Arts news

• 'The saddest image': courtroom sketch captures Michael Cohen's bad day

  14-12-2018 03:25 via Art | The Guardian
  Artist known for images of Tom Brady and Harvey Weinstein portrays moment of former Trump fixer’s downfall Michael Cohen did not have a good day yesterday. But no headline captured the discontent of Trump’s former personal lawyer, sentenced to three years in prison for financial crimes and lying to Congress, quite as well as this courtroom sketch.His despairing eyes and deep frown lines caught the attention of Stephen Colbert, who called it the “saddest” of all the images
  
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• End Of An Era: Denver Public Library Will Stop Charging Fines On Overdue Books

  14-12-2018 00:02 via ArtsJournal
  Starting Jan.1, Denver Public Library will be eliminating fees for overdue materials to help reduce barriers for low-income patrons. Library administrators are even letting most customers’ existing overdue fines slide to get them back in the door, according to a Wednesday news release from the library. That’s $474,000 owed right now by 85,000 people. – Denver Post
  
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• Women Are Leading The Arab Gulf’s Surging Art Scene

  13-12-2018 23:33 via ArtsJournal
  To the women themselves, gender is almost a non-issue. The Art Newspaper spoke to three female directors who are shaping the future of museums in the Gulf about their efforts to build creative communities, embrace inclusivity in the workplace and reveal the relevance—beyond the beauty—of Islamic art. – The Art Newspaper
  
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• This Year’s Additions To The Rock Hall Of Fame

  13-12-2018 23:01 via ArtsJournal
  Since 1986, the Hall has added 323 inductees to its rolls; they include 220 performers, 33 “early influencers” (a category largely composed of rock and roll’s African-American founding mothers and fathers, such as Lead Belly, Robert Johnson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe) and 34 non-performers (generally music-industry executives, but also songwriters, producers and instrument makers). – NPR
  
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• ‘Sperm Cult’ at LAXART, Los Angeles

  13-12-2018 22:56 via ARTnews
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• Uh Oh: Now We Have To Worry About Provenance Of AI Art?

  13-12-2018 22:32 via ArtsJournal
  In the fallout of the Christie’s sale it emerged that the AI was actually the work of another artist, Robbie Barrat. He had programmed it, trained it on works from Wikiart and used it to generate very similar portraits, before he posted the code online with an open-source licence, so others could use it freely. So not only is the Obvious portrait not attributable to the AI – it’s not even really attributable to Obvious. – BBC
  
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• MFA Boston Receives Largest-Ever Gift of Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy

  13-12-2018 22:26 via ARTnews
  Highlights from the Weng Collection will go on view in fall 2019. Read More
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• Why Beauty Pageants Still Have A Hold On The Popular Imagination

  13-12-2018 22:01 via ArtsJournal
  Pageants still tend to fascinate. The very word suggests why: The ceremony and accoutrements of beauty contests play a powerful role in the national imagination, with their sashes and their tiaras and their inevitable rows of machine-stitched sequins. The ratings for Miss America have fallen consistently since its heyday, but 4.3 million viewers still tuned in to ABC to watch Nia Franklin triumph at this year’s ceremony in September. The pageant, despite everything, still catches the eye,
  
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• Study: How To Build Trust In The Media

  13-12-2018 21:30 via ArtsJournal
  It finds that news consumers are more trusting of the media—and more secure about their own ability to discern the truth—when they are exposed to a combination of fact-checking articles and opinion pieces arguing for the importance of journalism. “When one side attacks over and over again, and the other doesn’t respond, at some point people assume that journalists have conceded the point that they’re biased.” – Pacific Standard
  
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• Recent Listening In Brief: Christmas Music

  13-12-2018 20:58 via ArtsJournal
  Laura Dickinson 17: Auld Lang Syne (Music & Mirror Records)
  David Ian: Vintage Christmas (Prescott Records)
  Jake Ehrenreich, with the Roger Kellaway Trio,     A Treausury of Jewish Christmas Songs (Ehrenreich)
                 — Doug Ramsey
  
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• Reality as a Metaphysical Construct

  13-12-2018 20:55 via ArtsJournal
  It is a rare thing when a book comes along that looks as magnificent as Jürgen Ploog’s Flesh Film and reads like an hallucination. — Jan Herman
  
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• Seattle Opera Has A New Home

  13-12-2018 20:30 via ArtsJournal
  The 105,000-square-foot building, at Mercer Street and Fourth Avenue North next to McCaw Hall, is designed to allow people to take a peek behind the scenes, with walls of glass allowing the public to see performances and lectures in progress, and a viewing garden where people can watch those at work in the costume shop. – Seattle Times
  
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• Smithsonian American Art Museum Names David Voyles Deputy Director

  13-12-2018 20:19 via ARTnews
  He was previously director of the Smithsonian's Office of Planning, Management, and Budget. Read More
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• How The Lost Short Stories Of Naguib Mahfouz Were Rediscovered And Published (And Lost In The First Place)

  13-12-2018 20:01 via ArtsJournal
  The Nobel laureate had evidently intended to publish them sometime in 1994. Then he lost track of them after a very, very bad day. Two decades on, a critic in Cairo came upon them while searching for something else entirely. — Literary Hub
  
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• Stanislav Kolíbal Will Represent the Czech Republic at the 2019 Venice Biennale

  13-12-2018 19:54 via ARTnews
  His pavilion will embrace oppositions between certainty and uncertainty. Read More
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• Walmart Buys Art.com

  13-12-2018 19:31 via ArtsJournal
  Initially Art.com will operate independently as a standalone company, but the announcement states that soon Art.com’s collection of two million images ranging from posters to limited-edition prints on paper and canvas, as well as frames, wall décor and custom framing services for uploaded photographs, will be added to the Walmart.com, Jet.com and Hayneedle.com sites. – Forbes
  
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• Southward Bound: As Art Institutions Explore New Frontiers in South L.A., Communities Brace for Change

  13-12-2018 19:18 via ARTnews
  The expansive area will soon be home to satellite locations for LACMA and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Read More
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• Atlanta’s Monumental Piece Of Civil War Propaganda Art Is Being Restored To Tell The Truth

  13-12-2018 19:02 via ArtsJournal
  No, this isn’t Stone Mountain. It’s “the largest palimpsest of Civil War memory to be found anywhere on planet Earth — the Atlanta Cyclorama, one of the great wonders of the postmodern world.” Which is to say, it’s an enormous 360-degree painting, once a major tourist attraction, that was painted over repeatedly to change the narrative and show one side or the other as winning. — Smithsonian Magazine
  
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• Artist Subodh Gupta Accused of Sexual Harassment

  13-12-2018 18:59 via ARTnews
  Allegations were posted on an Instagram account attributed to "Scene and Herd" in India. Read More
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• Here’s the Exhibitor List for Art Cologne 2019

  13-12-2018 18:50 via ARTnews
  Some 176 galleries are lined up to exhibit work at the fair. Read More
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• Mental Illness And Theatre

  13-12-2018 18:31 via ArtsJournal
  Being a mentally ill theatremaker comes with its own specific challenges. Different mental illnesses require different care, but the majority are exacerbated by lack of routine, insufficient sleep, alcohol use, lack of access to health care, and undue stress—all elements of most theatre careers. Mental illnesses are chronic, requiring a redefinition of self after diagnosis, a lifetime of management, and the navigation of a complicated healthcare system. – Howlround
  
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• In Praise Of The Long And Complicated Sentence

  13-12-2018 18:03 via ArtsJournal
  “The style guides say: keep your sentences short. … But sometimes a sentence just needs to be long. The world resists our efforts to enclose it between a capital and a full stop. The sentence has to withhold its end because life is like that, refusing to fold itself neatly into subject, verb and object.” — Literary Hub
  
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• Detroit Symphony Executive Director Anne Parsons In Treatment For Lung Cancer

  13-12-2018 17:31 via ArtsJournal
  In a Dec. 5 email to board members, musicians, staff and donors, the DSO announced that Parsons is being treated at Henry Ford Health System with a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. The email described Parsons as a “lifelong non-smoker.” – The Detroit News
  
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• Meet The Man Who Took Care Of Oakland’s Ghost Ship — And Who’s Awaiting Trial For The Deaths In The Fire There

  13-12-2018 17:04 via ArtsJournal
  “Once a week, Max Harris is allowed to leave his 6-by-12-foot cell to go outside. The first thing he does, before the other inmates arrive in the small cement yard in Santa Rita Jail, is run around and pick up all the bugs … He wants to move them out of harm’s way before other men start playing basketball. — The New York Times Magazine
  
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• Carol Rhodes obituary

  13-12-2018 16:59 via Art | The Guardian
  Artist who created in her paintings a unique style of landscape, both traditionally beautiful and unsettling in subjectFrom the 1990s onwards the artist Carol Rhodes, who has died aged 59 from motor neurone disease, created in her paintings a unique style of landscape, both traditionally beautiful and unsettling in subject. She painted imaginary places, seen from some near but airborne altitude, as if from a balloon or from the window of a plane approaching an airport – close enough to sho
  
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• How Top-Quality Oil Paints Get Made

  13-12-2018 16:36 via ArtsJournal
  David Coles, who’s been making paints for artists for 20-odd years, walks us through the process, from sourcing the linseed oil to hand-filling the tubes for shipping and sale. — Artsy
  
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• A Fundraiser’s Ten Aphorisms To Live By

  13-12-2018 16:05 via ArtsJournal
  Longtime Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) president Karen Brooks Hopkins: “I call these tidbits ‘KBHisms,’ which I hope will guide you through the cold winter months ahead and provide some comfort.” (Note no. 6: “You Lose More Money Presenting Opera by Intermission Than You Do Presenting an Entire Season of Theater.”) — Inside Philanthropy
  
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• Blockbuster Films With Female Leads Sell Better: Study

  13-12-2018 15:34 via ArtsJournal
  “In a report compiled by media research agency Shift7 in collaboration with leading agency CAA, revenue for 350 high-grossing films released between 2014 and 2017 was assessed, and the average results for female-led films did best, at every budget level.” What’s more movies that pass the Bechdel Test do better box office than those that fail it. — The Guardian
  
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• From Xeroxed Queer Fanzine To Internationally Influential Opera Blog: The Tale Of Parterre Box

  13-12-2018 15:18 via ArtsJournal
  “The first issue was published 25 years ago this month and distributed in bathroom stalls at the Metropolitan Opera. Now its writers are credentialed press at the Met.” Joshua Barone looks at the history of Parterre Box and talks to its founder and doyenne, James Jorden (aka La Cieca). — The New York Times
  
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• NPR’s ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me’ To Be Adapted For TV

  13-12-2018 15:03 via ArtsJournal
  The hour-long program, being developed by NBCUniversal’s Wilshire Studios, “will stay true to the original while delivering bigger, visual and variety-themed games that can’t be captured on the radio.” — Deadline
  
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• Morning Links: Increasingly Fake Edition

  13-12-2018 15:00 via ARTnews
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
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• Dinner Theater In The 21st Century: Upscale, ‘Immersive’, And Actually Related To The Play

  13-12-2018 14:47 via ArtsJournal
  Back in 1973, the Times described the then-popular phenomenon as “restaurants that feature live theater.” Now it’s the other way around, writes Elisabeth Vincentelli: “The productions I caught this fall at least tried to make food an integral part of a show’s aesthetic and thematic universe. In turning New York venues into giant food courts, some even succeeded.” — The New York Times
  
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• At Cleveland Orchestra, Deficit Is Down And Audience Is Up

  13-12-2018 14:32 via ArtsJournal
  The budget shortfall for fiscal 2018 was $1.3 million, but that’s down from $4.2 million the previous year. At the orchestra’s main venue, Severance Hall, attendance rose by 8%, while audience numbers for summer concerts at Blossom Music Center were up by 28%. — The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
  
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• University Group Asked Comedians To Sign ‘Behavioural Agreement’ Before Benefit Performance

  13-12-2018 14:16 via ArtsJournal
  A student group supporting UNICEF at the School of Oriental and African Studies, a prominent research institution in London, booked five comedians for a benefit performance. Then it sent them a contract “agreeing to our no tolerance policy with regards to racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia or anti-religion or anti-atheism. … All topics must be presented in a way that is respectful and kind.” — The Guard
  
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• Alvin Epstein, One Of America’s Great Classical Stage Actors, Dead At 93

  13-12-2018 14:01 via ArtsJournal
  He was Marcel Marceau’s assistant in his U.S. debut tour, played the Fool to Orson Welles’s Lear, was a founding member of both Yale Rep and American Rep Theatre, and acted in everything from the Greeks to Shakespeare to Brecht and Weill. But he made his biggest mark in the plays of Samuel Beckett. — The New York Times
  
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• I Was An Unhappy, Aging Academic Until Flamenco Transformed My Life

  13-12-2018 13:45 via ArtsJournal
  Author and professor Catherine Taylor offers an impressionistic longread, with plenty of video clips, about how her midlife crisis moved her to travel to southern Spain for serious study of the form — and about how its aesthetic and mindset changed her way of being. — The Believer
  
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• Tasmanian Billionaire Is Building Hotel-And-Arts-Center Next To His Modern Art Museum

  13-12-2018 13:30 via ArtsJournal
  Gambling mogul David Walsh, who built and opened MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) in Hobart in 2011, has announced plans for a complex he’s calling Motown. In addition to 176 high-end hotel rooms, Motown will include a 1,000-seat theatre, a conference center, a library, a gallery, and a spa designed by no less than James Turrell and Marina Abramović. — The Art Newspaper
  
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• Finalists Named for 2019 Mario Merz Prize for Art and Music

  13-12-2018 10:00 via ARTnews
  The winner will be commissioned to create work for the Fondazione Merz. Read More
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• Queering Cambodian Classical Dance

  13-12-2018 09:04 via ArtsJournal
  Prumsodun Ok is a Cambodian-American who studied Khmer court dance in the US and ultimately in Phnom Penh. Now he’s the founding artistic director of Natyarasa, Cambodia’s first LGBTQ dance company, which performs traditional dances in (what’s the best word?) gender-fluid form as well as newly-created works. (video) — Atlas Obscura
  
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• Mountain devil woman: the extraordinary life and art of Kwementyaye Petyarre

  13-12-2018 04:28 via Art | The Guardian
  Her non-Indigenous partner claimed credit for her most prized work – but the artist, born and raised out bush, bounced back and travelled the worldThe artist Kwementyaye “Kathleen” Petyarre (c. 1938 – 24 November 2018) has died in Alice Springs, surrounded by family and loved ones, at about the age of 80. Alhwarrpe.About that age, because Petyarre was born out bush, delivered by Anmatyerr midwives at Atnangker on Anmatyerr country in Australia’s north-east Central D
  
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• Festival Mozaic – Executive Director

  13-12-2018 00:28 via ArtsJournal
  Reporting to the board of directors and working in partnership with the Music Director, the Executive Director (ED) supervises and directs all aspects of the Festival’s operations.Organization
  Each summer and throughout the year in the heart of California’s Central Coast, Festival Mozaic (the Festival) brings together music lovers to enjoy premier concerts and related events in a festive and stimulating atmosphere. The Festival was founded in 1971 as the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festiv
  
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• Prominent UK Musicians Write Letter Urging Canceling Brexit

  13-12-2018 00:02 via ArtsJournal
  The letter, published by the Music4EU initiative, describes Brexit as a “significant threat” to the country’s music industry, adding: “Leaving the EU’s customs union, single market, VAT area and regulatory framework (in whole or part) could devastate our global market leadership, and damage our freedom to trade, tour and to promote our artists and our works.” Concerns are also voiced over access to foreign markets and regulation over copyright, before a reque
  
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• The MFA Degree-As-Fraud

  12-12-2018 23:31 via ArtsJournal
  We are a long way from late-19th-century Paris, where “academic painting” signified technically dazzling neoclassical figures, lush but sterile, and where the brutal disruptions of Manet and the Impressionists were consigned to the “Salon des Refusés.” Beauty within the academies, scandal without. Today these positions are reversed, and the academic institutions that serve as gatekeepers for the art world praise the conceptual, the alienating, and the abstract whi
  
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• Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre A Cautionary Tale For Regional Theatre?

  12-12-2018 23:01 via ArtsJournal
   Liverpool’s plight is a reminder of just how close to the edge many regional theatres are operating and how perilously near many are to breaching their NPO agreements. As one leading industry insider put it to me: “There are many canaries in cages coughing, if not yet falling off their perches.” As with Liverpool, it wouldn’t take all that much to knock them off, and when one tumbles – particularly one as big as Liverpool – the fear is that more ma
  
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• René Daniëls at WIELS, Brussels

  12-12-2018 22:56 via ARTnews
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• What We Learned About Making Good Plays: “We Don’t Care If They’re Any Good” (At Least For Awhile)

  12-12-2018 22:32 via ArtsJournal
  “What we learned working on Sinan’s play, and several others at that time, completely changed our DNA. We learned that the pressure of rushing to production forced us to take safer approaches and to marginalise the most important visionary of all, the writer.” After Pera Palas, the Lark changed its approach. “We became what I like to call a ‘rehearsal company’. We would be a play lab, a think tank for theatre.” – The Stage
  
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• Hot Coffee!: On CTRI, the Shortest Artist Residency in the World

  12-12-2018 22:14 via ARTnews
  Fifty-two people have taken place in a unique program that takes place over a piping-hot beverage. Read More
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• Truth: It Probably Doesn’t Matter Where You Go To College

  12-12-2018 22:01 via ArtsJournal
  The seemingly obvious answer is, Of course it matters! How could it not? Ivy League and equivalent institutions provide more than world-class instruction. They confer a lifetime of assistance from prodigiously connected alumni and a message to all future employers that you’re a rarified talent. College isn’t just an education; it’s a network, a signal, and an identity. But what appears obvious may not be true. – The Atlantic
  
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• New Tech Could Revolutionize How We Reproduce Art

  12-12-2018 21:31 via ArtsJournal
  RePaint, a resin-based 3D printer that renders reproductions in color four times closer to the original than the next-best tool, utilizes a palette of 11 different inks: cyan, magenta, yellow, black, green, blue, orange, red, violet, transparent white and opaque white. Comparatively, traditional 2D printers typically operate in CMYK, or cyan, magenta, yellow and black, which is the keyline color. – Smithsonian
  
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• José Olympio Pereira Named President of Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

  12-12-2018 21:26 via ARTnews
  He is currently president of Credit Suisse in Brazil. Read More
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