LACMA has published an editorial on its blog this week, calling for renewed efforts in preserving the Nevada region of desert called Basin and Range, where artist Michael Heizer is working to complete his monumental City project.  “As the possibility for protecting Basin and Range comes close to a reality, LACMA and other museums around the country are hoping to bring attention to the positive cultural impact protecting this land would have,” the article states. (more…)

The U.S. Army is searching for a new group of cultural affairs officers to supervise the securing and preservation of important cultural monuments, property and locations in conflicted areas.  The Army had long taken a more lax, reactive approach to cultural preservation, but is looking to strengthen its methods.  “The civil affairs units have always had ‘functional specialists’, but the individuals were often not qualified in any meaningful way,”said Brigadier General Hugh Van Roosen, the director of the Institute for Military Support to Governance (IMSG) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  “At the same time, if you have one person who was just the right fit, you probably didn’t have two of them. It was just a broken system.” (more…)

James Turrell’s Meeting, permanently installed at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, is currently closed, as the museum seeks out a strategy for its restoration.  Commissioned in the late 1970’s, the work has remained opened to the public for over 40 years, but needs touch-ups to the walls, flooring and benches surrounding the open air in the middle of the space.  “We are going to get it back as close as we can to the original state, but we want it to be easier to maintain and use less power,” Turrell has said. (more…)

US Museums are joining forces with the Syrian Interim Government’s Heritage Task Force to assist in the preservation of the country’s cultural heritage against the tide of its ongoing civil war, training civilians in preservation techniques and strategies for securing important art objects and artifacts.  “Local communities are best equipped to identify heritage in need of preservation and protection, and this is precisely what is happening in Syria,” says Richard Leventhal, the executive director of the Penn Cultural Heritage Center. (more…)

Following concerns over possible damages during a renovation at the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York, Pablo Picasso’s immense stage curtain painting Le Tricorne will be moved to the New York Historical Society.  “It’s going to be at a good home, where even more people will see it,” Landmarks Conservancy President Peg Breen said. (more…)

The current Sigmar Polke retrospective at MoMA has posed interesting challenges to curators, namely how to maintain the artist’s Potato House (Kartoffelhaus) and Potato Drawing (Kartoffelzeichnung), which both incorporate real potatoes as a symbol of post-war Germany, and which are also subject to the tubers’ potential to decay.  “The potatoes are allowed to sprout,” says MoMA curatorial assistant Magnus Schaefer, but “if they’re beginning to rot, we have to replace them.”  (more…)

Hyperallergic has posted a thorough exploration of the debate surrounding the brutalist architecture and Picasso murals currently at risk of demolition at Oslo’s Regjeringskvartalet government center, badly damaged in a 2011 car-bomb attack.  Tracing the history of the design, the works, and the debate surrounding their preservation or destruction, the article places brutalism at the center of the debate, noting the continued destruction of many of its architectural masterworks based on their purported unattractiveness.  Joern Holme, the head of the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, echoes this statement, saying: “We can’t demolish the best of a cultural era just because we find it ugly today.” (more…)