Arts news

• Prized artworks from Scottish National Gallery risked oblivion with bargain basement plan for nuclear attack

  01-02-2015 23:53
  
  Think of it less as Desert Island Discs and more as nuclear island artwork. At the height of Cold War tension, fearful that Soviet missiles raining down on the British Isles could destroy prized art treasures, Whitehall officials drew up secret plans to save the country’s finest paintings for anyone who survived the atomic apocalypse.
  
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• Flex Dance Is Traveling Far And Away From East New York

  01-02-2015 21:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Flex is said to have originated in the 1990s in Jamaica with a dancer who called himself Bruck Up. It developed in Brooklyn, mainly in dance battles and tournaments, both informal and organized. Although the form has found exposure through television competitions and an ocean of online music and dance videos, the attention from the […]
  
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• ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark’ Writer Explains What Really Went Wrong (If Anything Actually Did?)

  01-02-2015 21:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  “What gets lost in this story is how many people actually wound up loving the show. … For a lot of people, because it was Spider-Man, it was their first musical ever, and for some it was kind of a gateway drug. They were turned on to Broadway musicals in a way they hadn’t been […]
  
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• If The U.S. Constitution Isn’t A Sacred Document, What Is It?

  01-02-2015 20:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Sealed in moisture-controlled, bullet-proof glass containers that are on display in a special rotunda at the National Archives Museum in Washington DC by day and lowered into a multi-ton bomb-proof vault by night, the Constitution is to the US what the Bible was to medieval Europe or the Qur’an to today’s Islamic State, albeit with […]
  
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• Yes, We Can – And Should – Enjoy The Music Of Richard Strauss

  01-02-2015 20:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  “It seems more and more obvious that the composer’s critics were merely looking for the wrong things.”
  
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• The Star Violinist Who Defies Putin’s Russia – And Thinks Western Orchestras Should Too

  01-02-2015 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  “She agreed to play in the concert but prepared a gesture of protest that was characteristically elegant. She commissioned an encore for solo violin from a Georgian composer, Igor Loboda, titled ‘Requiem for Ukraine,’ which she performed after her concerto — as Mr. Gergiev stood in the wings.”
  
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• What’s It Like To Write A Composition About Frank Gehry’s House?

  01-02-2015 18:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The new piece, for four musicians, tries to evoke the Gehry home with means both literal and conceptual. As with much of his music, Norman acknowledges, there’s a chance that some listeners will find ‘Frank’s House’ as unpleasant as those neighbors in 1978 found Frank’s house.”
  
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• Google Celebrates Langston Hughes’ Birthday With A Wonderful Google Doodle

  01-02-2015 18:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Hughes “travelled to West Africa and Europe, before returning to the US taking various jobs before meeting the poet Vachel Lindsay while working as a busboy at a Washington hotel. Lindsay was impressed with Hughes’ work.”
  
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• Theatre Too Big To Fail (Perhaps Unfortunately)

  01-02-2015 18:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  “There does seem something odd about ACE’s long-standing tradition of hurling ever more money at buildings and organisations that lurch from crisis to crisis. There are plenty of small, nimble organisations with absolutely no desire to empire-build by adding another auditorium or indeed any auditorium at all, but who get by on very little funding; […]
  
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• Keeping Music Alive

  01-02-2015 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Making sure our music survives is about a lot more than just writing it down. It has to do with teaching our harmonic language and melodic style to those who learn from us. It has to do with nuance, experience, storytelling, and subtlety.”
  
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• As Lawsuit Shows, It’s Hard Out There For An Independent Movie Producer

  01-02-2015 17:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Indie producers typically raise money from a pool of investors, and look to partner with studios that can market and distribute their projects. But their movies often have trouble finding an audience in a marketplace dominated by big productions. It’s a bit of a gamble, and unlike a corporation, independent producers often don’t have the […]
  
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• Moscow Library Containing 14 Million Books And Many Rare Historical Documents Goes Up In Flames

  01-02-2015 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  “It was founded in 1918 and holds documents from the League of Nations, UNESCO, and early parliamentary reports dating back as far as 1789.”
  
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• When People Say ‘Think Of The Children,’ They’re Not Being (Purposefully) Manipulative

  01-02-2015 17:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The notion of ‘harmless wrongs’ or ‘victimless crimes’ is more complicated that you might think. Although logically possible, victimless crimes are psychologically rare. Perceptually speaking, if you see something as wrong, you almost certainly see it as harmful. The absence of victims occurs only in the absence of immorality.”
  
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• When The Time Comes To Combine Your Libraries

  01-02-2015 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  “In some way that wasn’t apparent to me before they sat on the side table, waiting to be sorted, I could see these were the books that had kept him company in those years before he knew me, the books that had helped him turn into him. This hadn’t quite been apparent to me before […]
  
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• Indies Are Back With Force (And Bidding Wars) At This Year’s Sundance

  01-02-2015 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  “One factor in this year’s resurgence of sales may be the magic glow shed on Sundance by the fact that two of its 2014 selections – Whiplash and Boyhood, by festival regular Richard Linklater – are among the best picture contenders at the Academy Awards. But the marketplace has changed, with distributors hungry to buy […]
  
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• It’s 2015, And TV Now Has Exactly One Show About An Asian American Family

  01-02-2015 16:18 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Mr. Huang has been vocal in opposition to some of the differences between the show and his book. But producers and writers were, broadly speaking, true to his story of cross-racial solidarity. ‘The new generation of people, I think, are ready for this show,’ Hudson said.”
  
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• Foreign artists still find French inspiration

  01-02-2015 11:00
  
  France’s mid-20th century cultural heyday may have passed, but the country retains its appeal for overseas creativesJosephine Baker may have sung “I have two loves, my country and Paris,” but such a sentiment seems dated today, when even the French knock themselves. With a frustrating political system, a lack of competitive edge and everyone defending their own corner, there is reason for gloom. Yet Thomas Hirschhorn, a Swiss artist who has lived in Aubervilliers, east of Paris, since 2000
  
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• Jane and Louise Wilson: ‘This show is like going into seven different artists’ brains’

  01-02-2015 10:45
  
  Turner-nominated artists Jane and Louise Wilson talk about their part in a new group show at the South BankJane and Louise Wilson have been central figures on the contemporary British art scene for the last two decades, so when I find them helping to install their upcoming exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, I’m pleasantly surprised. “D’you know how to get gauze to stick to aluminium?” Louise asks, half-joking, pointing to two huge (and slightly unstuck) reprints of photos leaning against
  
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• Glasgow’s Burrell Collection could have been London’s

  01-02-2015 08:18
  
  Even Kenneth Clark couldn’t get the London County Council to accept the costs and strings attached to William Burrell’s gift
  
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• Christian Marclay: review – the most exciting contemporary art show in town

  01-02-2015 08:00
  
  White Cube Bermondsey, London
  The visual and cognitive effects of Christian ‘The Clock’ Marclay’s witty onomatopoeia show are compulsively physicalThe most exciting contemporary art show in town at the moment has to be Christian Marclay’s wonderful onomatopoeia at White Cube Bermondsey. It turns that enormous industrial warehouse into something like a metropolis, with a bustling main street that leads to an arthouse cinema, a gallery full of pictures and a concert hall where musicians wi
  
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• Christian Marclay: Liquids review – the most exciting contemporary art show in town

  01-02-2015 08:00
  
  White Cube Bermondsey, London
  The visual and cognitive effects of Christian ‘The Clock’ Marclay’s witty onomatopoeia show are compulsively physicalThe most exciting contemporary art show in town at the moment has to be Christian Marclay’s wonderful Liquids at White Cube Bermondsey. It turns that enormous industrial warehouse into something like a metropolis, with a bustling main street that leads to an arthouse cinema, a gallery full of pictures and a concert hall where musicians will ga
  
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• Great city walks: Pimlico, London

  01-02-2015 07:00
  
  Away from the tourist trail, walking in Pimlico offers quiet city churches and squares, as well as the majesty of the Tate Britain art collection
  • Five more walks tomorrowDistance 2.2 miles/3.6 km
  Typical duration 1 hour
  Start and finish Vauxhall underground station
  Start postcode SW8 2LR
  Step-by-step details and maps ramblers.org.uk/pimlico Continue reading...
  
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• Groovy Bob, secret star of the Sixties: A new show honours Robert Fraser, one of the decade's forgotten players

  01-02-2015 01:00
  
  He was described as “one of the most influential people of the London Sixties scene” by Paul McCartney. But the legacy of Robert Fraser, an Eton-educated former soldier who established himself at the centre of Britain’s counter-culture, has largely been forgotten.
  
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• Amos Chapple's images of Yakutsk in Russia shows locals go about their daily lives in temperatures as low as -50C

  01-02-2015 01:00
  
  If you've been bemoaning the current chill across the UK, spare a thought for the people of Yakutsk in the far east of Russia, where locals go about their daily lives in temperatures that drop as low as -50C in February. Factor in three scant hours of daylight and a 10m visibility limit because of freezing fog and it makes our winters seem almost balmy.
  
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