An AirTrain to LaGuardia Airport Is Coming, and Other News

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Construction on the long-awaited AirTrain to LaGuardia Airport will start this summer.

Thanks to a boost from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), construction on the long-awaited AirTrain to LaGuardia Airport—a $2 billion, 1.5 mile transit link that would connect the airport to public transit—is anticipated to begin in June. The FAA may soon release a “record of decision” later this spring, at which point construction on the AirTrain could begin. When complete, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey estimates a 30-minute commute between the airport and Midtown Manhattan. 

Vestre becomes the first furniture manufacturer to share the carbon footprint of its products.

In an effort to foster transparency and accountability in the furniture industry, the Norwegian furniture brand Vestre will list the carbon emissions generated by each of its products alongside the price. The company, which specializes in outdoor furniture, has created Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for its entire inventory to chart the amount of energy required to make each piece. These independently verified numbers will be visible in the 2021 catalogue and rolled out across its website.

The Cy Twombly Foundation sues the Louvre after renovating a gallery featuring his artwork.

Shortly after speaking out against the Louvre’s restoration of a gallery containing a site-specific artwork by Cy Twombly, the late American artist’s namesake foundation is filing a lawsuit. The suit demands that the museum undo changes to the space, which originally featured a blue-and-yellow ceiling mural that complemented the pale walls and floor envisioned by Albert Ferran in the 1930s. Recently, the Louvre restored the gallery to its pre-1930s appearance—new fixtures, reddish-brown walls, and parquet floors—that the foundation alleges violates the artist’s moral rights. Instead of requesting damages, the suit only demands the room be restored to its previous appearance. 

Judy Chicago fears her canceled Desert X sculpture may negatively impact her future work.

Desert X has officially canceled a smoke sculpture by Judy Chicago after weeks of trying to find a new location. The performance, called “Living Smoke: A Tribute to the Living Desert,” was supposed to take place in April over 1,200 acres, but was canceled after a longtime Palm Springs resident Ann Japenga raised concerns about the artwork’s effect on regional wildlife. Chicago insisted that the work, which she produces with colored pigment, is environmentally safe, and had been seeking a new location before the biennial ends on May 16. That ultimately presented too many challenges, and now Chicago is afraid the cancellation will impact a smoke sculpture she’s currently working on for her upcoming retrospective at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, which opens on August 28. 

Brooks + Scarpa unveil visuals for a sweeping new cultural center in Hollywood, Florida.

Renderings for a new arts and culture center in Hollywood, Florida, have been released by the firm Brooks + Scarpa. Designed in collaboration with the City of Hollywood, the space will include 5,400 square feet of education space with classrooms for dance, music, visual arts, and new media. Notably, the “sweeping” facility will link to the west side of the neighboring Kagey Home Facility’s circa-1924 Spanish Mediterranean facade. Further expansion of the facility’s east side will include building a new performing arts studio and the renovation of current gallery spaces.

The Performa Biennial is returning to New York this fall with an exclusively outdoor lineup.

For its ninth biennial and first post-pandemic edition, Performa plans to stage its signature cross-disciplinary projects outside in streets and parks across New York City. Organizers also moved the event forward, to October 12–31, to catch slightly warmer weather. The biennial will also feature a slate of artists—Kevin Beasley, Madeline Hollander, Tschabalala Self, and Sara Wynar among them—that hail exclusively from the New York region to help reduce travel. Details about each performance are forthcoming, but each artist will be tasked with contemplating the physical and cultural changes the city has undergone over the past few years

Today’s attractive distractions:

Sky Original’s latest film dives into the life of influential ceramicist Clarice Cliff.

Thanks to a new partnership, Apple Maps now shows where to get vaccinated. 

Marina Abramovic will unveil a digital manifestation of The Abramovic Method.

Virgil Abloh updates Dieter Rams’s Wandanlage hi-fi wall system for Braun.