All photos by thelexiphane at flickr Jeff Koons' rooftop installation at The Metropolitan Museum opened today, featuring three stainless steel sculptures with transparent colored coatings. The three pieces are Balloon Dog (Yellow), Sacred Heart (Red/Gold), and Coloring Book, the last being the representation of a sloppily colored-in illustration of Piglet, from the Winnie the Pooh series. The special exhibition opened today and will continue through October 26. The NY Times wrote the rooftop is......

Photo: Banksy Banksy, the cheeky street artist/prankster turned multimillionaire art star, was in town last week, presumably for the Damien Hirst-coordinated auction at Sotheby’s to benefit the (Project) RED campaign, which works with corporations like the Gap to raise money for the treatment of A.I.D.S. patients in Africa. The $48 million raised at the event – through the sale of works by Hirst, Banksy, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning and others – will......

Danish–Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson will work with the Public Art Fund – a nonprofit that brought Anish Kapoor's "Sky Mirror" and Jeff Koons's "Puppy," to Rockefeller Center – to bring freestanding waterfalls to the East River this spring. The project will be officially announced tomorrow, but a source tells the Sun that the waterfalls will rise 60 to 70 feet above the water, which is more than half as high as the Brooklyn Bridge roadway.......

The Post finds out that if sold, the inflated balloon of artist Jeff Koons' Rabbit, which made its debut appearance in the 81st Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday, would go for $5 million. The balloon isn't for sale, but the parade is so happy with the balloon that it's interested in ideas from other artists. Um, formaldehyde Damien shark, anyone? Or how about a Takashi Murakami Mr. Pointy balloon? Dan Flavin light balloon?......

Starting in the afternoon, the masses traveled to the Upper West Side yesterday to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons get inflated on West 77th and West 81st Streets between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. By 6PM, crowds were penned in for blocks - it took us about 30-40 minutes of shuffling and snaking around before we could get close to any balloons. We suspect the Broadway stagehands' strike as well as......

Tomorrow is one of our favorite days of the year: The annual Thanksgiving Eve inflation of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons! This year, there are twelve giant balloons: Dora the Explorer, Kermit the Frog, Healthy Mr. Potato Head (he's wearing a jogging suit), Scooby Doo, Ronald McDonald, Pikachu w/Poke-Ball, Energizer Bunny, Flying Ace Snoopy, and JoJo's Circus will be joined by new balloons Abby Cadabby, Shrek, and Super Cute Hello Kitty! As if Hello......

Yesterday's Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing over 980 Madison Ave. was a relatively staid affair. On the second floor of the Surrogate's Court building on Chambers Street, Lord Norman Foster told the 150-plus audience that 980 Madison Ave. was about one thing: regeneration. But Foster, wearing a bubblegum pink tie, took it one step further, characterizing the Upper East Side as a neighborhood with "a tradition of radicalism." He compared 980 Madison Ave.'s role, architecturally,......

With the rest of the World Trade Center redevelopment mired in a bureaucratic morass, the opening of 7 World Trade Center was greeted with joy, excitement, and yes, even praise for beleagured developer Larry Silverstein for actually building something. The festive opening ceremonies lacked Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, who had "other commitments," giving center stage to Silverstein who said, "We've come a very long way. What you're looking at today is just the beginning."......

Like a crackhead in Amsterdam, the art world is generally known to suffer from a nearly crippling case of ADD. Today's shocking sensation is tomorrow's freshman dorm decoration and it's easy to look back on past controversies and not be able to see what all the fuss was about. Once avant-garde Impressionism is now mundane enough to be found on everything from magnets to postcards, while the stunts of more recent artists like Jeff Koons......

Nothing says Tuesday night like the launch party for a book with a cover of Kim Jon Il as Terminator, George Bush wearing a freedom-fries hat, and Saddam Hussein as Rambo. Architect Rem Koolhaas's new book, Content, is a follow-up of sorts to the wonderful S, M, L, XL , covering architecture, politics, the economy, and technology, and pubisher Taschen and artist Jeff Koons threw Koolhaas a party at the Women's National Republican Club......