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Phoebe Philo launches her own independent fashion brand after a three-year departure.
With her namesake brand, Phoebe Philo renters the fashion scene on the premise of self-determination after a three-and-a-half year hiatus following successful stewardships of Chloé and Celine. Although the brand is partially backed by LVMH, Philo maintains the ability “to be independent, to govern, and experiment.” Credited as a designer who is in tune with modern women’s tastes, Philo expresses that she is “very much looking forward to being back in touch with my audience and people everywhere.” The designer’s new line projects an ambiguity when it comes to her audience, but certain clues about her upcoming collection promise that it will be of “exceptional quality.”
Petzel Gallery advances its collection into a reimagined new address in Manhattan.
Outgrowing its base on W. 18th St in Manhattan, Petzel Gallery is relocating to an updated space on 25th St as part of a redevelopment project with the Feil Organization and Rigby Asset Management. The influential contemporary art gallery, which first arrived in Soho in 1994, will spread its collection over 11,000 square feet of ground-floor exhibition space—more than double its current size—and add an additional 7,000 square feet of office space. By staying close to home, founder Friedrich Petzel notes that he intends to stay put for a while. “I’ve been checking out the buzz about up-and-coming gallery neighborhoods. Ultimately, after talking with my artists, I decided to make a long-term commitment to Chelsea and the brilliant community there.”
The Frank Gehry-designed Beckmen YOLA Center opens in Los Angeles in September.
Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center will equip L.A.’s Inglewood and surrounding neighborhoods with new performance space and teaching facilities for aspiring musicians. Situated in a former bank building designed by Austin, Field & Fry in 1965, celebrated architect Frank Gehry breathed new life into the structure with a minimalist design not typical of his work, famous for its whimsical and curvaceous style. YOLA is the latest addition to the Inglewood Civic Center, the 29-acre brutalist campus designed by Charles Luckman Associates that comprises City Hall, a public library, fire station, and public health complex.
Miami officials are having conversations about the future of the Surfside condo site.
Less than three weeks after the Surfside condo collapse left 94 dead and dozens else unaccounted for, questions are already arising about what will happen to the site at 8777 Collins Avenue. Should the site be transformed into a tribute to victims or should the property be sold and redeveloped into a more lucrative new real estate development? “I think for most of us, we don’t want to have it be business as usual, and certainly discussions have begun how that could happen,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said during a press conference. Most people agree that it’s too soon to have such a weighty conversation; Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett would “like to know what the families want to see there.” An online petition, meanwhile, has garnered more than 1,000 signatures calling for a memorial.
The world’s largest astronomy museum opens in a cosmos-inspired building in Shanghai.
Housing exhibitions, a planetarium, an observatory, and a 78-foot-tall solar telescope, the 420,000-square-foot Shanghai Astronomy Museum opens this Friday inside a curvilinear building by New York–based Ennead Architects. A branch of the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, the cultural institution is now the largest astronomy museum in the world.
With arching lines and non-linear shapes, the design is meant to reflect the geometry of the cosmos, with winding architectural ribbons representing the unsolved “three-body problem” in physics—the gravitational relationships between planets, moons, and stars. Those celestial entities are tracked on-site by a trio of standout architectural elements—the Oculus, Inverted Dome, and Sphere—that double as functional astronomical instruments. “The reason why we thought the three-body problem was interesting is because it’s a complex set of orbits,” says lead designer and partner Thomas J. Wong. “(These are) relationships that are dynamic, as opposed to a simple circle around the center. And that was part of the (design’s) intent—to capture that complexity.”
The 9/11 Museum’s 20th anniversary programming gets hampered by budget cuts.
The 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks—perhaps the most traumatic event in modern history—is rapidly approaching, but the museum and memorial dedicated to the nearly 3,000 lives lost on that day have dropped plans for special programming. The reduction comes after a pandemic-induced budget crisis forced the museum to furlough and lay off nearly 60 percent of its staff, including more than half the exhibitions department.
Instead, it’ll focus on the “core museum experience” of its permanent exhibitions. This approach has divided critics: Museum trustee Anthoula Katsimatides, who lost her brother in the attacks, believes just “gathering with each other and reciting loved ones’ names, which we couldn’t do during Covid-19, is important,” she tells the New York Times. Others think that scrapping new anniversary exhibitions freezes the museum in time and shows a reluctance to challenge the existing narrative.
Today’s attractive distractions:
Methane detected in Saturn’s moon Enceladus may be a sign of alien life.
Finland is coating reindeer antlers in reflective paint to prevent car accidents.
Manhattan’s latest art destination? A grove of handcrafted plaster lemons.
Desert Center, a remote Southern California town, faces an uncertain future.
