Justin Beal

2 weeks ago | archpaper.com | Justin Beal |Kristine Klein

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future by Alan Weisman | Dutton | $32The expression “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” is meant to convey a sense of futility, of meaningless action in the face of catastrophe, but I have been thinking recently of how it might be turned on its head, reimagined as a small gesture of purpose, of good work left to be done aboard that superlative metaphor for capitalist overabundance and technological hubris.

Oct 28, 2024 | frieze.com | Justin Beal

It is inevitable, in a time of prolonged market dominance, that artists begin to gravitate towards the practices of predecessors whose work defied simple commodification. To do so can be both an homage and a small act of resistance. Sometimes, it can feel as if a single artist has appeared in the minds of many with remarkable simultaneity.

Nov 3, 2023 | frieze.com | Justin Beal

The history of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) tells an intriguing architectural what-if story. When the industrialist Norton Simon and LACMA’s founding director Richard Brown began planning the city’s first stand-alone art museum in the early 1960s, they wanted Mies van der Rohe to design it. The trustees agreed. The building’s chief donor Howard Ahmanson, however, refused to pay for it.

Oct 27, 2023 | archpaper.com | Justin Beal

Take a look at any review of the new Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC) in New York and there is a good chance the words “$500 million” appear long before the name of any architect, actor, or dancer.