The Peabody Essex Museum is one of my favorite museums in the United States. And, the institutions East India Marine Hall is one of my favorite rooms in all of New England. I’m really excited that the PEM has begun to utilize the space for more innovative contemporary installations – a terrific idea given the potential for juxtaposition with the exceplery collection of figure heads which inhabit the hall.

Internationally renowned for his animated digital projections, artist Charles Sandison installs a site-specific artwork created for PEM’s East India Marine Hall. Sandison will activate the words of 18th-century ship captains’ logs to create an immersive environment drawing upon the trade routes, politics, competition and voices that led to the founding of the museum and the origins of PEM’s remarkable collection. Organized by PEM’s Curator of Contemporary Art, Trevor Smith, this installation marks the first in a series of contemporary art interventions in PEM’s FreePort initiative.

On view through April 24, 2011.

While not remotely inventive (look at this… and think to JR’s fantastic archive to street installations.), I still love the recent work by street art collective Sidi Medici in Barcelona. They’ve taken classic painting – see the Mona Lisa and more – and brought it to a broad audience. Framed, and complete with label text, these pieces have all the quality of good street art (sense of discovery, intrigue, etc.) and work to introduced iconic works to the general public. Fun stuff all round.

More looks at Sidi Medici in Barcelona after the jump.

FriendsWithYou hits Art Basel Miami with two installations – an indoor and an outdoor. For the Rainbow City, forty large scale inflatable objects form an interactive experiences based on Holi – a Hindu festival. The installation finds space in the heart of Miami’s design district, just steps away from decade in the making painting exhibition Building Blocks.

Building Blocks will be housed at 3930 NE 2nd Avenue 2nd Floor Miami Design District. The exhibition opens on December 2, 2010, and runs through January 8, 2011.

Full information about both FriendsWithYou Art Basel Miami installations after the leap.

From Venissage TV -

With SOMA, the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin presents an installation by Belgian artist Carsten Höller that appeals to all senses. Canary song fill the room as well as the smell of Reindeer. With SOMA, Carsten Höller (born 1961 in Brussels), has created his most complex and elaborate installation to date. The living protagonists of the exhibition are formed by twelve reindeer, twenty-four canaries, eight mice and two flies.

LLove celebrates 400 years of trade and cultural relations between Japan and the Netherlands. The exhibition follows an interesting premise – 8 designers (Japanese and Dutch, including Scholten & Baijings, Pieke Bergmans, Richard Hutten and Jo Nagasaka) created full room installations in what essentially serves as a pop up hotel. Their rooms are both exhibition spaces and available for impromptu stays.

The exhibition is curated by Suzanne Oxenaar, artistic director of the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam.

Wallpaper* has the full story, and notes the “hotel” will be open until November 23, 2010.

Images follow

New York-based Dan Colen has hit Paris with a signature installation in the courtyard of Colette. The jumble of bicycles, delicately balancing thoughts of “junk or sculpture” fills the space well and hits the nail on Colen’s style. His work at Gagosian recently found leaning Harley’s – so you can easily see the connection here. (via LaMJC).

Check out the full scope of the installation after the jump.

You Are Here, presented Grupo YMT and Eyelevel BQ, opens this evening in New York City. The exhibition, displaying the work of the “You Are Here” Project, presents a series of interactive video art installations and objects.

The exhibition will run through the weekend (to October 18, 2010).

47 Grand Street at West Broadway,
New York, NY 10013

A brief preview video follows.

The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei opened today at the Tate Modern. The Chinese Artist is the latest to take Turbine Hall as part of the Unilever Series, and his installation will remain on site through May 2, 2011.

Vernissage caught the press preview yesterday. Their video is above. Images from the Tate follow.

Born in Oxford, Mississippi, Carson Fox has transformed the galleries of Redux into an exaggerated winter wonderland. Through mixed-media installation, she has created works simulating icicles and snowflakes.

The work is on view through November 30, 2010, at Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, South Carolina. Entitled, Ice Storm, the sculptural pieces are produced with complex arrangements of individual pieces of cast resin. The result is a richly textured, highly controlled, vision of winter.

View more images of Ice Storm after the jump.

Installed in the window of Bergdorf Goodman, Andy Harman’s “BK Totem” melds pop culture reference, craft, and a vague notion about “future flea-market goers.” Andreas Kokkino wrote about Harman’s latest leather work in T, finding glory in the Yale trained artists investigation of reinvestigation of sculpture through furniture.

Carefully manipulate a stack of ottomans, and one achieves a monumental burger.

On view through October 22, 2010.