Following smow Turin's thoroughly unexpected, if in no way undeserved, victory in the 2021 smow Song Contest, it's off to Piemonte for the 2022 edition. A 2022 smow Song Contest being held very much in context of events 20 years previous....... 2002 was a very different world than the one we know today. In 2002, for example, following the ousting of the Taliban girls were allowed to attend school in Afghanistan; Chechens stormed the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow demanding an end to Russia's
read moreAs here in the northern hemisphere winter cedes to spring, not only is nature once again reawakening from its long repose but so too is the international museum community; and that, one senses, with more vigour than in the most recent springs where the Covid pandemic induced upsetting of the established order of the museal ecosystem, through both enforced closures and fundamental disruptions of essential exhibition development processes, dimmed somewhat the promise of the annual spring blush.
read moreWhile Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is arguably best known for the works he realised in the (mid-)west USA, the works he realised in west(ern) Germany are no less relevant or important for understanding the man, his work and his legacy. Summer 2019 saw the western German State of Nordrhein-Westfalen host three Mies van der Rohe exhibitions, one each in, and devoted to Mies's works in, Aachen, Krefeld and Essen. Three exhibitions now united in one in Cologne, and which as a unified trio not only
read moreIn October 2017 the Design Department of the Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen moved into its new home, the so-called Quartier Nord designed by Stuttgart based MGF Architekten. The 2018 Folkwang Summer Rundgang therefore not only offered an opportunity to explore the work undertaken by institute's students in the semester past, but also to explore their new home....... Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen, Quartier Nord..... Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen The most important
read moreWhereas most design schools stage their annual exhibition at the end of the summer semester, there are exceptions, such as the Folkwang Universität der Künste, Essen, who present theirs just before the start of the winter semester. And so nigh on three months after all others have ended. Because, one wonders, they fear its brilliant glow would place all other schools in its shade, and they want to remain fair to their colleagues elsewhere? Because they have something to hide, and hope by
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