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The Headlines




THE BUILDERS.  The many architectural firms  developing plans  for  The Line —the wildly ambitious new city that will stretch for more than 100 miles in Saudi Arabia—include  Adjaye Associates ,  Peter Cook ,  Morphosis , and  OMA , the  Architects’ Journal  reports. Some of their proposals are now on view in an exhibition about the effort in Riyadh. Speaking of architecture: An AI art generator called  Midjourney  has “quickly emerged as  the architect’s favorite artificial intern ,”  Bloomberg  reports. Practitioners are using it to conjure unbuildable visions, and are figuring how it can help produce actual structures. However, it has its limits. “When I work with non-Western architecture, it’s hard for me to get good images because these tools seem to lack a deep understanding of these styles,” a computational designer,  Hassan Ragab , told the outlet.




THE BUILDERS.  The many architectural firms  developing plans  for  The Line —the wildly ambitious new city that will stretch for more than 100 miles in Saudi Arabia—include  Adjaye Associates ,  Peter Cook ,  Morphosis , and  OMA , the  Architects’ Journal  reports. Some of their proposals are now on view in an exhibition about the effort in Riyadh. Speaking of architecture: An AI art generator called  Midjourney  has “quickly emerged as  the architect’s favorite artificial intern ,”  Bloomberg  reports. Practitioners are using it to conjure unbuildable visions, and are figuring how it can help produce actual structures. However, it has its limits. “When I work with non-Western architecture, it’s hard for me to get good images because these tools seem to lack a deep understanding of these styles,” a computational designer,  Hassan Ragab , told the outlet.




The Digest




The  Harvard Law Review  elected  Apsara Iyer , an expert on antiquities theft, as its president. Iyer is the first Indian American woman to hold the position, and while working at the  Manhattan District Attorney’s Office was involved with the case of billionaire collector  Michael Steinhardt , who ended up  surrendering  $70 million in artifacts.  [Reuters]




San Francisco’s  Legion of Honor  is readying a show of  Sandro Botticelli ’s drawings for November. It will include nearly 60 pieces (27 of them drawings); five have been newly attributed to him. His “mastery as a draughtsman underpinned the character of his paintings,” the museum’s director,  Thomas P. Campbell , said.  [The Art Newspaper]




A court in the United Kingdom ordered two activists who smashed a vegan chocolate cake on a wax depiction of  King Charles  at  Madame Tussauds  in London to pay £3,500 (about $4,300) in compensation.  [The Guardian] Ted Shen , an investment banker-turned-musical composer, is sending 25 pieces from his collection of early American modernism to  Christie’s  in April with an estimate of $10 million. The lots include a luscious  Marsden Hartley  beach scene from 1940 that is expected to sell for as much as $3 million.  [Penta]




Mary Zimmerman ’s 1993 play  The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci , which was inspired by those astonishing volumes, is now running at the  Old Globe Theatre  in San Diego. “It no longer seems as revelatory as it did when it burst into existence,” according to theater critic  Charles McNulty .  [Los Angeles Times]




Artforum ’s February issue has appraisals of superstar artist  Alex Katz  by four of his peers:  Jamian Juliano-Villani ,  David Salle ,  Amy Sillman , and  Sam McKinniss . Katz’s  Guggenheim Museum  retrospective runs for about three more weeks.  [Artforum]




The Kicker




LET IT RIDE.  Every museum has a founding story, a tale of people who were committed to safeguarding treasures against the vagaries of time. In the case of the  Bicycle Museum of America  in New Breman, Ohio,  one man was instrumental , the  Associated Press  reports:  James Dicke II , a forklift tycoon who snapped up 150 bicycles and other materials at a 1997 auction of the collection of the family behind the  Schwinn  bike company. But Dicke had help, of a kind: a willing seller,  Richard Schwinn , the founder’s great-grandson. The  AP  notes that Schwinn said at the time: “It’s hard to take care of this mess of stuff. We could put it in storage or we could sell it and I’m tired of storing it.” The rest is history.  [AP]