CONTEMPORARY ART

Expanded memories

ARCHITECTURE

Taking the plunge

Nicholas Grimshaw’s new Spa at Bath is a fine building, but its clinical austerity is surely at odds with its purpose.

From America for Florence

Mel Gibson and Sting may not often be associated with Florentine mannerist altarpieces, but, as Larry J. Feinberg explains, the support that they and many other benefactors are giving to a dynamic American organisation, the Friends of Florence, has helped the city’s museums repair some of its least-known as well as most celebrated treasures.

At home on Chestnut Street

Historic New England has acquired a major new property, the Stephen Phillips House in Salem, Massachusetts. As Brian Pfeiffer explains, from the outside it appears to be a classic Federal-period mansion, but its history is as intricate and unexpected as the many layers of its 200-year-old family collections. Photographs by David Bohl.

The sins of the world

Kenneth Bendiner argues that Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘combine’ work Monogram is not a random assembly but a coherent whole that by alluding to Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat takes as its subject the sacrifice of Christ.

Nwe museum acquisitions

The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, has reopened after a major renovation and expansion of its collections. Its Chief Curator, Eleanor Jones Harvey, presents a selection of its new acquisitions, all designed to further one of the museum’s purposes: to explore the origins of American culture – and to suggest where it is heading.

The Denver Art Museum

On 7 October Daniel Libeskind’s first completed work in the USA will be unveiled, a new building for the Denver Art Museum. Louise Nicholson talks to him and to the museum’s director about the close collaboration between architect, curators and city that lies behind this spectacular commission.