The Wall Street Journal embarks on a tour of the MTA’s public arts projects, profiling some of the New York Subway’s most iconic murals, installations and pieces, including Roy Lichtenstein’s classic Times Square piece, and Sol LeWitt’s mural at 59th and Columbus. (more…)

A new conservation approach is being used to return Mark Rothko’s badly damaged Harvard Murals series to public view, works that have sat in storage for years to avoid any additional damage to their already badly faded surfaces.  Using a series of colored light projections, the works will restore portions of the surface that had faded from view.  “Where’s the line between what is Rothko and what is the projection?” says Mary Schneider Enriquez, the museum’s associate curator of modern and contemporary art. “What is the original work of art when you project light on it? Is it the same work of art? As a teaching museum within Harvard, that’s the kind of discussion we want to generate.”  (more…)

As the Whitney prepares to relocate its collection to lower Manhattan, American artist Alex Katz will christen the neighborhood in September with a 17-by-29-foot print of his painting “Katherine and Elizabeth” (2014).  The mural, which will adorn the building directly across from the museum’s future home, is the product of a collaboration between the Whitney, High Line Art, and TF Cornerstone that plans to fill the space with public art installations over the next five years. (more…)

Artist Bridget Riley has revealed a special painting commission for the Imperial College Healthcare Charity Art Collection, painting the 10th floor hallways of the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital building in London with her signature parallel lines and bright colors.   “It reminds patients that theirs is a transitory state,” Riley says. “That they are there to recover and rejoin life – that life goes on, and life is outside, and they feel reassured.” (more…)

The Guggenheim Museum’s upcoming show on Futurist art will feature a number of rarely seen murals, on loan from the central post office of Palermo, Sicily.  Created by Benedetta, the works have never left Italy, and have hung in the same place since they were commissioned in the 1930’s.  “It’s the grand finale of our exhibition,” says curator Vivien Greene. “It’s such a beautiful way to end the show. It ends it on a really positive note. Instead of lingering more on the end of the war, when poor Italy is so beat up it’s so depressing, I thought, ‘Let’s have a finale that shows you at your best.’ ” (more…)

An Alphabet City apartment building slated for demolition has become the site for a number of murals and installations.  The building will be torn down in late January, but the owner has, in the meantime, opened the space up for artists to create their own murals and sculptures inside the space.   (more…)

Street artist Swoon is currently working on a new piece at the corner of Houston and Bowery in downtown New York,part of the Groundswell Community Mural Project.  Taking on the themes of destruction and renewal brought last year by Hurricane Sandy, the piece looks to feautre several swells of populist imagery, centered by a ghostly female figure.   (more…)

Brian “KAWS” Donnelly’s mural, his second major art exhibit in Brooklyn is the latest addition to The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s public art offerings. The mural 3 story-high mural was completed this week, and stands behind a newly-installed, modular bike rack designed by David Byrne, which forms the phrase “Bold wink.” The mural is in bright neon colors and shows the artist’s trademark cartoon forms. (more…)

Emphasizing the recent vote by Michigan’s Oakland County to withdraw support for the museum if any works were to be sold, DIA Director Graham W. J. Beal has stated in the September museum newsletter that “selling any art would be tantamount to closing the museum.”  Beal continues by questioning the valuation of the museum’s assets, particularly the Tintoretto ceiling painting in its lobby.  “You may have read in the Detroit Free Pressthat an expert valued the painting at $100 million. This came as a surprise to us as, a couple of years ago, for insurance purposes, a different expert assessed the painting at $2 to $3 million.”  He writes.
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The restoration of artist William Morris’s home in London has uncovered a full wall, Pre-Raphaelite mural, believed to have been painted by Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal, Ford Madox Brown and Morris himself.  The work was discovered under layers of paint, completely unbeknownst to those working on redeveloping the house.  “In the morning we had one and a half murky figures, in the evening we had an entire wall covered in a pre-Raphaelite painting of international importance,” property manager James Breslin. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal reports on the long, convoluted journey of a 63-year old mural painted by artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser.  Originally created outside of Paris by the well-known Austrian, Paradise: Land of Men, of Trees, of Birds and Ships has since moved from Paris to Switzerland to Long Island, before coming to rest in a Brooklyn warehouse.  The work’s long history and current restoration needs illustrate the challenges facing the preservation of such large-scale works, particularly given its 10 x 16 foot size and its weight of over 3,000 pounds.   The move to its current location “took me two days with six guys and heavy equipment and a tow truck,” Says current owner Chris Muth. “If it fell in the process it would have been destroyed, and if it we had been under it we would have been dead.” (more…)

Beginning April 25th, the Art Production Fund will unveil a series of murals on the steel shutters of local businesses on The Bowery in New York.  Titled “After Hours 2: Murals on the Bowery,” the project has welcomed a number of artists, including Laura Owens, Adam Pendleton, Dana Schutz and many more to create works only seen when the businesses close for the night.  “They’re all site-specific, and they all relate to the neighborhood,” says APF co-founder Yvonne Force Villareal. (more…)

The first concrete murals done by Pablo Picasso are in danger of destruction following severe damages to the buildings that house them.  The two buildings were severely damaged in the terrorist attacks of July 2011 in the Norwegian city of Oslo, and government employees have voiced concerns that they may require demolition.  “If the buildings were demolished and the murals integrated into new ones or brought to another site, they would no longer be the works Picasso intended,” says Jørn Holme, the head of the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage. (more…)

Painter José Parlá unveiled his 70 ft. mural inside Brooklyn’s Barclays Center last night.  The painting, titled Diary of Brooklyn, was inspired by writer James Agee’s novel Brooklyn, and the artist’s impressions of the continued transformation of the borough.  The Barclays center, which opened last fall, has commissioned a number of works by Brooklyn artists, including another mural by Mickalene Thomas. (more…)