Architects are fascinated with the sculpture and furniture of Donald Judd, so the title alone of his show at the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea (Works in Granite, Cor-ten, Plywood, and Enamel on Aluminum) should make them palpitate. Architects appreciate the vernacular materials and rigorous form-making of Judd’s work, and the way the objects flirt with architectural language without really being architecture, so that they seem strangely attenuated physically and syntactically.  

But when seeing Judd’s work in person, two aspects lost in the adoration quickly become apparent.  First, the works are immaculately crafted.  The plywood Judd uses is the finest grade, sanded super smooth, and joined in ways that the most experienced carpenter would admire.  The steel plates he uses are finished with a delicacy that Richard Serra could not even imagine.  Second, the works are strangely (and disappointingly, I think) non-architectural.  Most are too small to enter and too large to pick up, hovering in the nether-region between furniture and building.  They’re loaded with spatial suggestion but ultimately sculptures.

New Banksy works have been spotted in LA, which means that he might be in town to attend the Oscars on Sunday and, if he wins, to claim the Best Documentary award for “Exit Through the Gift Shop."  I saw the movie at MoMA last month, which itself is sort of hilarious.  The street artists it celebrates (with the very major exception of Thierry Guetta) are in pursuit of the marginal, the incongruous, and the ephemeral.  They're  not looking for recognition.

Banksy has worked hard to retain his anonymity.  Some British tabloids tried to expose him, publishing washed out shots of a plain-looking, ginger-haired man who very well could be Banksy.  But his presence in "Exit,” obscured with an oversized hoodie and a voice processor, is shrewd and indelible.  My hope is that he wins on Sunday night and stays away.

I typically race through the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum (which one needs to walk through to reach the costume gallery) to avoid the schoolchildren gawking at the mummies and the droning docents accompanying them.  But this weekend I walked through in an entirely different spirit, mindful of the revolution in that country.  The statues, reliefs and small objects on display all seemed especially expressive.

During the protests in Cairo some foreigners expressed concern that the country wasn’t acting to preserve its artistic and archaeological treasures.  That’s an awfully high-handed perspective when one recalls how many ancient Egyptian artefacts are esconced, safely, in international museums.  Hopefully the country will find stability soon and the pieces in the Met’s galleries can one day be returned.

Some contemporary buildings look exactly like their design renderings, so much so that it’s hard to distinguish these renderings from final photographs.  And some contemporary buildings exceed their renderings, achieving a charisma in built form that their renderings do not predict.   I’m hoping that the new BIG (Bjarke Engels Group) apartment tower in Manhattan, for which renderings were just released, falls into the latter category.  The images are a bit flat.

I loved the BIG monograph “Yes is More,” which showcases the firm’s projects in cartoon form.  Each chapter illustrates how one project unfolded, and how it was a swarm of smaller decisions (along with a swarm of architects) that gave shape to the building rather than a singular, authoritative vision.  I can’t wait to see how this new apartment tower comes together, and how far it lands from its renderings.