Interpreting the results of AmericanStyle’s 2009 Top 25 Arts Destinations poll was a little like reading tea leaves. Were readers looking for security in making their selections this year? Reassurance? Bargains? Sure bets?
Read MoreIn Memoriam
The cultural world lost three members in recent months—creators of large, medium and pint-size works.
Sculptor Coosje van Bruggen created large-scale public art in collaboration with her husband Claes Oldenburg. The couple’s 40-plus site-specific sculptures include the 38-foot-high “Flashlight” at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; “Cupid’s Span,” a massive bow-and-arrow embedded in Rincon Park, San Francisco; and “Spoonbridge and Cherry” at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Van Bruggen died in January at age 66.
Read MoreStyle Spotlight: To Sell or Not to Sell?
Will the Rose Museum of Art at Brandeis University close this spring? Will the artwork owned by the university be sold or auctioned? Will the building be converted to an exhibition gallery? Your guess is as good as ours.
Months of turmoil have followed the January ahttp://www.americanstyle.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpnnouncement by university president Jehuda Reinharz that the school’s board had voted to close the art museum and “publicly sell the art collection.”
Read MoreIconic Portrait Finds Home, Kicks Up Storm
A symbol of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, a red-white-and-blue portrait of the candidate with the word “HOPE” emblazoned below, has found a home at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.
But despite the seeming success of the image, both the work and the artist Shepard Fairey have found themselves surrounded by conflict.
Read MoreStyle Spotlight: Celebrating Sam Maloof
For Sam Maloof, furniture is about function. “Furniture should be felt,” he says. “I think that art is alive and wants to be felt, and it wants to be touched.” Photographer Gene Sasse pays homage to the master woodworker in an equally tactile experience, Maloof Beyond 90: An American Woodworker, a book so finely crafted, it’s a work of art itself.
Read MoreStyle Spotlight: A New Center of Glass Art?
Seattle may remain the undisputed West Coast center of glass art, but the East Coast title seems to be up for grabs. Corning, N.Y.? Pittsburgh, Pa.? Or, Hampton Roads, Va.?
Though the southeastern Virginia region seems an unlikely candidate for the reigning capital of glass east of the Mississippi, it’s giving its competition a run for the money with this spring’s “Art of Glass 2,” the sequel to its wildly popular 1999 glass festival.
Read MoreParting Shot: Beach Baby
Miami has a reputation for attracting the young, trendy, beautiful and thin to its hip hot spots and crowded beaches. Yet Swiss artist Olaf Breuning’s buxom 150-ton sand beauty seemed perfectly at home when she made her appearance last December as part of the city’s Art Basel events. Martin and Cricket Taplin, owners of Miami’s art-loving Sagamore Hotel, commissioned the artist to construct the Paul Klee-esque reclining statue. “I’m very proud to be making an art piece you cannot buy,” Breuning told The New York Times Style Magazine.
Read MoreEditor’s Note: Traveling (Yes!) on a Shoestring
Need some good news? Given the current state of the U.S. economy, cities big and small are tripping all over themselves to make leisure travel more affordable. From our perspective, it couldn’t be happening at a better time.
Read MoreIf You Go: Chattanooga
The Chattanooga Arts Tour, led by artists, gives you the opportunity to visit private studios and public art sites in Chattanooga. Reservations are required.
Read MoreCity Arts: Chattanooga
When joggers and bicyclists complained that the River Walk in Chattanooga, Tenn., did not have distance markers, the city didn’t just install signs. It commissioned artist Jim Collins to create colorful sheet metal sculptures—depicting a mother pushing a baby carriage, joggers and bicyclists, among other subjects—to mark the miles.
Read MoreArts Travel: Finding Main Street, U.S.A.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has named its 2009 Dozen Distinctive Destinations— towns in the United States that have maintained their visual and cultural identities in the face of suburban sprawl.
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