, 2017RMA’s Soft Thresholds is about opening up physical boundaries: an elephant village is one of a number of the firm’s marvelous examples of this commitment. Soft Thresholds: a RMA Architects exhibition in Gund Hall Gallery at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, MA closed October 15 but left lasting memories. An elephant never forgets.
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A Study in Contrast Two Museums in Lisbon
National Tile Museum and MAAT Bookend Art and Culture
By: - Dec 30th, 2017These institutions visually and physically reflected Portuguese art and culture, one embracing the nooks and crannies of history while the other exhibited a vibrant openness to contemporary urbanity.
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Vermont’s Eclectic Shelburne Museum
How Sweet It Is
By: - Jan 12th, 2018Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888-1960) founded the Shelburne Museum which has 150,000 objects and 39 buildings on 45 acres. Her father Henry Osborne Havemeyer was known as The Sugar King. With his wife Louisne they created a vast collection donating 2,000 objects, including French Impressionist masterpieces, to the Met. Electra married polo champion James Watson Webb II of the Vanderbilt family. Well before the controversies of the Berkshire Museum, in 1996, the Shelburne Museum sold $30 million of its art to pay expenses. During the winter just five buildings are open. We viewed two special exhibitions in the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education which opened in 2013. It was a lively and intriguing experience.
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Hugh Ferriss Delineator of Heroic Modern
Great Architectural Visionary of the '20s and '30s
By: - May 29th, 2018Hugh Ferris was a visionary ‘Paper Architect’ who influenced popular culture as well as a generation of architects through his heroic skyscraper renderings and delineation of construction projects. His influence can still be seen in popular culture..
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Kansas Symphony at Helzberg Hall
Everything's Up to Date
By: - Jun 04th, 2018The Kansas City Symphony is a superb group pf superb artists, who make their home in one the of the performance treasures of America Like Dallas and other smaller cities across the country, Kansas City community leaders decided to spiff up its arts’ presence, A decade ago they dtermined to build a new home for its Symphony Orchestra and somewhat larger hall for events on tour.
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London’s Design Museum — An Inspiring Experience
One of the Major Venues for Experiencing Art of Design
By: - Jan 23rd, 2017London's newly opened Design Museum is the world's leading museum devoted to contemporary design in every form from architecture and fashion to graphics, product and industrial design. The Design Museum is now open in its spectacular new location on High Street Kensington. It is now a major venue to visit in London.
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Exploring Spectacular Biltmore (Wine Included)
Vanderbilt's Chateau Near Asheville
By: - Oct 27th, 2018The Biltmore Estate, near Asheville, North Carolina, is a 250 room mansion that opened on Christmas Eve, 1895. The Vanderbilts lived there until 1930, when the property was opened to the public. Presently, it is the state's top tourist attraction and home to a vineyard and winery that produces close to a million bottles a year.
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100 Years Bauhaus
Opening Ceremonies in Berlin
By: - Jan 26th, 2019Angelika Jansen was lucky enough to experience many aspects of the '100 jahre bauhaus' (100 Years of Bauhaus) celebrations, from January 16-24, as she writes in her following article. Architecture and culture in the 20th Century were greatly influenced by works and activities of many members of an 'institution' that only lasted 24 years - and the Bauhaus impact lives on.
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Bauhaus in Chicago
100 Years Celebrated at Elmhurst Art Museum
By: - Mar 01st, 2019The Whole World a Bauhaus, the 100th anniversary exhibit of Bauhaus work, is now on display at the Elmhurst Art Museum. There are national and global Bauhaus exhibitions. This one is on view in Chicago.
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Bauhaus Centennial a Global Celebration
Numerous Exhibitions and Publications
By: - Apr 25th, 2019In 1919 Walter Gropius retrofitted the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts into what he dubbed Bauhaus. In its centennial year there are global celebrations through media coverage, publications and exhibitions. It has been reported that there are 600 shows in Germany. We have been reading and visiting work on view at the Museum of Fine Arts and some 200 objects from the 50,000 donated through Gropius and others to Harvard University. He joined the Graduate School of Design as its director in 1937.
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Spring Awakening at Hancock Shaker Village
Borrowed Light Watercolors by Barbara Ernst Prey
By: - May 24th, 2019Working "24/7" over several months the renowned, Williamstown-based artist, Barbara Ernst Prey, created Borrowed Light. The suite of watercolor renderings of interiors is on view in a converted chicken coop of Hancock Shaker Village. It is a part of expanded contemporary programming under the director Jennifer Trainer Thompson. She was a founding member of the MASS MoCA team. They have been neighbors and friends for many years. It was intuitive for them to undertake this remarkable project.
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Documentaries on Art and Design
What to Stream When Home Alone
By: - Apr 02nd, 2020Most of us are now hunkered down and isolated, inundated by 24/7 news coverage of depressing medical and economic conditions, compounded by failed White House leadership. To lighten our burden, just a bit, here is a list, with thumbnail reviews, of nine excellent documentary films about architecture and design.
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Tanglewood's American Institute of Architects Award
For Linde Center for Music and Learning
By: - May 05th, 2021Tanglewood’s Linde Center for Music and Learning received a 2021 Interior Architecture Award from the national American Institute of Architects (AIA) on April 16, 2021. The Linde Center was one of only seven projects nationally to receive this award that "celebrates the most innovative and spectacular interior spaces."
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National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC
A Visual Journey Through History
By: - Dec 18th, 2016President Barack Obama officially opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture on September 24, 2016, on the Washington Mall. It is actually the 19th Smithsonian Museum. My daughter Olivia and I got up early on a December day, to stand in line for one of the circa 100 free daily tickets. Otherwise, tickets can be reserved online months in advance. The short text and extensive photo essay convey our experiences.
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American Ski Resort: Architecture, Style Experience
Lavish Book by Margaret Supplee Smith
By: - Sep 23rd, 2014With holiday gift giving approaching consider this book for your ski enthusiast friends. Wake Forest professor emerita Margaret Supplee Smith combined two loves, skiing and architecture in ten years of research. This has resulted in a lavishly illustrated, beautifully designed book American Ski Resort: Architecture, Style, Experience. It will be an absorbing read both for skiers and armchair enthusiasts. Her overview from the Depression to the current era goes beyond a chronicle of the sport to address social, economic, envirnomental aspects of architetural and design issues of resort development.
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Artwashing: Gentrification or Cultural Enrichment?
Aiding Derelict Neighborhoods or Abetting Social Inequity
By: - Aug 11th, 2016For the anti-gentrification critics, urban deterioration should be left the way it is rather than reverse it through the introduction of art galleries, performance spaces, work/live lofts, and museums. This is an issue wrapped in controversy that underscores progress while perhaps marginalizing impoverished residents and pioneering artists. It is hard to determine if everyone is right or everyone is wrong.
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Naumkeag Chinese Temple Gardens Opens
Three Years and a Vision
By: - Jul 27th, 2016After a public 'Appeal' for the renovation of elements of Naumkeag, the first phase of the project has finished. Newly restored Chinese Temple Gardens and an updated landscape project have been completed. The new project opened its doors at a ribbon-cutting ceremony recently. Yo-Yo Ma and wife Jill Hornor chaired the event.
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The Olana Summer Party
Olana '66: Fifty Years of Art & Style
By: - Jul 07th, 2016Fifty years ago, Olana was saved from the brink of destruction. The Olana Partnership is celebrating the past fifty years of art and style with a lawn party
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M.I.T.’s Memorial to Officer Sean Collier
Mundane Rather than Marvelous
By: - Jan 11th, 2016Seeming to be set in an empty MIT campus corner space, this memorial does not elicit a strongly felt aesthetic or visceral reaction. Perhaps, it was a prose statement expressed too soon rather than physical poetry done with more thought?
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Design Biennial Boston 2015: Hit or Miss
Younger Architectural Firms Expressing Themselves Through Sculptural Forms
By: - Jan 11th, 2016Contemporary architecture is not an easy fit in Boston. Hoping to stimulate higher quality and innovative design in the region, Design Biennial Boston was introduced during the dark economic days of 2008. Its mission is to showcase the distinctive work of emerging Boston architects, designers, and landscape architects. This past year, four younger firms were chosen to create an architectural statement in the form of a sculptural form. Were these pieces metaphorical or symbolic or something else?
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John Stomberg Discusses Hood Museum
51 Million Expansion Designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien
By: - Jan 13th, 2016Recently we visited Dartmouth College where we learned that the Hood Museum of Art will close in March for renovations to begin this summer. We discussed these plans with an old friend, John Stomberg, who has just arrived in Hanover as the new director of the museum.
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