MUSEUMS MAKE INFRASTRUCTURE LIST

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has offered an impressive list of ready-to-go infrastructure projects for president-elect Barack Obama’s proposed economic recovery program, which involves funding public works on a massive scale.

The mayors’ list includes more than 11,000 projects in 427 cities, priced at a total of over $73 billion and producing more than 847,000 jobs. The list ranges from new sewers and street improvements to new schools, parks and dog pounds -- and also includes two major museum projects.

One is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is earmarked for $80 million for the reconstruction of its loading docks and other infrastructure improvements, an undertaking that would result in the creation of an estimated 889 jobs. Philadelphia is also ready to spend $20 million on its "Avenue of the Arts" streetscape, producing 222 jobs.

The second big museum project is in Miami, where the Miami Art Museum has launched plans for a new $87-million facility sited on a 29-acre park on Biscayne Bay. The city is seeking $70 million for construction of the park, a project that would create 1,400 jobs.

BILLBOARD ART IN MOSCOW
The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow (CGCC), the new art center opened in September by the glamorous 20-something art patron Dasha Zhukova, is taking its arts programming to the billboards -- that is, to a huge video screen on the top of Moscow’s Mosenergo building opposite the Kremlin. "Moscow on the Move," as it is called, runs to Dec. 22, 2008, and features vids by top artists, including AES-F, Doug Aitken, Pipilotti Rist, Yang Fudong and Agnes Varda. "I thought this would be a great way for people on their way to work to get a glimpse of these beautiful works," said Zhukova.

The vids are presented in collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery in London, and selected by Serpentine co-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. Next up at GCCC: works from the François Pinault Collection, opening Feb. 19, 2009.

BAIBAKOV ART PROJECTS OPENS IN MOSCOW
Moscow’s historic Red October Chocolate Factory, which recently was the site of an exhibition organized by the Gagosian Gallery [see Artnet News, July 31, 2008], has now been reborn as Baibakov Art Projects, a noncommercial exhibition space sponsored by Maria Baibakova, a 23-year-old Barnard College alum who once interned for Mike Weiss Gallery in Chelsea (her father is a Moscow mining and real-estate executive). The new space, which boasts (occasional Artnet Magazine contributor) Kate Sutton as curator, opens with "Invasion: Evasion," Dec. 13, 2008-Feb. 1, 2009, featuring over 20 site-specific commissions.