"I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning," said Andy Warhol. The marketing execs at Martini & Rossi probably wouldn't agree, as they're bringing back the ads the artist helped create for the alcoholic beverage company in the 1950s and 1960s, back when he was known only for those adorable little drawings of lips, shoes, and cats done for the likes of Mademoiselle. According to Brandweek's Steve Miller, Barcardi-owned Martini & Rossi is partnering with the Andy Warhol Foundation to launch "Warhol's take on taste," a campaign of four "new" print ads featuring illustrations by Warhol. A report in the Wall Street Journal adds that the company will hold Factory-themed parties in select U.S. cities. "Model mixologists and celebrity look-alikes from Warhol's era (such as Marilyn Monroe) will reinforce the company's connection to the artist." One event we found, scheduled for July 16 in New Orleans, promises "two limited edition Warhol-inspired Vermouth cocktails and, in true Warhol style, unexpected surprises." Although himself a teetotaler, Andy would surely delight at the idea of cocktails described as both inspired by him and "limited edition."

No, that's not an exterior shot of Pee-Wee's Playhouse above, it's the House of Artists at the Art/Brut Center Gugging just north of Vienna. The center houses a museum/exhibition space where visitors can purchase works by the artists in residence, all of whom happen to be mental patients, which seems appropriate, as the center was once a sprawling psychiatric hospital. Daphne Merkin explains further in her recent piece on Gugging and its unique twist on Outsider Art in Culture+Travel. Meanwhile, in the latest travel-themed issue of T: The New York Times Style Magazine, columnist Stephen Metcalf journeys to the Territory, a renegade art collective in Paris of which his first impressions are of "a firetrap, a serial-killer lair, and Willy Wonka's chocolate factory." He later describes the place as "a semi-commune dedicated to artsy poverty in an era that has not been kind to artsy poverty." Sound like your cup of tea? Before you apply to be a resident/member, consider this:

To live in the Territory, one must follow 135 rules, which include elaborate habits of communication (via walkie-talkie) and egress (everyone must master exiting in one minute, with passport, laptop, and pants), so that no one will ever be harmed in a fire. Other rules encompass kitchen etiquette, the management of the "strategic reserve" of 300 frozen salmon and the necessity of obeying the Art Class Alarm, which draws together the Territory at any hour, night or day, for an art project.

Artwork by Chase Sperry

Are you an artist who uses his or her talents to promote creative freedom, empathy, and understanding? Do you and your art routinely confront discrimination and oppression? Do you currently find yourself in prison? These are among the qualities Singapore-based philanthropic organization ArtVenture seeks in contenders for its new Freedom to Create Prize, for which it is partnering with human rights organization Article 19. Announced yesterday, the prize will award a total of $100,000 to three artists and organizations that further the causes highlighted by their artwork. Click "continued..." for details.

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Now that it's been announced that the British Museum has surpassed the Tate Modern as being the UK's "most popular cultural attraction," Jonathan Jones is telling the massive institution to watch its back and not fall into the troubles shared by the Louvre and the Tate, namely doing too much to stay popular and forgetting what made it a location of memorable experiences in the first place. Jones top suggestion is to keep things smart and not assume you have to dumb everything down, just to please anyone and everyone. It's sound advice, but only time will tell if it winds up being taken. Here's a bit about what went wrong with that other museum in town:

By pandering to its crowds instead of trying to interest them in serious art, Tate Modern has sometimes seemed to be on a slippery slide of mass cultural folly. It has been too easy to go there and come away again without learning anything -- to see it as a bit of a laugh. It is nothing if not serious this year, with exhibitions of Cy Twombly and Mark Rothko. But why does it have to have its current display of street art painted all over it, like something that might decorate a Nike store? Museums don't need to pursue fashion that desperately.

Following up on yesterday's post about the changes being required to Santiago Calatrava's contribution to the World Trade Center building project, a reader was kind enough to pass along world of Calatrava's reaction. It's nothing all that telling, as it tows the company line pretty well, but if anything, it shows that this particularly starchitect knows when to pick his battles and when he should be gentle and go along with a super high-profile project. Here's his quote:

"We strongly support the Port Authority's efforts to ensure that the World Trade Center Transportation Hub is built, and we are continuing to work collaboratively to find potential changes that will save time and money while preserving the integrity of the original design. The recent simplification of the mechanism for the opening and closing of the roof is just the latest example of many changes we have recommended to accomplish that goal."

You likely heard about the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee back in early 2006 when the project was announced with Pentagram and architect Jim Biber at its helm. While its 2008 opening seemed like a long way off way back then, the time has arrive to throw open the doors and see what the two have been up to. There are few random photos on the Museum's site, but there are also a couple more, and some additional information, over at Design Week. Here's a bit from them:

It will house a retail space, an annexe and a rally urban space which will enable bikers to ride through the grounds.

Visitors to the museum will see installations designed by Pentagram partner Abbott Miller, such as a parade of bikes at the museum's entrance which showcases the best designs from the Harley collection.

The colour palette inside uses the Harley colours of black, silver and orange, while the museum will use a variety of media including photographs, Harley-branded apparel and documents to engage visitors with the brand.

Also of note, should you want some more to aid your Pentagram fix, we highly recommend reading up on their blog about the new Radar magazine redesign by the firm's Luke Hayman and Kate Elazegui. Well worth seeing their genius at work.

When it comes to the sports section of the newspaper, we're fair-weather readers: grab us with a juicy headline or a story related to one of the few sports we follow and we'll read the whole thing; otherwise, we're skipping right to Arts. Yesterday we were drawn in by a doozy of a Wimbledon infographic on the front page of the New York Times sports section. Floating over the above-the-fold headline, "Two More Seeds Fall, Clearing Way for Williamses," was a graphic depiction of the tournament's early round knockouts, featuring an info-studded strip of photos of all ten top-seeded women players.

For those who had failed to advance to the quarterfinals, the tiny photos were faded and showed faces contorted in anguish, while those remaining (seeds five through seven: Elena Dementieva and the sisters Williams) were grinning in saturated shots. More info was added below each photo, where the player's name and seed was topped by a series of boxes that represented how far she had progressed and where applicable, noting the player who had beaten her. Sure, there was a key explaining the box scheme and pointing out that for the first time since 1927, none of the four top-seeded women had advanced to the quarters, but the smart, eye-catching graphic spoke for itself. Click here for the full graphic.

Yesterday we told you about our enduring fondness for Pee-Wee's Playhouse and in particular the show's marvelous set, which was designed by the multi-talented Gary Panter. And so we were pleased to hear this morning from a reader who sent along a scan of Jacob Bernstein's feature on Panter in the latest issue of WWDscoop, a special publication of Women's Wear Daily (that is not online). Among the highlights is a quote from Panter's old chum Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art and the commissioner of last year's Venice Biennale, who reveals his knowledge of the playhouse as it relates to Panter's studio. "In a way, the playhouse is a phantasmagoria of the messy, rundown thing Gary's got up in the attic," says Storr, referring to the stuff-filled top floor of Panter's house in Brooklyn. "He lives in the mundane version of his own crazy world, and the playhouse is the artful projection of that world into another dimension." Bernstein also talks to Pee-Wee himself, a.k.a. Paul Reubens, already a fan of Panter's when in 1981 he asked the artist to a do poster for him. Says Reubens, "He came down and saw me, and afterward he said, 'I'd love to design the poster, but how about the set, too?'"

How do you celebrate the closing of a $2.4 billion deal to acquire a photography giant? We can't say for sure, but at this time of year, we bet it involves sparklers, watermelon, and lots of stock images of American flags. Getty Images announced this afternoon the completion of its acquisition by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, a deal that was announced back in February and received shareholder approval last month. Hellman & Friedman's other recent media-related investments include DoubleClick, Digitas, and The Nielsen Company.

Zaragoza isn't just a lot of fun to say, it's also the Spanish host town of the world's largest water festival, Expo Zaragoza, which through September 14 immerses visitors in an astounding number of water-themed events with the help of "Fluvi" (at left), a hydrophilic mascot who looks like a cross between E.T. and a loquacious blue hammer. As part of the festival, Zaragoza has acquired a new architectural landmark, the pedestrian bridge pavilion (pictured above) designed by Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher. Organized around four "pods" that both distribute the bridge's weight and enclose separate exhibition spaces, Hadid's Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion is her firm's first completed bridge project.

While leaders of Expo Zaragoza describe the 853-foot-long and 98-foot-wide bridge as "gladiolus-shaped," Hadid emphasizes the project's structural ambition, fluidity, and dynamic nature. The pavilion houses an interactive exhibition "Water, A Unique Resource" designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, and the structure was created with an eye to the sustainability issues the show and the broader Expo address. "We designed an envelope for the Bridge Pavilion that encloses the exhibition spaces yet can be permeated by natural elements. The internal micro-environment varies with the external climate and requires minimal cooling or heating infrastructure," says Hadid. "In particular, we considered the local Cierzo wind when designing the Bridge Pavilion's skin. A variety of openings convey and direct air into the building's interior—cooling visitors in the heat of the summer."

Elsewhere in the UK, and just a little bit of a subject we've promised not to over-cover, we quickly peek back over the fence at the London Festival of Architecture and Wallpaper's coverage of it. They've put together a couple of very easily digestible reports from the field about the fest, as well as including the real meat and potatoes everyone's always after: lots of photos. In the first chapter, they offer up a bunch of quick details on the fest itself and give you a sort of pictorial tour of what you'd see as you approached the goings-ons. In chapter two, they start selecting their picks of the best of the best and what not to miss, should you be fortunate enough to attend (and, again, with lots of great photos). And so we leave you with both parts, and the suggestion that you check in with Wallpaper from time to time to see more, and then we promise to leave the subject alone, as to not over do it.

Proof that the reconstruction behind the new World Trade Center site is like architecture's version of the Martin Luther King Memorial troubles, it was announced late yesterday that Santiago Calatrava's contribution to the site are being scaled back, thus adding to the many changes involved with nearly everyone involved with the project. In an effort to bring the project back within more feasible budget ranges (by dropping the building cost by a reported hundreds of millions of dollars), the city has decided to ax Calatrava's ideas to include a retractable roof to the building, one that "would open each Sept. 11 at the time of the terrorist attack." Fortunately, most of the officials being talked to about the cutbacks sounded pretty upset by the big change, that it just wasn't in the cards to spend that much, no matter how important the structures, but it does make sense that, when bringing in that many starchitects to help rebuild the area, ultimately you're going to have to pull back on the reigns a bit.

Yesterday, after hearing from our friend Kristen Richards over at ArchNewsNow that many of the wire services had the news wrong about when exactly Frank Gehry would be receiving his Venice Biennial lifetime achievement award (it was a mix between this year and next year, and the initial press release was even pretty vague), we finally figured out that it is in fact this year that the starchitect will be honored and we've since updated our original post to reflect as such. But staying on Gehry for a while, we turn to a piece that Kristen was also kind enough to pass along, this one from the Guardian with Jonathan Glancey talking about why the UK is so afraid of having Frank Gehry doing any work in their country, his Serpentine Pavilion being the first project he's been awarded there. It's a pretty funny piece, with Frank speculating why the English don't like him and Glancey helping to egg him on just a bit (along with giving a lot of biographical information on an already very well-known figure -- at least well-known to people like us). Here's a bit:

The odd thing is that the Serpentine Pavilion is Gehry's first English venture. "Probably the last, too," he says. "I don't think England likes me. The critics don't, that's for sure. I reckon I've got a couple of years in me, but I don't count on making a career in England."

We're not ashamed to admit that today, nearly two decades after Pee Wee's Playhouse taped its final episode, we can name most of the characters that were embedded into the show's fantastical set (oh, how we coveted Magic Screen, to say nothing of plush, toothpaste-hued Chairry), the creation of which was helmed by illustrator, painter, and designer Gary Panter. And so we were thrilled to discover that Panter has a blog, and while only updated once every couple of months, it does not disappoint. Late last year, Brooklyn-based Panter wrote of his experience dropping off a cover design at the Manhattan offices of Marvel Comics, where he was directed to deposit his envelope at the end of a hall ("There on the floor, by the door, was a pile of packages, but also some thrown-out pizza boxes in the same pile....Is this any way to run a Death star?"). But we call your attention to Panter's most recent post, in which he weaves a wonderful tale-cum-thank you note to the employees of a Taco Bell he recently visited. An excerpt:

I can't chew gum and walk straight, so I can only vaguely imagine the fog one must enter; what psychic challenge it must be, trying to order ones senses while taking the order by earpiece, given all the contradictory sensorial input; running back and forth from the colorful branded zones of Baskin-Robbins/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell/Dunkin Donuts—how many colors and smells can you intake per minute? You have to be as canny as a bartender, mixing subtle ratios of matter and flavor bits, into tasty Manhattans of 100% cheesefood, microwaved ground fried beef, frosty sour cream, gloopy russian dressing and so forth, soft or crispy?....I feel for you. All of you. You all. Not just all of you. All of you all.

What sound does glazed terra cotta make when hitting the polished stone floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Whatever it is, nobody was around to hear it, when late last night or early this morning, the museum's late 15th-century relief sculpture of Saint Michael the Archangel by Andrea della Robbia (pictured above) fell from its mount above a doorway in the European Paintings and Decorative Arts Galleries. The museum announced the accident in a statement issued this afternoon, explaining that, "Preliminary inspection indicates that the relief has not been irrevocably harmed and that it can be repaired and again presented to the public." For now, the museum is leaving the sculpture where it is and keeping the immediate area closed to visitors before transferring the work to a conservation area in the building. Meanwhile, the museum pledges to "initiate a reinvigorated museum-wide examination as expeditiously as possible" while conservators work to reinvigorate Saint Michael. Good thing he was wearing armor.