The program is now entering its 12th year, and past winner have included such now-prominent firms as SHoP (Atlantic Yards, East River Esplanade), nARCHITECTS (the Switch Building), WorkAC (Dianne Von Furstenburg, Edible Schoolyard), and last year's winner, SO-IL (Derek Lam, Sukkah City). It can be quite the springboard to success.

MoMA has just determined its shortlist for the 2011 competition, and The Architect's Newspaper has the names:

From Brooklyn the firms are FormlessFinder, Interboro Partners and Matter Architecture Practice. MASS Design Group comes from Boston and IJP Corporation Architects are based in London.

The mix is usually local with a few out of towners, so this is par for the course. Interestingly, the prize always seems to go to the local faves, even though last year among the entrants was Danish darkhorse Bjarke Ingels (now of Durst pyramid fame.) The Observer's money is on Interboro or Matter, as they have a decent amount of cred already--rarely is the winner a total unknown--but whoever comes out on top, and even those who don't, likely have a bright future ahead of them. Attention builders. These are the names to watch.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

The play, a transfer from London’s Donmar Warehouse, where it was widely acclaimed, unfolds in Rothko’s New York studio and features a great deal of the physical toil involved in the act of painting (lots of red gets splashed around). It looks at Rothko’s working process—but also the struggle between his own art and the aims of the grand restaurant for which he’s painting. And while a mystery still exists over what actually happened, Rothko experts say that Red paints a likely, if disputed, scenario.

Playwright John Logan, who is also an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (Gladiator, The Aviator), said: “It seemed an extraordinary act to accept the commission from the Four Seasons. To spend years working on the paintings, then decide not to put them there. I think that’s heroic—and Rothko’s great act of valor in the play.”

Mr. Logan was inspired to write Red after seeing several of the Seagram-commissioned works in London. “When I walked into the Tate Modern and saw them for the first time, I was staggered by their power,” he said in an email. “They got under my skin, and I couldn’t shake them.”

When he began, Mr. Logan said he knew very little about Rothko, a leader of America’s postwar Abstract Expressionist art movement. Once he did some research into the artist, who is best known for his now-iconic paintings that seem to pulse with rectangles of color, certain themes began to resonate. As a playwright, one structural element was clear to him, he said. “I almost immediately thought it should be a two-hander play: reflecting the pulsating back-and-forth colors in the paintings. To me, it’s always been a father-son play.”

The characters in Red are Rothko, played by Alfred Molina, and his young assistant, Ken, played by Eddie Redmayne. In the play, they argue about everything from Rothko’s legacy to the rise of a next generation of artists seeking to unseat him to the ethics of his decision to work for the Four Seasons.

Rothko had been at first delighted to take the lucrative commission. The Seagram building, designed by Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe, was a showcase for Modernism. And the Four Seasons was already displaying a Picasso, a metallic curtain designed by the Spanish master for a 1919 production of the ballet Le Tricorne. But Rothko (an artist prone to depression who committed suicide in 1970) grew increasingly disenchanted with the restaurant’s approach to his work.

His concern may have turned on a seemingly simple matter: display. Rothko believed that how one of his paintings was hung on the wall (generally lower than most paintings are) and how it was lighted were essential to a viewer’s experience of his work, said Bonnie Clearwater, former curator of the Rothko Foundation and now director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, Fla. For gallery shows of his work, he visualized how the pieces would look in the space, and gave detailed instructions. For instance, he called for “normal” lighting, Ms. Clearwater said, to echo the muted natural light of his studio, which would heighten the drama of the colors on the canvas. For the Seagram works, Rothko envisioned his paintings hanging as a continuous frieze, Ms. Clearwater believes, rather than as individual canvases.

Rothko’s circle was certainly aware of his displeasure as the project went on. The late poet Stanley Kunitz, who knew the artist well, spoke about the incident when he was interviewed for the Archives of American Art.

“He was fit to be tied during that whole period,” Kunitz said. “In the beginning, of course, he felt complimented because they wanted the work, but when he saw what they were doing with the hanging, he was furious. … He felt his paintings were being treated like decorations, and that all the labor, all the love and all the art that had gone into them was wasted.”

However, there’s more than one version of what happened. According to the Web site for the Four Seasons restaurant, Rothko pulled the paintings (and also returned the money) when he found they weren’t going to hang in an employee cafeteria. Four Seasons co-owner Alex von Bidder said, “I’ve always been told that he came to check the place out, to have lunch or dinner, and I was told that he said, ‘I don’t want to have my paintings in a place where only the rich can see them.’” But he added, “There’s no definite answer. … That died with Rothko.”

According to Mr. Kunitz, Rothko was furious with the way his paintings were being hung. “Somehow they looked insignificant and tawdry where they were. He felt it was all wrong.” Rothko’s withdrawing from the commission “wasn’t just someone trying to be demanding,” Ms. Clearwater said. “The work lives and dies” by how it is shown.

After Rothko withdrew his paintings, many of them were shown in 1961, first at the Museum of Modern Art and then at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Years later, Ms. Clearwater found Rothko’s written instructions on how the works should be hung and advised the Tate on its installation. Part of the impact of seeing these paintings results from their being displayed according to Rothko’s wishes, she said. The tension within the paintings themselves is part of who Rothko was—a visual dramatist, Ms. Clearwater said. Rothko thought of the shapes within his paintings “as performers.”
Of course, Red isn’t a biographical study of Rothko. It’s “a work of drama, not reportage,” Mr. Logan said. “I think, however, we represent him fairly and with honor. I feel extremely protective of him. He’s a great bear of a character.”

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“We’re looking for younger people who are really ready to commit themselves to being involved with P.S.1 and being satisfied with that, who don’t see MoMA as the place to maybe be on the board of over something like P.S.1,” Ms. Gund said.

She added: “My ambition is to see [P.S.1] come alive again the way it was under Alanna, and really be a place that is a destination for people. It already is for younger people and artists, but we have to really get a more mixed crowd.”

Reached for comment at her studio on Tuesday, Ms. Anderson said that she initially hesitated when Mr. Biesenbach asked her to join the board. “I’m not so good on boards, frankly, because I’m usually out of town on a tour, but I love thinking of what institutions should or could do,” Ms. Anderson said. “I love P.S.1 and I have for several decades. I don’t know what Klaus has in mind for it, but, you know, I think he’s really open to a lot of different things.”

“P.S.1 is really the hotbed in New York for the next generation of artists, and that’s really something I wanted to get involved with,” said Mr. Kimmel. “Klaus has really big shoes to fill with Alana and I think he’s bringing her spirit and his own, and it’s a beautiful thing.”

None of the other new board members, nor Mr. Biesenbach, could be reached for comment yesterday.

lneyfakh@observer.com

The Observer profiled Biesenbach back in 2007, when he became chief curator of the new MoMA media department. He was an intense guy:

“He doesn’t have his own family,” said the performance artist Marina Abramovic, who has known Mr. Biesenbach since he was 21 years old. “He sacrificed a very large part of his private life for the work. Basically, all his life is the work.”

In the early years of their acquaintance, the two experimented with a romantic relationship, despite the 20-year gap in their ages (she just turned 60 last November). “It was a very short time, yah, yah, about three months,” she said in her sumptuous Slavic accent. “It was really a disaster. It was really funny. We devoted three months together, and we decided we can have like a ‘house life.’ He would make the apple pies, but they were always burning!”

And in January, W magazine toured Biesenbach's rigorously spartan apartment, providing another glimpse into the world of Klaus:

“Small objects make me nervous,” says Biesenbach, 42, looking around his apartment on New York’s Lower East Side, which is notable for its lack of not only small objects but also large ones. The living room has no sofas, tables, pillows, books or lamps; the kitchen has no countertops, cookware or appliances, apart from a $99 mini fridge. As for beds, there is a mail-order mattress in the bedroom, but Biesenbach prefers to sleep on the one on the outdoor terrace, weather permitting.

Right. And that’s why -- in the spirit of raves! -- “attendees are encouraged to wear bright and bold colors” and “will receive a colorful custom-made gift designed by PopRally and DFA.” Still not sold? Two words: “free” and “booze”!