Imagining Donald Trumps Presidential Lie-Brary, and Other News – Surface Magazine

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An anonymous New York architect has imagined how Donald Trumps presidential library might look like if it faithfully reflected his time in office. Immediately setting the stage are sculptures of COVID-19 proteins displayed right outside the entrancea monument to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who succumbed to the disease. In the Alt-Right Auditorium, films such as Birth of a Nation and Jud S, a 1940 Nazi propaganda film, are on a constant loop. Hypothetical permanent exhibitions include the Wall of Criminality, Tax Evasion 101, and the Twitter Gallery, while interactive elements include Lie to America, where visitors get to spin their own alternative facts. The Criminal Records Room, part of the Play the Prosecutor library archive, offers up the opportunity to do the research on how YOU would prosecute Trumps crimes against humanity!

Though the designer behind the concept remains unidentified, the renderings make their opinion of the outgoing president very clear. Even from behind the legendary Resolute Desk, Donald Trump set new bars for all future presidents, reads the curatorial statement. You can rest assured, no matter how low they go, no one in all eternity will ever be able to sink this once-great office any lower.

More than 700 works by the influential graphic designer Ivan Chermayeff have been donated to the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Made possible by the late designers children, the expansive gift contains works created as early as 1952 spanning all the way until his death, in 2017. The collection includes paintings, prints, book covers, and even his personal artworks and collages. Among his most recognizable designs include the NBC peacock, the Smithsonians yellow sun, and PBSs faces in profile. Bringing much of my fathers design and collage work to the permanent collection at the School of Visual Arts was enormously exciting for myself and my siblings, Maro Chermayeff, the chair of the universitys MFA Social Documentary Film program, tells The Art Newspaper. It was an obvious home for the works. He would be so pleased to know that students could continue to partake in his thinking and design ideas.

An overdue memorial dedicated to Native American veterans, now open in Washington, DC, marks a major step forward in recognizing their service. According to the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), Native Americans serve in the U.S. armed forces more than any other ethnic group. As a collective, they have served in every major military tangle since the Revolutionary War, yet their efforts have gone largely unnoticeduntil now. Located a stones throw from the National Museum of the American Indian, the memorial overlooks a freshwater landscape adjacent to the National Mall. Harvey Pratt, a member of Oklahomas Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran, designed the 12-foot-tall stainless steel ring. Postured on a carved stone drum, the sculptures shape holds special significance to many Native American cultures, symbolizing traditions in dance, storytelling, and prayer. The monument is an emblem for reverence, as visitors are encouraged to leave prayer tiesa symbol of spiritualityon four vertical lances.

Each year, Vancevas World of Color Award (WOCA) goes to a design firm that best uses the brands color interlayers in laminated glass configurations. For the Museum of Fine Art, Houstons recently unveiled expansion, Steven Holl Architects encased its Kinder Building in white glass, including the canopied entrance, clerestory windows, and double-layered facade of laminated glass tubes over an opaque weather wall. Translucent interlayers filter sunlight into the galleries while protecting the artworks from harmful UV rays. As for the projects monochromatic nature, its difficult execution makes it worthy, explains WOCA juror Benjamin Wright. As an aesthetic maximalist, it seems somewhat contrary to give a color award to a white building, but in this case the architects and fabricators used the shape and nature of the glass to optimal effect. The challenge of lighting a museum with natural light cannot be understated.

Last week, a controversial sculpture of the feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled in Richmond, London. The fleshy, naked depiction of the mother of feminism polarized critics, many noting that its representation was insulting to Wollenstonecrafts legacy. In response, a campaign to fund a statue of Virginia Woolf, created by the sculptor Laury Dizengremel, has received an influx of donations. The nonprofit Aurora Metro Arts and Media has been saving for three years to commission the sculpture, which will be situated by the river in Richmond, where the author lived and worked for a decade. Almost $21,000 of the $66,000 target has been raised to fund the monument, a life-size bronze statue of Woolf sitting on a bench and looking toward the river, with just enough space for visitors to sit next to her.

Todays attractive distractions:

What does a prenup smell like? Goops latest candle might have the answer.

This surrealism exhibition in Madrid is a welcome escape from the pandemic.

Patricia Carr Morgan captures the majestyand disappearanceof glaciers.

McDonalds will debut a plant-based hamburger, the McPlant, early next year.

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Imagining Donald Trumps Presidential Lie-Brary, and Other News - Surface Magazine