Standing around the corner from Richard Meier’s glass towers on Perry Street is a pink building designed to resemble a Northern Italian palace. The building is called Palazzo Chupi and the owner is none other than artist Julian Schnabel. The brick building was formerly a horse stable that has been converted into Schnabel’s work studio. Five additional luxury living units were added to the building. It has been designed for private use for residential and work until now. Schnabel is opening up a gallery on the ground floor called Casa del Popolo. The inaugural exhibition will feature six new paintings by British artist Nick Mead and will open to the public tomorrow at 11am. via psfk.

Richard Prince is an artist. He’s also a famous collector of art, furniture, cars, and most of all, print. The contents behind this building is mind blowing. This is Prince’s personal library, an early 19th century brick building in Rensselaerville, NY. The materials he’s acquired through the years, range from the greatest literary works to the trashiest pulp novels. A 2007 Vanity Fair article gives us some insight into this shrine.

“The psychic epicenter of Richard Prince’s rural empire would have to be his “Library”—this 1821 brick building, located on a street corner in the town nearest to Prince’s upstate compound, is filled with a collection of mind-boggling worth. In a way, its contents tell you most of what you need to know about Richard Prince.

The Library is a climate-controlled shrine to midcentury hipster culture; it’s like the most exquisite bookstore on the planet, except nothing is for sale. On the ground floor you’ll find mint-condition first issues of Mad magazine, Playboy, and Zap Comix, and acres of Beat-sploitation paperbacks. You might well drool over photo books like Young London: Permissive Paradise, the “Do-It-Yourself Beatnik Kit,” the poster for a (canceled) Los Angeles concert by the Velvet Underground, and row upon row of artist monographs by the likes of Larry Clark, Ed Ruscha, Martin Kippenberger, and Christopher Wool. And, of course, Andy Warhol, with whom Prince shares more than a birthday.

Upstairs, locked behind thick metal doors designed to withstand a 14-hour fire, is the heart of Prince’s collection, ceiling-high shelves filled with ultra-rare inscribed editions of works by 20th-century literary icons such as Dashiell Hammett, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac, among countless others. (Prince has 65 versions of Lolita, including Vladimir Nabokov’s hand-corrected desk copy.)"

For the past three years, a five-story building on the corner of Spring and Mercer has been shrouded behind a white curtain. Bit by bit a massive restoration was underway. The historic significance of the building wasn’t so much the structure itself but the contents inside it. Since 1968 it belonged to Donald Judd. He lived and worked until his passing in 1994 when it was handed over to his children and eventually to the Judd Foundation. The foundation had a dauntingly simple mission, to preserve Judd’s art-installed spaces in perpetuity. Spaces that included 15 buildings in Marfa and the massive cast-iron building on Spring Street.

The project to essentially build a new building from inside an old one, ballooned from $8 million to $28 million ($23 million according to Vulture). Construction finally began in 2010 after eight years of planning and raising capital to finance the restoration.

After three years, the building has finally shed its skin of curtain and metal scaffolding. Judd fans will now be able to see how his art, his work space and his living space in guided tours of eight. The Judd Foundation will begin taking reservation starting June 3rd. Read more about the entire restoration process at Residential Architect.

James Turrell is a hero of ours. We’re consumed by the progress of his ongoing master piece in the Arizona desert and whenever possible we make it a point to visit one of his works during our travels. So it should come as no surprised that we’re thrilled about the three major exhibitions on Turrell this summer. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Guggenheim have worked in concert to bring this retrospective together. Most impressive, biased because of our location, is Aten Reign. The site specific installation will transform Guggenheim’s rotunda into a canvas for shifting artificial and natural light that is synonymous with Turrell’s work. LACMA will be the first of the three museums, with their exhibition opening May 26th. Followed by The Museum of Fine Arts Houston on June 9th and finally Guggenheim on June 21st.

THROUGH THE LENS with Rob Machado from Through The Lens on Vimeo.

We’ve long admired Jay Nelson’s work since seeing it for the first time at Mollusk in San Francisco. He was able to bring a little bit of the outdoors inside with his treehouse structure made from found wood. Shelter is a recurring theme Nelson explores in his art, whether its stationary or mobile, like the campers he’s built onto used cars, boats, and scooters. His work is quintessential California and his lifestyle seem to reflect this. Nelson’s studio is within eye distance of the ocean so whenever he feels the urge, he goes out and surf. designboom sat down with Nelson for an interview today to discuss his work where he cites Buckminster Fuller as an influence.

Street art is no stranger to consumer goods. You needn’t look further than Keith Haring’s iconographic work that has adorned everything from keychains and magnets to coffee makers and yo-yos. He’s probably the most prolific of them all when it comes to art and commerce within this genre. Though Barry McGee has licenses his art to various products in the past, from t-shirts to sneakers, it’s not often you see his work available to purchase as a consumer product. With the opening of his mid-career survey this weekend at ICA Boston, the museum has collaborated with a couple of our favorite brands, The Hill-Side and Cinelli. Four prints have been produced with The Hill-Side, two of McGee’s signature characters and the other two of his patterns. While Cinelli produced a couple of water bottles. Posters and books will also accompany the exhibit. All items will be available starting Saturday on ICA’s online store.