mark your calendar

Less than a month stands between you and Dwell on Design, a veritable feast of modern design in the form of thousands of products, oodles of presentations, modern home tours, and demonstrations galore. This year’s three-day celebration, “Modern Beyond Expectations,” takes place June 22-24 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, where Dwell has taken an additional 60,000 square feet of exhibition space. Among the highlights in store for the event’s seventh go-round are an exhibition of the best in Swiss design, an original installation by Oyler Wu Collaborative, and a screening lounge that will show films such as Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island and Hella Jongerius: Contemporary Archetypes. Featured speakers include Miami architect Chad Oppenheim, who will discuss the life-enhancing power of houses, and prefab innovator Mitchell Joachim of ONE Lab. The Brooklyn-based architect and TED fellow will speak about cities and how we think about all kinds of urban scale simultaneously. “Cities are always shifting and their smallest components can have the greatest implications,” says Joachim. “I call it ‘from the doorknob to the democracy.’”

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

“Outlaws and Icons” is the theme of this year’s Gravity Free design conference, which kicks off tomorrow at Chicago’s Spertus Institute. The multidisciplinary affair brings together disparate design stars, from Chip Kidd and Brian Collins to Rafael de Cárdenas and Margie Ruddick. Jonathan Alger of C&G Partners will be on hand to moderate, probe, and query. And the big finish? A Wednesday afternoon keynote address by George Lois. Register here.

Back in New York City, the month of May brings flowers and the Parsons Festival, 20 spring days worth of exhibitions, symposia, panel discussions, critiques, and special projects that celebrate the next generation of artists and designers. There are graduate shows a-plenty, beginning with tomorrow’s fashion benefit honoring designer Donna Karan and entrepreneur Sheila C. Johnson.

On Wednesday, all eyes will be on the D-Critters at the School of Visual Arts as the MFA Design Criticism program presents “Eventually Everything,” its third annual conference. Change Observer co-editor Julie Lasky will moderate a day of presentations from the likes of media historian Stuart Ewen, Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, and the whipsmart student speakers. MFA candidate Anna Kealey’s talk sound particularly tasty. “I’ll be presenting my thesis topic ‘Unpacking the Pastoral Food Package,’” she tells us, “which discusses the role designers have played in perpetuating myths about how food is produced in the United States.” Yum! And save room for talks from her classmates, who’ll tackle topics including the implications of Anthropologie and the AK-47.

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “Mmm. Donuts.” Splurge on L.A.’s finest (we’re partial to the sprinklebombs from Blinkie’s Donut Emporium) this weekend as ForYourArt opens its new activity space at 6020 Wilshire Blvd. with “Around the Clock: 24 Hour Donut City,” a tasty celebration that runs simultaneously with LACMA‘s 24-hour screening of “The Clock” by Christian Marclay. ForYourArt promises “a curated selection” of (free!) donuts beginning at noon on Saturday. Look sharp for the chocolate custard puff, as the selection will change every two hours. We hear that more enduring donuts will also be on offer, in the form of 1,000 pins made from Kenny Scharf’s donut paintings. The artist’s zippy donutmobile will be parked outside ForYourArt all weekend.

Meanwhile, here in New York, we suggest hitting up the Maison du Macaron en route to Saturday’s SVA/BBC Design Film Festival, a slate of groundbreaking BBC films that have never been screened in the United States. Curated by the all-seeing Steven Heller along with D-Crit faculty member Adam Harrison Levy, the festival includes films on topics such as the history of the Barcelona chair, the future of the book, and the real life stories that inspired Mad Men (yes, George Lois will be there). The $15 run-of-the-festival tickets are going fast, so grab one here.

Once you’ve recovered from the weekend’s dessert-themed cinematic adventures, head over to Steelcase’s New York HQ, which on Wednesday, March 28, plays host to the State of Design, an annual fundraising event organized by our friends at Metropolis and the Education Legacy Fund. The evening of “open, constructive dialogue about what shapes twenty-first century design and how designers respond to our evolving culture” will feature a conversation with health policy guru Ruth Finkelstein (New York Academy of Medicine) and Quest to Learn founder Katie Salen (DePaul University) moderated by Metropolis editor-in-chief Susan Szenasy. Learn more and register here.
Read more

Despite rumors that it is a fading art, architectural criticism continues to play an important role in the field, but what is that role, exactly? New York’s Center for Architecture, AIANY, and The Architect’s Newspaper are determined to find out this evening in a critic-stuffed panel, the first in a four-part series on Architecture and the Media. The marvelous Julie Iovine will moderate what promises to be a stimulating discussion among Paul Goldberger (The New Yorker), Justin Davidson (New York), Cathleen McGuigan (Architectural Record), and James Russell (Bloomberg). Details and tickets await you here.

Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Paul Holdengraber walk into a library… The architect and ubercurator sit down with the New York Public Library’s resident interlocutor/impresario on March 8 to talk Metabolism with a capital “M.” The trio will discuss Koolhaas and Obrist’s new Taschen tome Project Japan, part oral history and part documentation of Japan’s radical mode of nation building. Among the topics they’ll tackle: how an activist state mobilized its best talents and meticulously planned the future of its cities, how the media adopted the architect as a serious agent of social change (think anti-starchitect). Snap up your tickets here.

March is shaping up to be a good month for Kehinde Wiley. Look for the artist’s work to be front and center at Sean Kelly’s Armory Show booth (March 8-11) just as New York’s Jewish Museum debuts 14 large-scale paintings from his newest series, “The World Stage: Israel,” complete with hand-carved wooden frames designed by Wiley. On Thursday, March 15, he’ll take the museum’s stage to discuss the work with Lola Ogunnaike. Learn more here.

Right up there on our list of favorite things are Steven Heller and documentary films, and the two come together in the SVA/BBC Design Film Festival. Here’s your chance to view groundbreaking BBC films that have never previously been screened in the United States. The ridiculously solid program includes films on topics such as the history of the Barcelona chair, the future of the book, and the real life stories that inspired Mad Men (yes, George Lois will be there!). Curated by the all-seeing Heller along with D-Crit faculty member Adam Harrison Levy, the festival takes place Saturday, March 24, at the SVA Theatre. The $15 run-of-the-festival tickets are sure to go faster than you can say “BBC Heaven,” (see below) so grab one here.
Read more

Shepard Fairey does Dallas! The street artist is making his mark on The Big D with a series of murals that will be unveiled tomorrow. The citywide project is sponsored by Dallas Contemporary, which is celebrating with an “over-the-top, neon-inspired” Saturday night dance party (fingers crossed for glowsticks!). Fairey will balance DJing duties with signing merch from the on-site OBEY pop-up shop. Meanwhile, the Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas are organizing an art bus tour for next Saturday, February 11. Stops include the current Rob Pruitt, David Jablonowski, and Failure exhibitions at Dallas Contemporary, several of the Fairey murals, and a studio visit with Dallas-based graffiti crew Sour Grapes. Don’t miss the bus: tickets are going fast here.

Lately we’ve been sleeping with a copy of Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee’s wondrous Alexander Girard mega-monograph under our pillow, and next Tuesday, February 14, Pratt Institute welcomes the delightful Oldham for a lecture on all things Girard, from his iconic textile designs for Herman Miller and branding and environmental design for Braniff International Airways to his celebrated retail store Textiles and Objects and folk art-stuffed Girard Foundation. The 6 p.m. lecture is free and open to the public, but Pratt students get first dibs on seats.

As part of its burgeoning “Fashion at FIAF” programming, our friends at the French Institute Alliance Francaise here in New York have invited agnès b. (née Agnès Andrée Marguerite Troublé) to curate a month-long series of films that have most influenced her life and career as a designer, photographer, and more recently as a film producer and director. Among her picks are Godard‘s Vivre Sa Vie and Pierrot le Fou, while Valentine’s Day revelers can be transported to St. Tropez at one of three V-Day screenings of …And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot. The fashionable French fun kicks off on Tuesday, when agnès b. will appear in person to present the first film in the series, The Crime of Monsieur Lange, directed by Jean “Yes, he’s my dad” Renoir. Buy your tickets here.

Art and design fans have much to look forward to in the coming weeks. Here are our picks of the latest and greatest not-to-be-missed events in NYC:

What’s more fun that art forgery? A talk about the colorful history of art forgery by Milton Esterow. The ARTnews editor and publisher takes to the stage tomorrow evening at 92nd St Y for “Fakes, Frauds, and Fake Fakers” (we adore that title), a sure-to-be-fascinating look at how forgers have created convincing imitations of masterpieces, as well as works that mimic the styles of great artists, duping collectors, dealers, and even the experts themselves. Don’t bother trying to forge a ticket to this talk; buy a real one here.

On Monday, January 30, Moleskine hosts an evening of interactive portrait-making at Exit Art. Stop by the reception (6-9 p.m.) to “explore the many ways to capture a portrait using Moleskine objects” with featured artists including Emilie Baltz and Nathan Sensel. Text-portraits, sound-portraits, taste-portraits, photo-portraits, and more are promised. RSVP here to be sure that your name in their little black (guest) book.

Cooper-Hewitt director Bill Moggridge kicks off a new year of Bill’s Design Talks with a tribute to Eva Zeisel, who died a few weeks ago at the age of 105. Joining Moggridge on February 9 at The Greene Space will be art critic Jed Perl (The New Republic) and the designing duo of James Klein and David Reid (KleinReid), who collaborated with Zeisel on a series of ceramics and prints. Register here to attend. There will be also be a live webcast.

But back to people named “Milton”! On February 16, Milton Glaser comes to Brooklyn’s terrific powerHouse Arena for an exclusive discussion and signing of his new book In Search of the Miraculous (Overlook). A $10 ticket saves you $10 off the price of the book, in which Glaser highlights work, largely created by him over the last five years, to demonstrate how one concept leads to another. Bring on the fascinating juxtapositions.
Read more

Stimulation is always in store with the Guggenheim’s annual Hilla Rebay lecture, an endowed program named for the Strasbourg-born baroness and artist who made her mark as Solomon Guggenheim’s art advisor and curator. The twenty-fourth annual lecture is set for the evening of January 11 (admission is free, but get there early to stake out a seat) and has a distinct design angle, as Tom McDonough, associate professor and chair of art history at Binghamton University, will discuss the prominent role of typography in contemporary art. “The Artist as Typographer” will highlight the work of artists such as Dexter Sinister (the design and publishing collaborative’s 2010 unpronounceable glyph, “A skeleton, a script, or a good idea in advance of its realization,” is pictured at right) Shannon Ebner, and Janice Kerbel. Learn more here.

As any pensive puppet frog will tell you, it’s not easy being green—unless you have access to Diana Balmori. The landscape and urban designer works at the interface of nature and structure (to wit: Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture, written with Joel Sanders and freshly published by Monacelli). Her New York-based firm continues to push the boundaries with innovative green roofs, floating islands, and temporary landscapes that get people talking in more ways than one. On Tuesday, November 15, Balmori will be the one doing the talking, as she sits down for a conversation with Peter Reed, MoMA’s senior deputy director of curatorial affairs, at 92nd Street Y. She will show slides of her work, discuss the role of landscape in today’s cities, and explain her vision of life-enhancing design. Tickets are available here, and you can save 25% off by entering discount code UNBEIGE11.

What with the sluggish economy and soaring airfares, our passport hasn’t seen the light of day for some time and is now threatening to sell its Smythson case on eBay. Our heady days of 4 a.m. gift shopping sprees at Keflavik International Airport may be a thing of the past, but The New Yorker is helping us feel better about the passport atrophy. This Saturday, November 12, is the magazine’s seventh annual Passport to the Arts, a gallery crawl, evening cocktail reception, and silent auction to benefit the CUE Art Foundation. A ticket ($45 here) gets you a “limited-edition passport” that each of the 18—and counting—SoHo and Chelsea galleries on the self-guided tour will stamp with a replica of a featured work of art. And with a list of participating galleries that includes David Zwirner (make the breathtaking Michaël Borremans exhibition your first stop), Jack Shainman, and Zach Feuer, this year’s Passport to the Arts promises to be quite a trip.

Home to the Temple of Dendur, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Sackler Wing was added as part of Kevin Roche’s masterplan for the museum.

Don’t miss “Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment.” On view through January 22 at the Museum of the City of New York (following its debut earlier this year at the Yale School of Architecture), it’s the first retrospective exhibition of the Pritzker Prize winner’s work, which includes the Ford Foundation Building, the master plan and extension of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum in California, and the Union Carbide World Corporate Headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut. The museum is also offering three unique opportunities to get up close and personal with the Dublin-born principal of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates.

The architectural fun begins next Tuesday evening, as speakers Todd DeGarmo (CEO STUDIOS Architecture), Belmont Freeman (Belmont Freeman Architects), and critic Alexandra Lange consider Roche’s work from the inside out, by focusing on his innovative corporate office interiors for the likes of John Deere and Company. On December 6, Roche himself will be on hand to chat with Morrison Heckscher, chairman of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about the design, realization, and reception of Roche’s plan for the museum. The architect returns on January 10 to tackle the topic of “The Limitations of Modernism: Classical Forms in the Buildings of Kevin Roche” in the company of curators Donald Albrecht and Kyle Johnson as well as Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, an associate professor at the Yale School of Architecture. UnBeige readers can save 50% off the regular ticket price of $12: use code Roche2011 when ordering here.