If you’ve ever read my “about” page, which likely dissuaded your continued interest in my blog (should I say I’m a 30-something for credibility?), you’ll know I was once on the fence between graduate school for public policy and art history.  Knowing what I know now, I should have gone straight to law school and never looked back.  But, in haste, I ended up at the London School of Economics.

It seems LSE has gotten some religion on public space (it’s not a very attractive campus), and commissioned San Francisco-based artist Michael Brown to create a super cool piece of public sculpture out of blue LED lights that literally reflects the research going on inside the library.  Online database searches and the titles of books being checked in and out of the building are displayed– sort of like a muddled, real-time Jenny Holzer sculpture.  Such a cool idea.  Learn more details from the press release here and a check out a YouTube video of the piece in action here.

I’d love to do something like this for my blog, but the search “amateur ass” would unfortunately come up all too often.

“Cleveland– at least we’re not Detroit!” was written on a white T-shirt worn by a fellow passenger on my flight back home this past weekend.  Clearly something did go wrong; a comparable city, Pittsburgh, which grew to prominence via similar industrial means, has successfully built up other sectors and is thriving.  Cleveland, however, is still visibly suffering.  Surprisingly, the city remains a cultural hub even if it does not seem to have the cultural capital to sustain it.  The Cleveland Museum of Art is a world-class institution, the Cleveland Orchestra is considered one of the best in the country, the Cleveland International Piano Competition is prestigious, and so on.  I’m thankful I had these resources growing up, but I still don’t get it…the culinary, nightlife and entertainment scenes are so far behind those of other metropolitan areas.

My apologies for the photograph being a little dark– there’s a charming permanent sculptural piece titled “Home, School and Office” by Andy Yoder in the Continental Airlines Terminal at Cleveland Hopkins Airport.  If you can’t make it out, there are three “paper” planes, each a different form and type of paper, whimsically floating to the ground.  Note to self: airport art is a great topic for a coffee table book.

If you’ve ridden the NYC subway within the past six months or so, you may have seen this illustration by Philippe Lechien (sorry, couldn’t find a better picture to post!).  I decided to be pro-active and do a little internet research about Philippe, but it turns out that there actually isn’t that much out there.  Here’s a little blurb from theispot.com:

One feels the immediacy of Philippe’s work because he illustrates the moment as a photo journalist does.  During the 1990s, Philippe traveled Africa to make reportorial drawings about the conditions in refugee camps.  From this experience came his current style which allows the viewer to peek out at an event from an obscure vantage point.  Philippe loves both jazz and New York City.  Festival de Jazz de La Villette, held in the great Cultural Hall in Paris, exhibited his suite of drawings “Jazz in New York,” created during the years he lived in Manhattan.  Most recently Philippe’s version of a bustling New York can be seen as an MTA art card on the NYC subway.

Okay, here’s the memory lane bit…I guess I was never really cognizant of how often I looked at these art cards over the years until I found this MTA website that has all of these posters from the past TEN years pictured.  If you live in NYC, I think you’ll be surprised at just how many of these you recognize.

A new article from Dow Jones Financial News Online finds that a record high 40% of contemporary works for sale at major auctions went unsold in the first quarter of 2009.  Only three pieces, including the Anish Kapoor scultpure pictured above, sold for over $1 million (the Kapoor sold for approximately $1.2 million, including the buyer’s premium, at Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Sale in London last February).  Check out the full article here.

One can assume that similar results are occurring in the non-six/seven/eight figure art market, too.

Speaking of Anish Kapoor, one of my favorite pieces of public sculpture is his “Cloud Gate” in Millennium Park, Chicago.  I found this article in the Chicago Tribune about a battle brewing over raising admission cost to the Art Institute of Chicago for city residents.