THE ART GUYS GO TO THE LIBRARY 
A Swamplot reader says that the eponymous live oak (shown at right) in “The Art Guys Marry a Plant,” acquired by the Menil Collection in 2011, has been uprooted from Menil Park. Art Guy Jack Massing “didn’t want to say where the tree has gone,” reports the Houston Chronicle: “‘We’ve got it all taken care of,’ he said.” Instead, he wanted to talk about the Art Guys’ 30 years of working together; they’re planning “12 Events:” a year of once-a-month “behaviors” beginning on January 23 with a marathon autograph session at the Julia Ideson Library on McKinney: “They see signatures as something both basic and profound that’s evolved from the simplest mark making — drawing a line — into a legally-binding expression of identity. ‘People say they can’t draw, yet they have a signature. It’s a way of drawing your identity with a linguistic connection so you can be relevant in the world,’ Massing said. ‘It’s simple and basic, and yet incredibly profound.'” [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Robert Boyd
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Menil Collection
BREAKING UP WITH THE ART GUYS Will the newest installation at the Menil Collection be a hole in the ground? The Art Guys were told last week that the museum intends to remove the live oak they “married” in 2009 in “The Art Guys Marry a Plant,” a public ceremony at the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden at the MFA,H. The museum acquired the tree in 2011 and held another public ceremony when it was planted in Menil Park on Branard St.; the little site (shown at right) backs up to the bamboo grove walling off the park from the Rothko Chapel and Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk.” [Houston Press] Photo: Robert Boyd
L.A. architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee will be the designers of the Menil Collection’s new Drawing Institute building, the organization’s board announced late yesterday. Their firm, Johnston Marklee, beat out Tatiana Bilbao, SANAA, and David Chipperfield Architects for the commission. The exact location for the building hasn’t been decided yet, though a Menil spokesperson previously told Swamplot the southern portion of the campus (depicted above in a Johnston Marklee graphic) was likely, and the Menil’s description of the LA firm’s design proposal makes it clear it’ll be long and thin: “a single-story, metal-roofed structure . . . built around a trio of courtyards.”
Where exactly on the Menil Collection campus in Montrose will the new 18,000-sq.-ft. Drawing Institute building be built? That’s for one of 4 architecture firms to decide. The organization announced late yesterday that Mexico City architect Tatiana Bilbao, LA’s Johnston Marklee, 2010 Pritzker Prize winner SANAA from Tokyo, and Menil master plan designer David Chipperfield Architects are the finalists to get the commission. Chipperfield’s 2009 plan for the campus doesn’t dictate a particular site for the new structure, which will combine exhibition areas, offices, storage, and conservation space for the Menil’s growing collection of drawings. But a Menil spokesperson tells Swamplot that the southern portion of the campus is a likely location, and that the building’s footprint “will be similar to that of the Twombly Gallery.”
- Menil Collection plans new building for Drawing Institute; four architecture firms named as finalists [Culturemap]
- 4 vying to design Menil building [Houston Chronicle]
- Previously on Swamplot: The Menil Looks at Richmond
Photo of Richmond Hall and Richmont Square Apartments on Richmond Ave: Raj Mankad
THE HOUSEWRAP RED CARPET TREATMENT 
“Tina McPherson, whose day job is as the supervisor of the William R. Jenkins Art and Architecture Library at U.H., . . . conducted interviews of arriving guests (pretty much anyone who came through) similar to those red-carpet interviews one might see on awards shows or celebrity-oriented shows. I’ve always thought it was weird how the backdrop to these interviews would be wallpaper printed with copies of corporate and/or product logos. iPageant parodied this tendency by putting up Tyvek, the super-strong water-proof paper that home builders use to cover the wooden balloon framing of modern houses. Tyvek has its logo printed in a regular pattern, making Tyvek paper perfect for a red-carpet backdrop. McPherson treated everyone who came in as if they were a celebrity, whose answers to her repetitious questions were actually worth hearing. This went out live on the closed-circuit feed.” — Robert Boyd, describing artist Dennis Harper‘s homey one-night performance last month at The Joanna, across the street from the Menil Collection’s Byzantine Fresco Chapel. [The Great God Pan Is Dead] Photo: The Joanna
CY TWOMBLY, 1928-2011 
Famed scribbler and smudger Cy Twombly died earlier today in Rome after a battle with cancer. He was 83. A ceiling painting created by the shy former army cryptologist for the Louvre opened to the public just last year. In 1995, a permanent exhibition of his works opened in Renzo Piano’s quiet addition to the Menil Collection at 1501 Branard St. in Montrose. [Arts Beat] Photo: Stephen Bridges
DOES THIS MEAN THEY’RE GONNA START CHARGING FOR ADMISSION? Writer and filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer gives architecture the U.S. News & World Report treatment, asking a bunch of “experts” to name the world’s most important buildings, monuments, or bridges: “Even though the 52 respondents were greatly varied—ranging from Frank Gehry to Hank Dittmar, the head of Prince Charles’s very conservative architectural foundation—V.F. could not have imagined what a crapshoot such a poll would turn out to be. For the five greatest works constructed since 1980, the Guggenheim Bilbao received 28 votes. The next favorite, the Menil Collection, received only 10. Zumthor’s baths [in Vals, Switzerland] received 9 votes. Foster’s HSBC Building received 7. Four buildings were tied for fifth place, with 6 votes: Koolhaas’s Seattle Central Library, Toyo Ito’s Mediatheque building, Tadao Ando’s Church of the Light, and the late James Stirling’s Neue Staatsgalerie. Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial received 5 votes. Three buildings followed with 4 votes: Rogers’s Lloyd’s Building, Foster’s Millau Viaduct, and Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, in Berlin. The rest of the votes were scattered over 120 buildings, most of them cited only once. Two voters indicated that there was virtually nothing new worth voting for.” [Vanity Fair]
The Richmont Square apartments on Richmond Ave. get knocked down in the new master plan for the Menil Collection campus. Speaking at a public forum last night, British architect David Chipperfield referred to the Menil’s big multifamily property as “this thing getting in our way.”
Cite magazine’s Raj Mankad describes more details of the Chipperfield plan:
The car park along Alabama would be strengthened with the new bookshop, cafe, and auditorium nearby. The key change would be to connect West Main across the site [to Yupon] through the area occupied by the northern end of Richmont Square. The complete street grid would surround a new green space that would also be made possible by the clearing of the north side of the apartments. It would connect, slightly off axis, with the current Menil park between the main building and the Rothko. The Drawing Institute and Study Center and Single Artist Studios would be sited around the new green space. And along Richmond itself, the plan calls for dense residential and commercial development.
