On October 24, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens a special exhibition devoted to the legacy of departing director Philippe de Montebello. "The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions" will include approximately 300 works of art (including that remarkable little Duccio) from a total of more than 84,000—yes, 84,000—that were acquired during his tenure. Accompanying the show are all manner of videos, podcasts, and museum events that will feature de Montebello in conversation with critic Robert Hughes and chatting with Isabella Rossellini about "The Language of Love in the Italian Renaissance." But the real coup? A de Montebello-themed dinner.

When we heard that the Met's Trustees Dining Room would be "honoring Philippe de Montebello with a 'French Classics' tasting menu offered each weekend in October," we had to get the full scoop. The woman in charge of reservations at the dining room, an elegant spread on the fourth floor that is open only to museum members, told us that the four-course menu includes black angus steak tartare, pan-seared dorado, and roasted duck breast (with butternut squash and field mushrooms). And for dessert? As if we had to ask. It's creme brulee, of course, in a Tahitian vanilla that we hear was Gauguin's favorite.

Previously on UnBeige:

The US has had two bouts of Egyptian mania in the past hundred years. First was in the early 1920s, when King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered, leading to influence the art deco style. Later, it was the late 70s, which among other things resulted in perhaps Steve Martin's most famous song. So we can only sit and speculate as to what this third wave will bring, as the infamous King Tut exhibit returns to America (we're purposefully skipping over the fact that it was also here in 2005 and 2006, because that doesn't work into this narrative we've got cooking, or maybe it was just the warming up process). Starting out at the Dallas Museum of Art, where the exhibit just opened, it will then travel to two other, yet-to-be named cities, bringing with it both its cash cow heritage, a whole ton of curses that will likely involve frogs, and perhaps a new day in US trends. Here's a bit:

"Tut mania is back," said John Norman, president of Arts and Exhibitions International, an organizer of the exhibit.

The exhibit features about 130 objects -- more than twice the number in the 1970s show -- including more than 50 of Tut's burial objects such as a golden crown Howard Carter discovered still on the head of the mummy. About 80 objects from the tombs of other royals and those with connections to the royal family will also be on display.

The Tut death mask, a showstopper of the 1970s run, won't be displayed because it's no longer allowed out of Egypt. But David Silverman, national curator for the exhibit, said the show helps tell more of the story of Tut.

You've probably noticed that we, along with numerous other sites, have been talking about Le Corbusier a lot more than would traditionally be expected. This is, of course, due to the recent launch of the first exhibition on the famous architect in many years, located in the crypt of the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral in the UK. To give you a sense of the exhibit, we thought we'd offer up a quick rundown of the recent reviews, now that they're starting to trickle in. First up is the local press, the Liverpool Daily Press, which spends it's time talking to museum officials about the exhibit and describes what's there. It's interesting, but certainly short and sweet. For the real meat and potatoes, turn first to Jay Merrick's review in the Independent, which not just gets into detail about what exactly you're looking at, but into the significance of what it meant to Le Corbusier, his career, and the idea of "architecture as art" in general. If you're one for putting your brain cap on to do some thinking about these sorts of things, it's well worth your time. Finally, we turn to the one and only Edwin Heathcote, who muses on some similar terrain, but also focuses on delivering more of a review toward the end, saying that it's perfect for Corbusier fans, but really doesn't spend enough time focused on what happened after he'd died in 1965, both the cultish celebration of his work and the vilifying of it as well. In total, all well worth your time, and see how we either just saved you plane fare to the UK, or persuaded you to book a trip to go check it out? Either way: you're welcome.

(Photo: UnBeige)

Earlier this week, the New York branch of Sotheby's hosted "Creative Hong Kong," an exhibit organized by the Hong Kong Design Centre and highlighted by ten unique products born from collaborations between global brands and Hong Kong designers. Among the works on view were Eric Chan's ergonomically sound bamboo chair for Herman Miller and "Flora Banquet," a set of Royal Copenhagen dinnerware tailored for Chinese cuisine with graphic designer Kan Tai Keung's Chinese brushwork-influenced hybrid of painting and calligraphy. "Hong Kong design is characterized by its international perspective...the meeting of Eastern culture with Western culture," said Lorraine Justice, director of the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, at Monday's press briefing.

The opposites really attracted in architect and designer Chi-Wing Lo's "Stringless Pleasure" mini-stereo system for KEF (pictured above), which you'll recall as the British company that partnered with Ross Lovegrove on those lovely Muon speakers. Made of shimmering antique wood accented with jade buttons and dials, the sleek stereo fuses craftsmanship and innovation, east and west, natural and synthetic—and that, and shelf space (a clever way to ensure optimal spacing between wall and speaker)! "I think of it as the mussing link between a musical instrument and a contemporary hi-fi system," Lo told us. He further described his concept, designed to celebrate last year's tenth anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong to China, as "Hong Hong and China, bridged by sound." Click "continued..." for a closer look.

continued...

In his highly amusing 1971 manifesto on postcards, artist Tom Phillips breaks down the general categories of postcards, from "news from another planet" and "o châteaux, o saisons" to "pastoral/historical" and finally, "national cliché compendium," as exemplified in a card featuring a "kilted bagpiper in the heather seen through thistles with inset of haggis." Two new projects seize upon the power and enduring versatility of the postcard, even as the art of letter-writing is in its long-winded death throes. Writer and New Yorker editor Ben Greenman is using postcards to invite reader participation in his new book, a limited-edition, letterpress short story collection, while photographer and installation artist Zoe Leonard amassed thousands of vintage postcards of Niagara Falls for her upcoming exhibition at Dia:Beacon. The show takes its title from the terse message inscribed on one card: "You see I am here after all."

Slated for release in November, Greenman's Correspondences (Hotel St. George Press) promises "a bittersweet glimpse at the lost art of letter-writing, and the manner and means by which emotions are conveyed in that form." The book will also be an art object in itself; it is being hand-crafted by letterpress and design studio Blue Barnhouse as an unfolding chip-board casing with pockets for three accordion books. A fourth pocket contains a postcard that the reader can use to fill in the gaps in the collection's final story and send in for possible publication in future online and paperback editions of the book. Greenman has also brought his experimental "Postcard Project" online, where he has issued a call for postcards bearing literary fragments that will help to bring his story "fully to life."

continued...

© Estate Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

As Fashion Week transport options go, yellow cabs and black cars are the norm, but we're taking the eco-friendly, high-art high road and traveling to the Bryant Park tents and points south in the above creation of the late German artist Martin Kippenberger. "Worktimer" (1987) is a capacious pseudoauto crafted of steel that shares its minty-fresh, toothpastey hue with the famed Vitra-produced W.W. stool that Philippe Starck designed for Wim Wenders. And with those thoughtfully placed hooks to hold our attaché cases, who need headlights?

Once we're done with the Kippenbergermobile, it heads west, to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, where it will be prominently featured in the first major U.S. retrospective of Kippenberger's work. Titled "The Problem Perspective" (after a 1986 work from his No Problem paintings), the show opens September 21 and will assemble key bodies of work from 1977 to 1997, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs, posters, and books. "He leaves an exhaustive and challenging oeuvre, a few lifetimes of work in just 20 years, with numerous trails of associations that will take many years and many exhibitions to unfold," writes exhibition curator Ann Goldstein in the catalogue (designed by Lorraine Wild of L.A.'s Green Dragon Office). "It is a most problematic practice—and that is its great gift."

The Ordos 100 may sound like a doomed Da Vinci Code cabal, but it's actually a new residential development in the Inner Mongolian city of Ordos. The "100" is the number of emerging architects from 27 countries that were each invited to design a villa on lots ranging from a quarter to a half acre for a client known as Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd. And did we mention that the project's master plan is by Mr. Bird's Nest Himself, Ai Weiwei, and that Herzog & de Meuron selected the participating architects?

You'll be hearing more about the ambitious project later this fall, when the Architectural League of New York spotlights the local chosen ones with an exhibition of the designs by the 11 New York-based architects working in Ordos. Among the participating firms are our old friends Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis, Lyn Rice Architects, and Toshiko Mori Architect. According to curator Gregory Wessner, the League's director of exhibitions, the show will explore the unique process of the undertaking and provoke a conversation about the role that design is playing in the development. "New York Architects and the Ordos 100" is slated to run from October 11 through November 26 at the Urban Center, which is considerably easier to get to than Inner Mongolia.

It's never too early to get excited about anything related to Shepard Fairey, and so we're pleased to bring you word that come February, the man who made the world obedient to his mesmerizing Andre the Giant stencil will get his first solo museum exhibition—and at no less a venue than Boston's shimmering new Institute of Contemporary Art, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The exhibition, "Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand," is slated to run from February 6 through April 19 of next year and will include everything from early stenciled stickers and screenprints to works on wood and metal and fresh-from-the-studio pieces on paper and canvas. This all bodes very well for sales at the ICA gift shop.

If you've yet to experience the artist behind the bold, propaganda-flavored creations, here's an excerpt from Fairey's presentation at last fall's QBN Sessions event in which he explained the origin of the Andre stencil and "the Rorschach test facet" of his entire project.

Travel + Leisure commissioned 18 artists, designers, and photographers to create one-of-a-kind works for its Project Globe auction, but only one of them chose to work in buttercream. Wedding cake queen Sylvia Weinstock's "Globe Cake" (at right), which is 14 inches in diameter and serves 100 ("Who's hungry for Greenland!?"), will be auctioned on September 18 in New York City to benefit Future Generations, a nonprofit organization devoted to conservation and community development. But the online biding start today, at $2,625, a bargain at $375 per continent.

For those looking for a global artwork that doesn't require refrigeration, there's Boym Partners founders Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym's "Babel Globe," a multicultural cube with a graphic face painted in acrylic on each of its six sides, and artist Pat Steir's "Waterfall for Gabriella," an editioned etching of ethereal drips that namechecks art historian and writer Gabriella De Ferrari, who curated the Project Globe program. Manolo Blahnik whipped up some raffia-accented "Verdana" booties, which photographer Eric Boman was so taken with that he made one the star of his submission, an editioned print of a stiletto atop a glowing blue orb. (Boman also shot the auction catalog, and his photos of the works for sale will also be published in T+L's October Style + Culture issue.) Other participating artists include Maya Lin, April Gornik, and Laurie Simmons, whose silver globe-headed figurine has already sold. All of the works will be on view after the auction, on September 19 and 20, at GlassHouses in the Chelsea Arts Tower.

We've been known to swoon over antique maps (don't even get us started on Martha Stewart's canny cartographic cornering of Maine), but New York-based artist Josh Dorman manages to improve on the bleached hues and buzzing topographic outlines of vintage maps by weaving in swirls of color, bubbling grids, and ink doodles that look ripped from the notebook of Leonardo da Vinci if he had been a bored high school physics student. So successful are Dorman's dreamscapes that an obstinacy of buffalo seem a perfectly logical counterpoint to a Louise Nevelson-style block tower hovering menacingly in the corner.

"Paper that has lived a life and shows its age compels me to paint," writes Dorman on his website. "I am intrigued by systems I do not understand and by information that is no longer relevant." Try to wrap your head around it all at his solo museum exhibition debut on Sunday. On view through January 11, 2009, at L.A's Craft and Folk Art Museum, "Within Four Miles" includes works created over the past decade, like "Sacrament II: Blissdale" (2006, pictured above). The show's title, of course, maps to the past. According to the museum, "Within Four Miles" is inspired by Lewis and Clark's ability to make accurate predictions about uncharted lands.