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Among our favorite finds at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, which wrapped up Tuesday at New York’s Javits Center, is the new Broom chair from Emeco and Philippe Starck. “It’s made of nothing,” says Starck. Well, almost. The latest addition to Hanover, Pennsylvania-based Emeco’s largely aluminum line-up consists of 75% reclaimed polypropylene, 15% reclaimed wood fiber, and 10% glass fiber—a new chair material composite derived from a compound of industrial waste from lumber factories and plastic plants. That’s where the sweeping up comes in. “Imagine a guy who takes a humble broom and starts to clean the workshop, and with this dust he makes new magic,” Starck says. “That’s why we call it ‘Broom.’” First shown last month at Salone Internazionale del Mobile di Milano, the chair is part of Emeco’s ongoing efforts toward zero-waste (remember that snappy variation on the 111 Navy Chair made from recycled plastic bottles?). “Philippe Starck and I have always agreed that it is not about recycling, but about restructuring production,” said Emeco CEO Gregg Buchbinder in a statement announcing the Broom chair. “Our aim is to prevent waste from being manufactured in the first place. Instead we use discarded materials to make things last.” Hear more from Starck in these three short films by Eames Demetrios, who as the grandson of Charles Eames knows a little something about chairs.

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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.

Hedge fun. The logo topiary at the Party in the Garden, hosted by the Museum of Modern Art.

• A new Diane Arbus biography? A new Diane Arbus biography! Journalist Arthur Lubow has inked a deal with Ecco to publish A Secret About a Secret: The Life of Diane Arbus. Word on the street (and by “the street,” we mean the deal report at Publishers Marketplace) is that the book “reveals the extraordinary facts of her life and explores the way she used her gift for intimacy to probe complex ideas about identity in a manner revolutionary to both her art and her time.” Tide yourself over by reading “Arbus Reconsidered,” Lubow’s 2003 piece in The New York Times Magazine, which ignites thusly: “‘Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby,’ Norman Mailer said after seeing how she had captured him, leaning back in a velvet armchair with his legs splayed cockily.”

• And speaking of colorful characters (monumental lips! glittering eyes!), the Cyclops Trannies are back. The colorful paint-marker portraits by assume vivid astro focus, exhibited earlier this year at New York gallery the Suzanne Geiss Company, are now available in book form. This evening (6-8 p.m.), Printed Matter hosts a reception and signing with the artists. Stop by the store anytime in the next week or so to check out two editioned neon works from avaf in the window. Next up, in June, is a window installation by book artist David Sandlin.

• Commencement season is in full swing, and the New York School of Interior Design celebrated its 175 graduates with the help of Amy Lau. The interior designer was the keynote speaker at Friday’s NYSID commencement ceremonies, where she received an honorary doctorate in fine arts along with Martha Stewart, Architectural Digest editor-in-chief Margaret Russell, and interior designer John Saladino.
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Time flies when you’re having fun with photos. It was almost four years ago that Hellman & Friedman acquired Getty Images—the world’s largest distributor of stock photos, video, and other digital content—in a take-private deal valued at $2.4 billion. Since the deal closed in July 2008, Getty Images has expanded its photographer grant program, partnered with Flickr on an imagery collection, launched a site devoted to stock photo rights, and tussled in court with a maker of car air fresheners. The company has also paid out a whopping $875 million in dividends, and now its private equity fund owner is fixin’ to cash out. According to a report in the Financial Times, Hellman & Friedman has retained bankers to examine a possible sale or public offering of Getty Images, with multiple sources valuing a sale or IPO at as much as $4 billion. News of the Getty exit plan comes days after KKR ponied up $150 million for a 50% stake in stock photography manager Fotolia, and Shutterstock filed for an IPO that could raise up to $115 million.

Dueling bathing beauties: Boo George traveled to Oslo to photograph Norway’s “It” couple, Iselin Steiro and Anders Danielson, for the cover of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. At left, George Hoyningen-Huene’s 1930 photograph “The Divers, Paris.”

• Got Polaroids? The Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, in connection with MIT and London-based publisher Thames & Hudson, is at work on a major project on Polaroid photography. Slated to open at MIT in late 2015 and then travel internationally, the show will cover Polaroid-related art, science, and technology. “This is a call for submissions,” William A. Ewing, who is curating the art aspects of the project with Barbara Hitchcock, told The Art Newspaper recently. “It demands the best of the best material. This is not a community project, we want the stuff that can hold its own against the art of the period—and it was a long period, from 1950 to 1990.” Deborah Douglas and Gary Van Zante are in charge of the project’s science and technology aspects.

• Five finalists have been selected for the Urban Land Institute‘s Urban Open Space Award, a competition that recognizes “an outstanding example of a well-used public open space that has spurred regeneration and the transformation of its surrounding community.” Two NYC projects—the High Line and Pier 25 at Tribeca Section in Hudson River Park—made the final five, along with Railroad Park (Birmingham, Alabama), RiverWalk Urban Waterfront Calgary, Alberta), and Tanner Springs Park (Portland, Oregon). The winner, to be announced in October, will receive a $10,000 cash prize, and if we know this group, they’ll blow it all on bulbs and shrubs.

• Author and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman delivered the commencement address and picked up an honorary doctorate at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Among his advice for the graduates: make mistakes. “If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something,” said Gaiman last Thursday. “And the mistakes in themselves can be useful. I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter, transposing the ‘a’ and the ‘o,’ and I thought, ‘Coraline looks like a real name…’” Watch the full speech (his first-ever university commencement address) here.

• Event designer extraordinaire David Stark has taken to the web in his search for a star intern. He has partnered with Apartment Therapy on its “Design is not Taught” contest. In addition to a three-month internship with David Stark Design and Production, the winner will have the opportunity chance to work with Stark one-on-one to edit and curate his or her portfolio. The intern’s final project? To single-handedly design Apartment Therapy’s holiday party. Click here for details.
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Buy design. Goods for sale at the new online home of the Shop at Cooper-Hewittt.

Whether you’re in the market for a hollowed-out half dollar, a megaphone-shaped iPhone speaker, a “living necklace,” a magazine designed to double as stunning wrapping paper, or a silicone-filled ostrich egg (Father’s Day gift alert!), the new Shop at Cooper-Hewitt has something for you. With its physical home in the throes of a $64 million renovation, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is expanding into new realms, from Governor’s Island (where on Saturday, it will open the highly anticipated “Graphic Design—Now in Production” exhibition) to cyberspace. It’s the digital realm where the museum has relaunched its famously well-curated shop, overseen by newly appointed director of retail Robert Nachman. The Cooper-Hewitt tapped Marque Creative to design the new site, which features seamless checkout, integrated member discounting, and enhanced search capabilities. “A true design destination for online consumers, the Shop offers a selection of works by established and emerging designers that will surprise, delight, and inspire,” said associate director Caroline Baumann in a statement announcing the relaunch. Plus, shop purchases are sales-tax exempt and all proceeds go to support the museum’s educational goals and mission—as if you needed more reasons to splurge on a hand-beaded Hella Jongerius bowl.

“Ladies and gentlemen, design is a popular subject today. No wonder, because in the face of increasing competition, design is often the only product differentiation that is truly discernible to the buyer.” That this sentiment came from Dieter Rams comes as no surprise. What’s striking is the date of his remarks, delivered to an audience at Jack Lenor Larsen‘s New York showroom in December 1976. He ended on a cautionary note: “I imagine our current situation will cause future generations to shudder at the thoughtlessness in the way in which we today fill our homes, our cities, and our landscape with a chaos of assorted junk,” said Rams. “What a fatalistic apathy we have towards the effect of such things. What atrocities we have to tolerate. Yet we are only half aware of them.” The full transcript of this disturbingly prescient speech is now available online thanks to Vitsœ, for whom Rams designed the eminently modular 606 Universal Shelving System in 1960. The big occasion is the legendary designer’s birthday: he was born 80 years ago today in Wiesbaden, Germany. Celebrate by treating yourself to Sophie Lovell‘s masterful monograph Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible (published last year by Phaidon) or a gorgeous poster of Rams’ famous “Ten Principles for Good Design,” available exclusively from Fab.com.

Can you hear me, Major Tom? The instructions that greet visitors to Tom Sachs’ “Space Program: Mars,” which lifts off today at the Park Avenue Armory. (Photo: UnBeige)

• Design Hunting is now on newsstands, just in time for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. The new stand-alone home design title from the publishers of New York magazine and tireless design huntress (and New York design editor) Wendy Goodman is stuffed with lush photos of eye-popping dwellings—from a dentist’s office-turned-studio to an indoor treehouse—as well as advice from industry experts and a handy-dandy guide to NYC design resources. Three versions of the cover (red, yellow, and blue), photographed by Hannah Whitaker, are being randomly distributed.

• The Society of Illustrators will add eight members to its illustrious (ha!) hall of fame this year. The eight artists to be recognized for their “distinguished achievement in the art of illustration” are contemporary illustrators R.O. Blechman, John Collier, and Nancy Stahl, along with posthumous honorees Ludwig Bemelmans, Edward Gorey, and John Sloan. Elected by former presidents of the Society, the hall of fame recipients will be honored at a dinner and induction ceremony on June 22.

• The New York Photo Festival kicks off this evening with a opening preview and a reception featuring a guest set by DJ Spooky, who is contributing “Dumbo ice floes” to the festival as part of his Book of Ice-themed project (in October, he starts a year-long residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Other must-see exhibitions include curator Glenn Ruga‘s “On the Razor’s Edge: Between Documentary and Fine Art Photography,” which features the work of Bruce Davidson, Reza, Platon, Rina Castelnuovo, and Eugene Richards. The festival opens to the public tomorrow.

Marina Abramović and OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu with a model of the Marina Abramović Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art (Photo: OMA / Loren Wohl)

Artist Marina Abramović began her Met Gala Monday in Queens, inside MoMA PS1′s geodesic Performance Dome, where she detailed her plans to transform a crumbling old theater in Hudson, New York into the Marina Abramović Institute for the Preservation for Performance Art (MAI for short). Hours later, having sharpened up her all-black ensemble, she was striding up the red carpet at the Metropolitan Museum of the Art on the arm of James Franco. “Today is a big day for me,” she told the morning assembly of press, curators, critics, and friends after a warm introduction by PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach. “In the life of an artist, it’s very important to think of the future. When you die, you can’t leave anything physical—that doesn’t make any sense—but a good idea can last a long, long time.”

Her good idea is to channel 40 years worth of pioneering performance art into a living archive-cum-laboratory that will explore “time-based and immaterial art,” including performance, dance, theater, film, video, opera, and music. The focus will be on “long-duration” performances, those lasting for between six hours and…forever. “Only long-duration works of art have a serious potential to change the viewer looking at it and also the performer in doing it, because the performance that is long becomes more and more like life itself,” she said. “There’s no division between normal daily activity and the performance. This is what I experienced especially at my [2010] performance at MoMA, which was three months long. That really changed me mentally, physically, in many other ways.”

(Rendering: OMA)

Abramović commissioned OMA to transform the crumbling theater that she acquired in 2007 into a space for training artists and audiences alike. “It has an interesting level of decay,” said OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu, pointing out a rotted column and ghostly baselines from the building’s post-theater incarnation as an indoor tennis court. “The project has to house a very specific program of long-duration performance, so the first thing we decided to do was insert a very monastic box inside that can house many things. It’s actually slightly bigger than the tennis court, so you can still play tennis if you wanted to.”
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I’ve got no strings. Maurizio Cattelan’s “Daddy Daddy” (2008), which sold for $2.5 million this evening at Phillips de Pury in New York.

• Congratulations are in order for Michael Silverberg, who has been named editor-in-chief of Print. In addition to the magazine, he’ll direct content for the regional design annual competition, Imprint, and Print Books. Silverberg previously served as managing editor of Print.

• Entertainment Weekly is getting a new design director: Kory Kennedy. He’s held the same role at Runner’s World for the past six years and previously worked his design magic for publications such as Spin, Rolling Stone, Interview, and Sports Illustrated. Kennedy starts at EW on May 30.

• The juries have spoken, and on Tuesday evening, the Art Directors Club celebrated the winners of its 91st annual awards at a cocktail-laden gala in New York emceed by John Boiler of 72andSunny. Pulling off the elusive three-peat were a couple of hometown favorites, The New York Times Magazine and the School of Visual Arts, which won the cumulative awards honor in their respective categories (ADC Design Team of the Year and ADC School of the Year) for the third year in a row. Click here for the full listing of winners or better yet, stop by the ADC 91st Annual Awards Exhibition, which opened today at the ADC Gallery and is on view through May 24.
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Show the world your love of architecture with a t-shirt that supports Architecture for Humanity.

• Can you believe graduation season is upon us? Pratt Institute holds its commencement—the 123rd in its history—this afternoon at Radio City Music Hall. In addition to approximately 1,300 bachelor’s and master’s degrees, honorary degrees will be awarded to artist Ai Weiwei (he’ll accept his doctorate of fine arts via video feed), architect Santiago Calatrava, patron of the arts and education Kathryn C. Chenault, and Philippe de Montebello, director emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Fiske Kimball Professor at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. Calatrava will deliver the commencement remarks.

• The Met Ball wasn’t the only black-tie event in town on Monday. Over at Avery Fisher Hall, the focus was on food, not fashion, as Alton Brown emceed the James Beard Foundation awards gala. In the restaurant design category, Bentel & Bentel triumphed for their overhaul of famed Le Bernardin, while graphic gourmand Richard Pandiscio took home the Outstanding Restaurant Graphics medal for his work for the Americano at Hotel Americano. Meanwhile, Jeff Scott‘s two-volume, 900-page Notes from a Kitchen: A Journey Inside Culinary Obsession (Tatroux) was named best photography book.

• And speaking of kitchens, artist and kitchen semiotician Martha Rosler is preparing for her first solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and it’s a doozy. Come mid-November, she’ll transform the museum’s atrium into a giant “meta-monumental” garage sale. That’s where you come in: the general public is invited to donate items—clothes, books, records, toys, costume jewelry, artworks, mementos—for Rosler to sell. Click here for the schedule and collection locations for donations. Why not seize the opportunity to get your artwork into a MoMA show?
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