Yayoi Kusama Unveils New Public Sculpture, Venice Mayor Investigated, Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art Tops Out, and More: Morning Links for August 7, 2024

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THE HEADLINES

MUSEUM PEACOCKING. Yesterday, we pointed you in the direction of Egypt building the world’s biggest museum (to store mummies). Today, we bring you China’s own cultural mid-life crisis – the soon-to-be-completed Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s huge and has “topped out” [reached its highest point], marking a major milestone in its construction. It spans more than 600,000 square feet – Egypt’s Giza Museum boasts almost 1 million square feet, by the way – and was designed by Danish architectural studio BIG, in collaboration with Arts Group and Front. Located next to Jinji Lake near the Suzhou Ferris Wheel, the museum is set to be opened to the public in 2025. BIG’s founder Bjarke Ingels said, “Against the open space of the lake, the gentle catenary curvature of the roofs forms a graceful silhouette on the waterfront. Its nodular logic only becomes distinctly discernible when viewed from the [ferris wheel] gondolas above,” he continued. “The stainless roof tiles form a true fifth facade.” The Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art will comprise main galleries in four of the pavilion-like spaces. A multifunctional hall, theatre, restaurant and main entrance space will be spread across the other structures.

NO GOURD VIBES. Prominent Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has unveiled a new public sculpture outside the UK’s busiest railway station, Liverpool Street in London. You might be forgiven for assuming it’s a giant pumpkin, but it is in fact an embodiment of another of Kusama’s obsessions – polka dots. Titled Infinite Accumulation, it is her largest ever public sculpture at 330 ft long, 33 ft high, and 40 ft wide. For the monumental site-specific work – which was commissioned by Transport for London (TfL), British Land, and City of London Corporation – Kusama expanded the polka dot into linked forms outside the new Elizabeth line entrance to Liverpool Street. “These dynamic serpentine arches were created intuitively by Kusama, hand-twisting the wires on the original models for the artwork,” TfL said in a statement. “London is a massive metropolis with people of all cultures moving constantly. The spheres symbolize unique personalities while the supporting curvilinear lines allow us to imagine an underpinning social structure,” Kusama said.

THE DIGEST

August 6 would have been Andy Warhol’s 96th birthday. To celebrate it, The Andy Warhol Foundation is launching a unique grants program and selling hundreds of the artist’s works from its collection. The proceeds will benefit dozens of US visual arts organizations. Dubbed the Philanthropy Factory, each grantee will receive money from the sale of at least four works, each valued between $250 and $20,000 each. [The Andy Warhol Foundation]

Venice’s mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, is in deep water after being accused of corruption, while one of his councillors, Renato Boraso, is under arrest. Italy’s financial police, known as the Guardia di Finanza, have called the investigation into the officials Operation Swamp. Whether or not they get bogged down in their efforts to find anything illegal in Brugnaro buying 100 acres of land near Venice for a knockdown price of 5 million euros remains to be seen. [The Art Newspaper]

A group of Austrian climate protestors who made the headlines for vandalizing a Gustav Klimt painting with black paint has disbanded, saying it has “no prospect of success.” Last Generation Austria threw in the towel after becoming tired of being fined thousands of euros for its activism, which included blocking roads. [The Telegraph]

Two new Banksy murals have been sighted in London over the last couple of days. The first is a black mountain goat perched precariously on the ledge of a wall support, and the other is a pair of black elephants looking lovingly at each other from two windows. What do they mean? Your guess is as good as ours. [The Art Newspaper]

THE KICKER

HEART IN THE RIGHT PLACE. Up-and-coming artists in the seaside town of Worthing in the UK have raised hundreds of pounds for a community defibrillator by painting pizza boxes. A micropub called The Brooksteed organized an auction titled “A Slice of Art” to raise cash for a new potentially life-saving machine, which will be located outside the watering hole. Local artists including Natalie Reilly and Gary Goodman were among those donated artworks. Maurizo Eusibi from “+39 Pizza on the Road,” which serves food at the micropub on Thursdays, donated 30 pizza boxes and artists were invited to decorate them in any way they chose. The auction raised £600 ($760). “A lot of the artists are already successful, so it was nice of them to give us their time. There were also some up and coming artists,” Eusibi said. “There was a lot of competition to buy them and a lot of offers at the auction. We were really quite touched.” [Sussex World]