A BUILDING OF ONE'S OWN
While the Guggenheim’s summer blockbuster exhibition, a 30-year retrospective of award-winning architect Zaha Hadid’s work, will be difficult to ignore, the museum’s complementary educational program might get overlooked. It shouldn’t. In August, children ages 5 –10 (and their adult companions) are invited to explore Hadid’s drawing and architectural models by building their own scaled structures, taking digital photographs of their creative edifices, then importing them into a variety of exterior environments via Adobe Photoshop. A similar program for teens is offered: 14- to 18-year-olds create their own site-specific structures in the 3D modeling program SketchUp. Both clever classes are led by Rosanna Flouty, the museum’s education manager for new media. The Hadid exhibition closes Oct. 25, with who knows how many future builders smitten.
www.guggenheim.org

ART IN HAND
Born and raised in Budapest, where she studied the craft of handbag design during World War II, Judith Leiber is now an American household name in those homes whose residents can afford a $3,000 evening purse. Remarkably, every First Lady since 1953 has carried one of the Hungarian’s crystal-covered minaudieres (jeweled bags), many in fanciful shapes of animals and fruits, to presidential inaugurations. (Hillary Rodham Clinton owns one that looks like Socks the cat.) Touted by museums as works of art (The Metropolitan in New York, The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.), Leiber’s sparkling handbags are known for their fiawless craftsmanship. Now until Aug. 27, anyone with $9 and an active imagination can feel like she’s at an inaugural ball by viewing more than 100 of Leiber’s whimsical works at the Phoenix Museum of Art.
www.phxart.org

GUERRILLO HEROICO
The portrait of Ernesto “Che” Guevara photographed by Alberto Díaz Korda (a former fashion photographer who later became Fidel Castro’s personal photographer) on March 5, 1960, is considered to be the most reproduced image in the history of photography. That Korda’s iconic representation of Guevara, a guerrilla leader and Marxist anti-establishment hero, has been looted repeatedly for capitalist gains is yet another of life’s unrelenting ironies. Now, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London will display a collection of curios (photographs, posters, clothing) to examine how the ubiquitous image has inspired art, fashion, and culture for the past 45 years, particularly in the United States. Relevant artifacts, including Madonna’s album American Life and digital photographer Pedro Meyer’s “American Five Dollar Bill,” will be on display until Aug. 28. Che Guevara: Revolutionary and Icon was organized by UCR/ California Museum of Photography.
www.vam.ac.uk

DIVINE TRANSFORMATION
When not designing homeless shelters and chapels in Palm Springs, Calif., architect Phillip K. Smith III leaves his mark in the Joshua Tree desert with surveyor stakes. Made of Douglas Fir, the orange-tinged stakes he bolts and glues to laminated birch plywood create precise geometric forms which can rise up to 10 feet high. Since this personal project began in 2004, Smith has designed 27 of these transforming cylinder structures and is now branching out to design furniture—table bases and lamps. The largest piece made to date, a wood screen cylinder, was shown in May in New York at Mobile Living—an aptly named venue for the series, as the idea animating the screen is flexible space. All pieces are compact for shipping and storage and built to define space within space, with expert consideration of natural light.
www.theartoffice.com

READY FOR HIS CLOSE-UP
Known for his large-format, tightly cropped portraits of celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Angelina Jolie, German photographer Martin Schoeller is making his U.S. exhibition debut at New York’s Hasted Hunt Gallery. Is it easier for a photographer to get a one-man show in Manhattan if his subjects are well-known figures? You bet, but American audiences just can’t get close enough to the human stars in our terrestrial firmament. Close Up, a collection of Schoeller’s highly exposed 50 x 40-inch prints, most originally published in The New Yorker where he has been a contract photographer since 1998, will be on view until Aug. 30. German publishing group, teNeues, has released Martin Schoeller—Close Up: Portraits 1998–2005, to accompany the exhibition. www.hastedhunt.com, www.teneues-usa.com

ACT AT ADC
The idea sounds dubious: ad guys playing a significant role in addressing today’s crucial world issues. But AdForum’s nonprofit initiative, Advertising Community Together (ACT), is working hard to showcase “responsible communication” by organizing a worldwide traveling exhibition featuring politically correct practices. Sure, it makes the industry feel good about itself and its pro bono spots, but what about the general public? Has an ad ever convinced you to act more socially responsible? See if any of the 400 campaigns from 37 countries included in the exhibition Great Ads for a Better Future pull your heartstrings. Or open your wallet. Or change your mind. It will be on display at U.N. Headquarters during New York Advertising Week this September and at the Art Directors Club Gallery, Sept. 27– Oct. 30.
www.adforum.com