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The Headlines
THE BUILDERS. The many architectural firms developing plans for The Line—the wildly ambitious new city that will stretch for more than 100 miles in Saudi Arabia—include Adjaye Associates, Peter Cook, Morphosis, and OMA, the Architects’ Journal reports. Some of their proposals are now on view in an exhibition about the effort in Riyadh. Speaking of architecture: An AI art generator called Midjourney has “quickly emerged as the architect’s favorite artificial intern,” Bloomberg reports. Practitioners are using it to conjure unbuildable visions, and are figuring how it can help produce actual structures. However, it has its limits. “When I work with non-Western architecture, it’s hard for me to get good images because these tools seem to lack a deep understanding of these styles,” a computational designer, Hassan Ragab, told the outlet.
THE BUILDERS. The many architectural firms developing plans for The Line—the wildly ambitious new city that will stretch for more than 100 miles in Saudi Arabia—include Adjaye Associates, Peter Cook, Morphosis, and OMA, the Architects’ Journal reports. Some of their proposals are now on view in an exhibition about the effort in Riyadh. Speaking of architecture: An AI art generator called Midjourney has “quickly emerged as the architect’s favorite artificial intern,” Bloomberg reports. Practitioners are using it to conjure unbuildable visions, and are figuring how it can help produce actual structures. However, it has its limits. “When I work with non-Western architecture, it’s hard for me to get good images because these tools seem to lack a deep understanding of these styles,” a computational designer, Hassan Ragab, told the outlet.
The Digest
The Harvard Law Review elected Apsara Iyer, an expert on antiquities theft, as its president. Iyer is the first Indian American woman to hold the position, and while working at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office was involved with the case of billionaire collector Michael Steinhardt, who ended up surrendering $70 million in artifacts. [Reuters]
San Francisco’s Legion of Honor is readying a show of Sandro Botticelli’s drawings for November. It will include nearly 60 pieces (27 of them drawings); five have been newly attributed to him. His “mastery as a draughtsman underpinned the character of his paintings,” the museum’s director, Thomas P. Campbell, said. [The Art Newspaper]
A court in the United Kingdom ordered two activists who smashed a vegan chocolate cake on a wax depiction of King Charles at Madame Tussauds in London to pay £3,500 (about $4,300) in compensation. [The Guardian]
Ted Shen, an investment banker-turned-musical composer, is sending 25 pieces from his collection of early American modernism to Christie’s in April with an estimate of $10 million. The lots include a luscious Marsden Hartley beach scene from 1940 that is expected to sell for as much as $3 million. [Penta]
Mary Zimmerman’s 1993 play The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, which was inspired by those astonishing volumes, is now running at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. “It no longer seems as revelatory as it did when it burst into existence,” according to theater critic Charles McNulty. [Los Angeles Times]
Artforum’s February issue has appraisals of superstar artist Alex Katz by four of his peers: Jamian Juliano-Villani, David Salle, Amy Sillman, and Sam McKinniss. Katz’s Guggenheim Museum retrospective runs for about three more weeks. [Artforum]
The Kicker
LET IT RIDE. Every museum has a founding story, a tale of people who were committed to safeguarding treasures against the vagaries of time. In the case of the Bicycle Museum of America in New Breman, Ohio, one man was instrumental, the Associated Press reports: James Dicke II, a forklift tycoon who snapped up 150 bicycles and other materials at a 1997 auction of the collection of the family behind the Schwinn bike company. But Dicke had help, of a kind: a willing seller, Richard Schwinn, the founder’s great-grandson. The AP notes that Schwinn said at the time: “It’s hard to take care of this mess of stuff. We could put it in storage or we could sell it and I’m tired of storing it.” The rest is history. [AP]