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At the end of August, we checked in with the ever-stalled Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial project, only to find that it had reached yet another roadblock. Said roadblock that time actually dealt with the lack of roadblocks, with the National Park Service demanding that some sort of terrorist-stopping objects be placed surrounding the planned memorial. At that point, it looked like we were in for another couple of years of stand-still, as nearly everyone involved or had been following its progress had grown used to. But surprise, surprise, just under two months later and the latest updated plans (now with the additional security measures) have been approved. Now just one more hurdle stands in the way before construction can begin: the building permit. Fortunately, it appears as though that will come fairly easily (but we've heard that before, haven't we?). Here's from the Washington Post:

Peter May, an associate regional director with the Park Service, said the construction permit likely will be issued in a matter of days, after a final review of the building plans. The project also must contribute to the long-term preservation of the $120 million memorial and its site, he said. The project has raised $107 million so far.

Shepard Fairey's sudden about-face on the source photo for his iconic Obama HOPE poster puzzled many followers of an already multilayered legal battle with the Associated Press concerning what constitutes fair use. What prompted Fairey's admission? Lawyers, of course. Thorough ones. The American Lawyer has the scoop from the perspective of the AP's legal team, led by Kirkland & Ellis partner Dale Cendali:

...the fuse that ignited Fairey's bombshell revelations was lit two weeks ago, when the AP's legal team...confronted Fairey's lawyers from Stanford's Fair Use Project and Durie Tangri with "trace evidence" from materials turned over in discovery. The trace evidence, Cendali said, indicated to Kirkland that Fairey hadn't given them everything he was supposed to. "We were able to detect that there were other documents that should have been produced," Cendali said.

Armed with that information, the Kirkland lawyers sent an October 2 letter to Fairey's legal team, demanding that the missing material be turned over. A week later the Fairey camp responded with a letter outlining plans to amend its complaint against the AP, which initially sought a declaratory judgment that the artist's use of a photograph of Obama was permissible under fair use doctrine.

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Just when we thought we had a firm grasp on Shepard Fairey's legal wrangling with the Associated Press comes a new and confusing development: Fairey has changed his tune on what photo he used as the source material for the iconic HOPE poster that is at the center of the legal dispute, which includes a suit, a countersuit, and enough intellectual property lawyers to make Mickey Mouse break out into a cold sweat.

Originally, Fairey claimed to have used AP photographer Mannie Garcia's shot of Obama seated next to actor George Clooney at an April 2006 National Press Club event, while the AP alleged he had used another Garcia photo—a tight shot of the president's face taken at the same event. Fairey now admits the AP was right and will amend his court pleadings to reflect his new position. "While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong," Fairey wrote in a letter posted to his website on Friday. "In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images. I sincerely apologize for my lapse in judgment and I take full responsibility for my actions which were mine alone." According to an AP report, "Attorneys for Fairey have withdrawn and, in papers filed Friday in federal court in Manhattan, stated that he misled them." But it sounds as if Fairey hasn't given up. "Regardless of which of the two images was used, the fair use issue should be the same," he stated.

Previously on UnBeige:

Georgia and Verdana are getting a face lift. Commissioned by Microsoft in the mid-1990s as ideal for on-screen display, the typeface families were designed by Matthew Carter and hinted for screen legibility by Tom Rickner of Ascender Corporation. Now Carter, Ascender, and Font Bureau are working with Microsoft on a project to expand and enhance Georgia (once described by Microsoft's Simon Earnshaw as "effectively the more generous cousin of Tahoma") and Verdana (conceived as "a serif alternative to Times") for new applications, both on the screen and on the page. Look for new weights and widths as well as extended character sets. "The new additions to the font families are a natural and timely progression," noted Carter in a statement released by Ascender. "They offer a wider range of typographic versatility...while remaining consistent with the originals." The first of the new fonts will be released early next year.

Donald G. Fisher, who founded Gap, Inc. in 1969 with wife Doris, died yesterday of cancer. He was 81. "Today we lost a friend, a mentor, and a great visionary," said Gap CEO Glenn Murphy in a statement issued last night. "Don and Doris took a simple idea and turned it into a brand recognized as a cultural icon throughout the world and changed the face of retail forever."

Legend has it that the Fishers founded the company on August 21, 1969 after a frustrating experience exchanging a pair of jeans that didn't fit. That year, the couple raised $63,000 to launch a single jeans and music store called The Gap (named for "the generation gap") in San Francisco. In 2008, Gap reported annual sales of approximately $14.5 billion. Fisher served as chairman and CEO of the company from 1969 through 1995 and as chairman through 2004. He held the roles of director and chairman emeritus until his death.

It's been almost a full year since we last checked in on the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. At last we left it, things were finally moving forward, and it looked like it might finally find a home in Washington DC's National Mall following a few years of miscellaneous time-eating delays and battles. Now that we've returned, we learn that the memorial has hit yet another wall, this one being perhaps the most bizarre yet. The National Park Service and the memorial's organizing foundation has delayed the start of construction for nearly a full year due to bickering about how to best "secure the site against possible domestic terrorism threats." The park officials want big barriers blocking access to the memorial, but the memorial's organizers want the site uncluttered and conform to "King's legacy of openness and inclusiveness." It's been a little while since we've been to DC, but aren't a lot of the monuments and memorials already fairly terrorist-accessible? And what terrorist is going to target a granite structure? What's the benefit of that? We're sure there's some sound reasoning behind it (somewhere), we just don't quite get it. Fortunately, former Chicagoan and current Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, has gotten behind the memorial and is trying to put some pressure on the park service to get going already and approve construction:

Duncan said Tuesday it's time to get to work and offered to make some calls to fellow members of the Obama administration, drawing applause from students and others who gathered at the memorial site to mark the 46th anniversary of the March on Washington. King gave his "I Have a Dream Speech" there on Aug. 28, 1963.

"In any other country, Milton Glaser would have been knighted by now," says Steven Heller (himself deserving of a life peerage). The School of Visual Arts is doing the next best thing—at least until Queen Elizabeth wises up—and mounting a retrospective of nearly 100 works created by Glaser for the College, where he has been on the faculty since 1960 and currently serves as acting chairman. Opening August 31, "Milton Glaser's SVA: A Legacy of Graphic Design" is curated by Heller and Mirko Ilić. The dynamic duo, along with archivist Beth Kleber, have scoured SVA's Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives to assemble works ranging from the original artwork for the iconic posters created for SVA's ongoing subway campaign to rare printed pieces such as the 1963 announcement for the course Glaser taught at SVA with the late Henry Wolf. And look sharp for the new poster Glaser has produced for this exhibition that was inspired by his recent foray into designing textiles for the soon-to-be completed SVA Theatre. "I believe the work I've done for the School is more adventuresome than anything else I've done, primarily because of the audience," Glaser has said. The retrospective will be on view at the Visual Arts Gallery through September 26.

(Photo: Richard Avedon)

This iconic 1957 Richard Avedon photo, "Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York," is now in the collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art. Today the museum announced its acquisition of 39 Avedon photographs, more than doubling its collection of the late photographer's work. "We are very grateful...for the cooperation of The Richard Avedon Foundation, which enabled us to realize an acquisition that I had discussed with the photographer himself, and about which he was very enthusiastic," said Peter Galassi, chief curator of MoMA's department of photography, in a statement issued today. Acquired from the Foundation, the career-spanning photos date from 1953 to 2002 and include nine photos of Avedon's father that were first shown in a solo exhibition at MoMA in 1974. In addition to a pensive Monroe, there are portraits of Marcel Duchamp, Coco Chanel, Malcolm X, Bob Dylan, and fashion shots featuring Veruschka and Twiggy. A selection of Avedon's work is on view in MoMA's photo galleries through March 22, 2010.

Sure, UnBeige is published online, but we actually compose all of our posts on a pair of candy apple red Olivetti typewriters before turning them over to Eero, our technology-savvy web monkey, who somehow beams them into cyberspace (he also handles all of our links). Now Eero tells us that UnBeige and the rest of the mediabistro.com blog family have joined the future with mobile-optimized sites that are easily browsable on your iPhone, Blackberry, or Palm. Should you routinely carry one of these devices on your person, you need only type unbeige.com into the browser to be automatically redirected to our mobile-friendly page. The mobile optimizations are in beta, notes Eero, so if you have any problems reading UnBeige on the go, please drop us an e-mail.

Three cheers for architect and Princeton professor Sarah Whiting (that's her at right, all smiles amidst the Tyvek), who has been appointed dean of the Rice University School of Architecture. "Leading the Rice School of Architecture is a dream job," Whiting said in a statement issued today. "Because it is small, everyone—faculty and students alike—is engaged. The dean is not a distanced administrator like at big architecture schools, but is right in there focusing the school's ambition." Her decanal career officially begins on January 1, 2010, when she'll take over from John Casbarian, who has been serving as interim dean since Lars Lerup stepped down in the spring after 16 years in the post.

An expert in urban and architectural theory, Whiting came to Princeton in 2005 after six years at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (it was while at the GSD that she appeared on Charlie Rose, discussing Peter Eisenman). Prior to that, she taught at the University of Kentucky, IIT, and the University of Florida. Whiting is also an alumna of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture and departed Team Koolhaas for WW Architecture, the firm she founded with her husband, Ron Witte. WW's current projects include renovations for the drama division of the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center and a museum of art and design for San Jose State University. "I feel the variety of her experiences is a real asset," said Rice University provost Eugene Levy, who is not to be confused with the Canadian funnyman. "She's been on the faculty of a diverse set of institutions, which has fostered a broad set of perceptions and openness to thinking about the challenges of the discipline and the challenges of leadership that will be extremely valuable."