With its imminent move downtown to new Renzo Piano-designed digs, the Whitney Museum of American Art decided that its graphic identity was also in need of an overhaul. And so it’s out with Abbott Miller‘s 13-year-old wordmark (which, like a fine wine, would only have gotten better with age) and in with a…spindly, shape-shifting line? The new identity, created by Amsterdam-based Experimental Jetset and unveiled today along with the museum’s redesigned website, is an anti-logo: lacking distinction, gravitas, and the ability to be seen from across a room. The “responsive ‘W’,” intended to dynamically “illustrate the museum’s ever-changing nature” with an elastic take on the letter “W,” is paired with a redrawn version of Neue Haas Grotesk, in all caps. With an infinite array of options, the identity can evoke the work of Dexter Sinister or Lawrence Weiner, the slanting logo of W magazine, or a line graph that got lost in a museum on its way to a sales report. But mostly, it leaves us wondering, Why?

• Those in New York have plenty to keep them busy this weekend, as NYCxDESIGN rolls on and ICFF arrives. Whether you’re in Manhattan or Mumbai, Saturday is International Museum Day, an annual initiative of the International Council of Museums to encourage public awareness of the role of museums in the development of society. This year’s theme is “Museums (memory + creativity) = social change,” a nod to ICOM’s partnership with the UNESCO Memory of the World Program. Check out what some North American institutions have planned for International Museum Day here.

• The Association of Art Museum Directors is also seizing the Museum Day momentum. The organization is encouraging its members to offer free admission and special programs on Saturday for Art Museum Day. See if your favorite museum is participating by consulting the AAMD’s latest list.

• All that museumgoing sure works up an appetite. Depatures highlights some extraordinary museum restaurants around the world. Please pass the “whipped casein with strawberry-and-violet ice cream,” a specialty at the Guggenheim Bilbao’s Nerua.

• Where in the world are the best university museums? Consult this new ranking of the 30 Most Amazing University Museums. Created by Best Colleges Online, the international list is based on qualities such as architecture, depth of resources and collections, and activity as a learning and teaching resource for the surrounding community.

There’s more to the Met this spring than PUNK. Writer Nancy Lazarus headed up to the roof.

(Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

And how many rains must fall before the stains are washed clean? This question, posed by Pakistani poet Salima Hashmi, is at the heart of Imran Quereshi‘s latest work, created for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s roof garden. “This is an open space, and there will be lots of rain, so we’ll see what happens,” noted the artist.

During a rooftop museum press conference on Monday morning, the brisk weather cooperated, with partly sunny skies. But the theme of global violence and regeneration still casts a dark cloud over Qureshi’s artwork, on view through November 3.

Born in Hyderabad and now based in Lahore, Qureshi said he worked with the color red more as a political statement than to depict blood, but that changed in 2010, after a suicide bombing in his neighborhood. “When I saw TV images after the bombing, the area had transformed into a bloody landscape within seconds. I was thinking, how could a landscape full of life change so quickly? For me, this altered the meaning and symbolism of the color red.”

The artist specializes not only in expansive installations but also in miniature paintings in the style of the Mughal court. He said he’s fascinated by the New York City skyline, and for him the rooftop perspective reminds him of landscapes and miniature paintings.

Assistant curator Ian Alteveer said it took Qureshi about ten days, including breaks, to create his roof garden work. The artist used high-grade acrylic, rich in pigment and waterproof, so it did withstand the monsoon-like rains of the past weekend.
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• Munich’s Lenbachhaus museum reopened Wednesday with a Norman Foster-designed extension to the original building, a villa that once belonged to the artist Franz von Lenbach. The €59.4 million ($77.7 million) renovation includes a new room for the world’s largest collection of Blaue Reiter works as well as a new Ólafur Elíasson installation in the lobby.

• With the help of Christian Marclay‘s “The Clock,” the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is counting down the days until it closes its doors to the public on June 2 to prepare for construction on its major expansion. Now comes word that the museum has raised its fundraising goal to to $610 million from $555 million. The additional funds will allow SFMOMA to pursue three goals: to become a national leader in digital engagement, to pursue an expanded art commissioning program in the museum’s public spaces, and to increase accessibility to the museum, according to a statement issued Wednesday.

• Wondering how SFMOMA’s expansion will be reflected in its new visual identity? Get the scoop from the museum’s design director, Jennifer Sonderby, who is speaking at HOW Design Live, which gets underway on June 22 in San Francisco.

• ‘Tis the season for refreshed European galleries. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has just opened a sumptuous suite of five galleries, including the newly renovated Art of the Netherlands in the 17th Century Gallery and the Alan and Simone Hartman Galleries, which showcase art from Great Britain. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art follows suit later this month, with the May 23 reopening of its renovated and reinstalled collection of European Old Master paintings from the 13th through the early 19th century.
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Toilets and urinals aren’t typical fodder for red-carpet conversation, but stall talk dominated on Monday evening as galagoers ascended the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in ensembles that ranged from clownish to sublime. Guests were buzzing about the recreated CBGB bathroom (pictured) that is among the first things visitors encounter in the museum’s “PUNK: Chaos to Couture” exhibition, which opens to the public tomorrow. The cave-like space, scrawled with circa-1975 graffiti, is adjacent to monitors playing a looped selection of films and footage–of Blondie, the Ramones, Patti Smith, and Television–selected by Nick Knight and edited by Ruth Hogben.

“We’ve had great [design] moments in punk, but I’ve very excited about the urinal–a urinal at the Met!” said André Leon Talley at Monday’s gala. “According to Patti Smith, punk began in a urinal downtown somewhere that I never went to, so I’m excited to see that.” The Vogue veteran was dressed in an elaborately embroidered cape–think Joseph’s technicolor dreamcoat meets MacKenzie-Childs–designed for him by Tom Ford. “I love this coat and I don’t consider it punk. I just consider it appropriate for this occasion,” said Talley with a chuckle. “I said to Anna [Wintour], I didn’t do punk. I skipped punk and went straight to couture.”

“I’m just so fascinated with what the approach to theme will be–is it about a punk attitude? Is it about the specific time period referred to as punk? I think there are a lot of mysteries to be unveiled. And we can use it as an excuse to spit inside the museum…just inside a cistern of some sort, any old Greek cisterns we might find.”

-The delightful Lena Dunham on her expectations for last night’s punk-themed Met Gala. She attended with Erdem Moralioglu, who designed her dress, complete with upper back-bearing “tattoo window.” The two had a transatlantic fitting via iPad. Added Dunham, “My dog ate a safety pin during the fitting, which is punk.”

The gleaming logo, spotlit on the exhibition’s title wall. At right, the cover of the exhibition catalogue, which includes prefaces by Richard Hell and John Lydon.

When it comes to punk, the graphics tend to get gritty–all ragey handwriting fonts and distressed stenciling–but while a hit of GO-RILLA or Kra Kra is sufficient to evoke a Sex Pistols state of mind or a Ramones-era DIY kerning moment, it doesn’t quite capture the sartorial chasm of “chaos to couture.” Enter Peter Saville, who created the exhibition logo for the “PUNK” exhibition organized by the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He used lettering by Paul Barnes to evoke the “coup d’état in youth culture” that was punk. “There has been very little liaison with the Met and the photograph on your site is the first time we have seen the logo actually in use,” Saville tells us. “The logo employs an irreverent use of 18th-century typefaces (by Fournier) in keeping with Nick Knight‘s briefing for the design of the show, which was Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution.”

Paola Antonelli, charmer of Stephen Colbert and the most curious of octopuses, will be honored this evening in New York by the MEDIUM Group. The art and commerce go-between is presenting Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design and director of research and development at the Museum of Modern Art, with an award in recognition of her curatorial achievements and contribution to contemporary culture. Hosting the “Cocktails and Curators” bash, a kind of Frieze kickoff, are Hannah Bronfman, Amani Olu, and Larry Ossei-Mensah. We’re not sure what the award consists of (perhaps a lifetime supply of Beefeater 24 Gin, the evening’s sponsor?), but might be suggest forgoing a traditional trophy in favor of a carbon-fiber “robo-fly”? “Hello, world’s smallest flying robot!” Antonelli tweeted recently of the insect-scale innovation, the subject of a newly published Science paper. “Where have you been all my life?”

Three muses of Ann Demeulemeester, crowned in ‘dos by Guido Palau. (Photo: UnBeige)

Elaborately studded leather jackets, leopard print pants, and neon pink fright wigs were on display this morning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art–and that was just among those who had gathered in the Sculpture Court for a press conference, where museum director Thomas Campbell, Moda Operandi’s Lauren Santo Domingo, Givenchy creative director Riccardo Tisci, and curator Andrew Bolton spoke briefly about the Costume Institute’s “PUNK: Chaos to Couture” exhibition, which opens to the public on Thursday.

“Punk’s legacy has had an enduring and pervasive influence on high fashion and on the broader culture, often to surprisingly beautiful effect,” said British-born Campbell, who when first hearing of Bolton’s idea for the exhibition flashed back to images of his youth and the King’s Road scene that is celebrated in one of seven second-floor galleries. Bolton explained that he did not set out to examine the history of punk but rather to focus on the impact of punk on haute couture and ready-to-wear.

“No other subcultural movement has had a greater or more enduring influence on the way we dress today,” said Bolton, as a black-clad photographer with long, pointy green fingernails snapped away, “and I wanted the exhibition to underscore punk’s continuing relevance.” Sneak a peek at the exhibition in the installation images below as you ready your webby knitwear and skull-printed accessories for this evening’s gala.
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The Museum of Modern Art made headlines when it began adding video games to its collection (the first 14 are on view in the “Applied Design” exhibition), and now the Museum of Fine Arts Boston is getting in the game. The MFA has partnered with comic book creator Stan Sakai, video game company HappyGiant, and Dark Horse Comics for a unique collaboration that equips a samurai rabbit living at the turn of 17th-century Japan with armor from “Samurai! Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection,” an exhibition on view through August 4 at the museum. The battle-ready bunny is Miyamoto Usagi, star of the Usagi Yojimbo (“Rabbit Bodyguard”) comic book series and the new Usagi Yojimbo: Way of the Ronin video game (a new comics collection is due out in July), and thanks to the MFA, he confronts a bonus level of the video game outfitted in a special suit of armor, helmet, and mask inspired by one in the “Samurai!” show. Players can unlock the special MFA level with a passcode posted at the museum. Download the game for free here.