Starting next month, the Judd Foundation will make some of Donald Judd’s furniture designs—previously available only on a made-to-order basis—purchasable from inventory. This comes after a lengthy collection of Judd’s writings was published last year.
[WSJ. Magazine]
The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the winners of its 2017 architecture awards. Diébédo Francis Kéré received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, and Theaster Gates, Paul Goldberger, Walter Hood, and John Ronan were recognized as well.
[American Academy of Arts and Letters]
H&M, a brand that has capitalized on fast-changing trends, is launching a new chain focused on classic garments, called Arket. “Starting this project, a little over two years ago, we did quite extensive research and what we clearly saw was a broad customer base out there who are looking for classic, quality products in an environment that should be both simple and inspiring, but also putting our own fantastic design together with complementary brands,” said Lars Axelsson, Arket’s managing director.
[Business of Fashion]
The Getty Institute has acquired Frank Gehry’s archives, which include hundreds of thousands of models, sketches, and ephemera. The collection is concentrated on the architect’s early career, from his student work to his 1988 proposal for the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
[Curbed]
A new survey shows that 44 percent of exhibitions organized by major U.S. museums in recent years were devoted to contemporary art—a huge increase from 20 years ago. Some attribute the change to greater traction in the press, while others, like Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan, feel that the shift is related to a push for diversity. “If your mission is to reflect the world, and women are half of the world… it’s a lot easier if you are working in the present,” Govan said. “Institutions are thinking about audiences and communities and responsiveness.”
[The Art Newspaper]
A new study reveals a correlation between the availability of cultural resources in a neighborhood and increased social well-being—even when controlling for economic status, race, and ethnicity. “We might expect culture to exhibit the strongest relationship with social well-being in neighborhoods with the largest number of cultural assets, but this is not the case,” reads the report. “We’ve found the most consistent relationships between culture and dimensions of social well-being in lower-income neighborhoods that, on average, have fewer cultural resources.”
[Artsy]