From a New York Curbed.com online article:
There’s also a special focus on architecture and design in this new approach to the collection: Several galleries are devoted to various aspects of those fields, including “The Vertical City,” an examination of skyscraper construction that includes photos by Berenice Abbott, Hugh Ferriss’s architectural drawings, and other ephemera. Elsewhere, building models of the Guggenheim and a spec design of MoMA by modernist master William Lescaze emphasize the importance of architecture to museums, and vice versa.
…the museum is about to reveal its most ambitious revamp yet: On October 21, MoMA will open its expanded headquarters, which now takes up most of the block on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The museum has pushed westward, opening more than 40,000 square feet of fresh galleries in both a ground-up building (which rose from the ashes of the Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects-designed American Folk Art Museum) and the base of Jean Nouvel’s supertall skyscraper next door.
The galleries aren’t all that’s been added, though: The museum has also opened a new, expansive lobby—which has two galleries that can be visited free of charge—as well as a spacious gift shop that has been relocated below street level. A wall of windows gives passersby a glimpse into the space, and is intended as a gesture of “increased transparency,” according to the museum.
To read more: https://ny.curbed.com/2019/10/11/20908427/museum-of-modern-art-expansion-open-photos
I describe myself as an urban-based painter who is interested in green spaces. Painting and drawing have been seen as profoundly unfashionable for most of my working life, and I have felt sometimes that it was quite eccentric to be a figurative painter with conventional subject matter. Looking back, my insistence on maintaining my practice as a figurative painter now seems more radical than conventional.
I was very blessed to have the opportunity to catch up with Hogan ahead of her Mayfair exhibition. I find myself entranced by her vibrant paintings that are dense with detail, filling the canvas from edge to edge with layers upon layers of paint. She has also established portraiture practice, her commissions including HRH The Prince of Wales. In a unique style, Hogan paints her sitters whilst they are deep in conversation, capturing unguarded gestures and expressions to create intricate portraits of both honesty and intimacy.

The creators of Noori based the product on the traditional rocket stove design, which burns small-diameter wood fuel in a combustion chamber linked to an insulated vertical chimney.
“The most important thing that we do is we never shake the martini. James Bond had it all wrong,” says Scuto. Shaking it incorporates too much ice, making for a watery drink, and, if it’s a gin martini, it potentially bruises the delicate aromatics. Instead, the drink is stirred roughly 12 times—bartenders use careful discretion—with ice, which is made with filtered water and a top-of-the-line Japanese Hoshizaki ice machine. The liquor is then carefully strained into a glass. It’s “all in the hand of the masters,” says Scuto.
Age change should be allowed when the following three conditions are met. First, the person is at risk of being discriminated against because of age. Second, the person’s body and mind are in better shape than would be expected based on the person’s chronological age (that is, the person is biologically younger than he is chronologically). Third, the person does not feel that his legal age is befitting.
This week, a method for predicting follow-up earthquakes, and the issues with deep learning systems in AI.
The single most astounding thing I found was that if you took all your DNA and formed it into a single fine strand, it would stretch to Pluto. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a fact that blew me away more than that — that there’s enough of me or you or anyone else to stretch to Pluto. There’s 10 billion miles of DNA inside you. That just seems unbelievable. The surprise is not that there’s so much to understand about the body but that we understand as much as we do.


