Maurizio Cattelan Responds to 9/11, and Other News

The Design Dispatch offers expertly written and essential news from the design world crafted by our dedicated team. Think of it as your cheat sheet for the day in design delivered to your inbox before you’ve had your coffee. Subscribe now. 

Have a news story our readers need to see? Submit it here.

Maurizio Cattelan’s new solo show in Milan features his response to the 9/11 attacks. 

Maurizio Cattelan, the artist and longtime New Yorker, was at LaGuardia Airport when the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11, 2001, and spent hours walking home contemplating how the world would change. Two decades later, he unveils a solo exhibition in Milan, called “Breath Ghosts Blind,” that features a memorial to the attacks. The work itself is a black resin tower cut through the form of an airplane—a monumental work that he tried bringing to the Guggenheim, but which then chief curator Nancy Spector was “hesitant at best” to show. In an interview with the curators in the exhibition catalogue, Cattelan describes the work, called Blind, as “a work about pain and its social dimension—it’s there to show the fragility of a society where loneliness and egotism are on the rise.” 

Jonathan Anderson takes to Instagram to refute a critical Financial Times review. 

Known to be a reserved individual in the fashion arena, Jonathan Anderson’s recent social media presence revealed the hidden dragon behind his crouching tiger. Following the launch of Phoebe Philo’s fashion brand, the Financial Times fashion editor Lauren Indvik commented, “LVMH’s investments in young brands have rarely borne fruit—in February it said that it was winding down Rihanna’s fashion line just 18 months after launch, while its minority investments in JW Anderson and Nicholas Kirkwood have not been successful.” Subsequently, Anderson resurfaced his guest-edited FT How to Spend It “Hope Issue” with the hashtag #nohope and voiced “If I am not a success, then why do an issue together?”

Selldorf Architects will redesign the London National Gallery for its bicentenary year. 

To commemorate its bicentenary in 2024, the London National Gallery enlisted New York–based Selldorf Architects to reimagine part of the original structure designed by William Wilkins in 1838 and the Venturi Scott Brown–designed Sainsbury Wing “to create healthy, sustainable, and accessible spaces.” Following the completion of several galleries for David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, and Thaddaeus Ropac, the National Gallery revamp would be the firm’s first museum project in the UK. As noted by Selldorf, “this is a significant opportunity for an iconic cultural institution to reflect on its ambitions for the future and drive forwards an innovative, bespoke brief that befits its many visitors.” 

A wobble in the moon’s orbit forecasts an upsurge in high-tide flooding in the 2030s.

First reported in 1728, a wobble in the moon’s orbit continues to affect sea levels and coastlines to this day. In the wake of climate change, disruptions to the lunar cycle forecast a dramatic increase in water levels and flooding in the 2030s. Reporting 600 cases of high-tide floods in 2019, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that future floods will arise in clusters, lasting more than one month depending on the position of the sun, moon, and Earth. NASA records that “global sea level rise will have been at work for another decade. The higher seas, amplified by the lunar cycle, will cause a leap in flood numbers on almost all U.S. mainland coastlines, Hawaii, and Guam.”

Italy prohibits cruise ships from the Venice lagoon after UNESCO deems them a threat.

After Unesco threatened to put Venice on its endangered list, the city has agreed to ban all vessels weighing more than 27,000 tons—all but eliminating access for cruise ships into the Venice lagoon. Slated to take effect August 1, cruise ships will have to cut the destination from their itineraries until the industrial port of Marghera is repurposed for passenger use, a process that could take up to six months. “We finally seem to have got there,” says Tommaso Cacciari, the leader of the activist group No Grandi Navi (No Big Ships).

Boeing halts production on its large 787 airliner after discovering a new structural flaw.

Boeing will stop production of the 787 jet for several weeks after it discovered a structural flaw in planes that were built but have yet to be delivered to airlines. The aircraft maker now anticipates it will deliver less than half of the 787s remaining in its inventory this year—a move that caused its stock prices to tumble by four percent and will hurt the company’s cash flow. The Federal Aviation Administration said the problem poses no immediate threat to flight safety and will decide later whether changes are needed to 787s already in use.

Today’s attractive distractions:

This photo of the Milky Way makes the Arizona Desert appear otherworldly. 

Is Van Leeuwen’s new Kraft Mac & Cheese ice cream flavor humanity’s nadir?

Chipotle has started accepting TikTok video resumes to attract Gen Z-ers.

Pornhub’s new museum feature highlights famous nudes from classical art.