Dimore Studio Welcomes Milan Inside Their Universe, and Other News

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Dimore Studio Welcomes Milan Inside Their Universe

Milan Design Week had its fill of nonsense this year, but the city’s architecture and design firm Dimore celebrated its 20th anniversary with a pair of blockbuster exhibitions. While “Silence” installed a kind of visual biography of the firm in its new Dimorecentrale location, “No Sense” took over a historic Via Solferino apartment and filled its six rooms with discombobulating combinations of work by young living artists and masterpieces courtesy of collaborator Galleria Massimo Minini. 

The apartment’s fireplace room was particularly successful: within its dark, mirrored walls, Dimore juxtaposed a storage unit by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, a bookcase by Afra and Tobia Scarpa for B&B Italia, and vb.v 006, an early work made by Vanessa Beecroft, who began blurring the lines between female bodies and furniture while studying nearby at Brera. Elsewhere, arrangements went slightly apocalyptic, with an alcove defined by a panoply of various chandeliers, chattering brightly; and another violet room boasted the studio’s own limited-edition sideboard and chairs by Gio Ponti among others, along with the slightly disembodied facial sculptures of Armando Andrade Tudela. The installations might not follow traditional design sense, but they illuminate Dimorestudio’s sensibility loud and clear. —Jesse Dorris

Les Eaux Primordiales unveiled a sniffable timber installation at Milan Design Week.

DWA Design Studio unveiled an olfactory installation for perfumer Les Eaux Primordiales at Alcova during Milan Design Week. The installation, called Expériences Immobiles, featured two 13-foot-tall timber towers resembling factory chimneys. One tower held smellable clay sculptures infused with Les Eaux Primordiales’ latest fragrance, Cèdre Superfluide, while the other contained stills and beakers that break down the perfume’s different notes. The towers’ shape was influenced by the factory chimneys of northern France, where Les Eaux Primordiales’ founder Arnaud Poulain grew up, as well as the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher.

The Frick Collection will vacate its temporary Breuer-designed building in early 2024.

The Frick Collection will leave its temporary location on Madison Avenue and return to its historic Fifth Avenue mansion after a $160 million renovation and expansion designed by Selldorf Architects. The mansion will reopen to the public in late 2024. The Frick’s tenure at the Breuer location was a powerful contrast between the institution’s Old Masters collection and the building’s own austere modernism, which led to an embrace of contemporary art and installations by Frick curators. One show, for example, paired works by Claude Monet with Olafur Eliasson, while another juxtaposed Old Master paintings with recent works by Salman Toor, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Doron Langberg. The location’s final rounds of programming will include a site-specific pastel mural by Nicolas Party.

Harvard students demand the college strip the Sackler name from one of its museums.

Harvard University students staged a protest at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, demanding the removal of the Sackler name from the institution due to the family’s role in the opioid crisis. Protestors tossed fake medicine vials and prescriptions in the museum’s atrium, while others laid down on the venue’s floor in a “die-in” meant to represent the number of lives lost to opioid addiction. The demonstration was supported by members of Nan Goldin’s activist group PAIN. Harvard has yet to follow other prominent cultural institutions in removing the Sackler name, despite numerous calls to do so.

Lagos Island’s first public pool is being transformed into a sweeping cultural complex.

The first public pool in Lagos Island has remained unused since the 1970s, but it is now being transformed into a 194,000-square-foot community and cultural complex known as the John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture & History. Local firm SI.SA designed the project, which integrates the original pool and the adjacent 1950s J.K. Randle Memorial Hall with new recreation facilities, dining spaces, and a green-roofed gallery. Complete with a picnic-ready slope, the gallery is adorned with a fractal powder-coated screen inspired by ceremonial Ashoké cloth, with exhibits inside displaying historical objects and myths.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced $35 million in grants.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced $35.63 million in grants for 258 projects, ranging from museum exhibitions to initiatives at regional art institutions and nonprofits. These grants, the first since the launch of NEH’s “Spotlight on Humanities in Higher Education” program, cater to populations at U.S. colleges and universities. Projects include underwriting a restoration for the USS Intrepid, supporting a documentary project on the life and career of WEB Dubois, and facilitating a traveling exhibition on the global influence of art and culture in Byzantine-era North and East Africa.

Theaster Gates, Edmund de Waal, and Hanya Yanagihara receive the Isamu Noguchi Award.

The Noguchi Museum has announced the three winners of its annual Isamu Noguchi Award, which honors the sculptor and designer’s artistic legacy. Edmund de Waal, Hanya Yanagihara, and Theaster Gates will be honored at a September benefit gala at the museum’s Long Island City location. Gates said the award was “one of the highest honors” he could receive, while de Waal called it a “profound honor” and Yanagihara spoke of her admiration for Noguchi’s dedication to craft and cultural responsibility.

Today’s attractive distractions:

Here’s how weed strains get their amusing, provocative, and wacky names.

Spending the night in California’s largest bookstore isn’t for the faint of heart.

Ryan Gosling steals a Tag Heuer timepiece in a five-minute anniversary film.

Behold one man’s quest to see every piece of art featured in Animal Crossing.