Arts news

• Indigenous prisoners in Victoria to be allowed to sell artwork and keep profits

  02-02-2016 23:51
  
  Advocacy group says rule change will help offer economic development along with cultural learning and proceeds will support inmates after their releaseIndigenous prisoners in Victoria will be able to sell art they have produced in jail and keep the profits to support themselves upon release under an Australian-first scheme that the Victorian police and corrections minister, Wade Noonan, said would help reduce recidivism. Related: Artist Jonathan Jones on Wiradjuri country: 'Everything is chained
  
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• Umbrella shop oil painting wins top figurative art prize

  02-02-2016 23:30
  
  Lewis Hazelwood-Horner painting of ‘real people with knotty hands’ at James Smith & Sons wins Columbia Threadneedle prizeAn oil painting of a workshop scene at Europe’s oldest umbrella shop has won one of the most prestigious prizes for figurative art. The Columbia Threadneedle prize was created in 2008 to breathe life into a more traditional art genre which, with the strength of abstract, conceptual and performance art, was falling out of fashion.This very accomplished pai
  
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• Zona Maco: contemporary collecting gathers pace in Mexico

  02-02-2016 22:00
  
  The future looks bright for the art market in Mexico City, even as the Mexican peso continues to suffer against the US dollar. At Zona Maco, the 13th edition of the fair seems to be a lucky one, with heavyweight galleries such as Gagosian and David Zwirner participating for the first time and Lisson Gallery returning after its debut in 2012.Meanwhile, the proportion of Mexican galleries “increases every year”, says Daniel Garza-Usabiaga, the fair’s new artistic director. Local
  
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• The Met to celebrate art of Qin and Han dynasties

  02-02-2016 22:00
  
  The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is planning its next major exhibition of Chinese art, hot on the heels of last year’s blockbuster show of Chinese-inspired fashion. Provisionally called The Age of Empires and due to open in March 2017, the show will focus on the art of the Qin and Han dynasties (221BC-AD220), a period roughly coinciding with the rise of Greece and Rome in the West and just as pivotal.  The display of 180 ceramics, metalwork, textiles, sculpture and painting
  
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• The ICA reconfigures the ceramic vase

  02-02-2016 22:00
  n  The American artist Betty Woodman’s first solo show in the UK, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) (3 February-10 April), will focus on her enduring experimentation with decorative motifs. Known as a ceramicist, Woodman began creating vases in the 1950s and has merged her practice with painting and sculpture in the past decade. “The lasting relevance of the vase in her work is that it can be a vessel, a human body, an animal figure, a metaphor or an art-historical ref
  
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• The Buck Stopped Here: a bridge too far for Mayor Boris?

  02-02-2016 22:00
  
  There was much merry badinage between London’s mayor Boris Johnson and the artist Grayson Perry at last night’s presentation of the Columbia Threadneedle figurative art prize (which went to 24-year-old Lewis Hazelwood-Horner for his epic canvas of craftsmen at work in James Smith & Sons, the historic bespoke umbrella emporium on London’s Oxford Street). In befrocked alter-ego mode, the artist mounted the podium to promote The Art Room—a charity supported by Columbia
  
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• Tefaf Maastricht doubles down with New York expansion

  02-02-2016 22:00
  
  The venerable 28-year-old Tefaf, Maastricht art fair is the latest to shake up the art market calendar by announcing today that it will launch two editions a year in New York, starting this autumn.
  The European fair, which sells art from the ancient to the contemporary with Old Master paintings at its core, has joined forces with Artvest Partners, the New York art advisory firm that runs the Spring Masters fair held in May in the Park Avenue Armory. The Tefaf fairs will replace this event and t
  
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• Caretaker’s colossal collection

  02-02-2016 22:00
  Former binman and school caretaker Michael Woodford was, by all accounts, a modest man, but when curators from Chicester’s Pallant House Gallery visited his home in Kent, they found a former council-owned maisonette crammed with etchings, linocuts and watercolours by some of the biggest names of the 20th century. Woodford died last year and left most of his collection to the gallery, describing it as “a bequest by a minor collector (not a rich rock star!) collected through love and w
  
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• ‘The Lulz Continue’: The New Museum and Rhizome Co-Host the First Open Score Conference on Art and Technology

  02-02-2016 20:27 via artnews.com
  On Saturday afternoon, at the New Museum in New York, the artist Simon Denny was waiting for his slide to be projected. “It’s a real honor to be speaking, and to be speaking first, but I will need the slide,” … Read More
  
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• Ryan Wallace at Cooper Cole, Toronto

  02-02-2016 20:15 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.Today’s show: “Ryan Wallace: Dragnalus” is currently on view at Cooper Cole in Toronto. The solo exhibition is on view through February 20.
  
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• Here’s the Artist List for the 2016 Marrakech Biennial

  02-02-2016 20:11 via artnews.com
  The Marrakech Biennial announced the artist list earlier today for its 2016 edition, which will open in Morocco on February 24. The sixth iteration of the biennial features 46 artists and runs through May 8.This year’s Marrakech Biennial is titled “Not … Read More
  
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• Drowned world: welcome to Europe’s first undersea sculpture museum

  02-02-2016 19:58
  
  On the seabed off the coast of Lanzarote, British artist Jason deCaires Taylor is creating an extraordinary series of underwater artworks, concrete figures representing desperate refugees and selfie-taking tourists that are transformed as they become slowly colonised by marine life• See a gallery of more of Jason deCaires Taylor’s undersea sculptureJason deCaires Taylor is sinking fast. Below, 15 metres under the surface of the sea, a crowd of figures, unmistakably human, are motionle
  
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• Europe's first underwater sculpture museum – in pictures

  02-02-2016 19:47
  
  Artist Jason deCaires Taylor’s Museo Atlantico, off Lanzarote, is peopled with concrete casts of refugees and people taking selfiesDrowned world: welcome to Europe’s first undersea sculpture museumContinue reading...
  
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• RxArt Receives $1 M. Gift, Largest in History

  02-02-2016 18:17 via artnews.com
  The Gerard B. Lambert Foundation has donated $1 million to RxArt to “continue their mission of transforming pediatric hospitals around the nation through contemporary art,” according to a press release. The donation is the single largest in the nonprofit’s history and will … Read More
  
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• Rothko specialist and son testify they never authenticated fake painting in Knoedler trial

  02-02-2016 18:06
  
  Knoedler’s former director Ann Freedman handled work fr om a fictitious collector as late as 28 November 2011, just three days before the gallery shut its doors amid allegations it was selling fake Abstract Expressionist paintings, the Mark Rothko expert David Anfam testified in a New York court on Monday.
  According to Anfam’s notes of a telephone conversation with Freedman, she said the work was from the same Swiss or Mexican collection as a trove of 40 other works brought to Knoed
  
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• 'Fake Rothko' trial reduces tragic art to farce

  02-02-2016 18:06
  
  Mark Rothko railed against the money-obsessed art world; now one of New York’s oldest dealers is accused of knowingly selling copies of his workIt is a story that illuminates in fiery red and perturbing black Manhattan’s long decline as an art capital.In 1945, New York City stood poised to become the new centre of modern art. Paris was exhausted by war and occupation. While great European artists like Picasso and Giacometti still had plenty of genius to reveal, it was a generation of
  
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• Saudi court overturns death sentence for Ashraf Fayadh

  02-02-2016 18:00
  
  The Palestinian artist and poet Ashraf Fayadh has had his death sentence for apostasy overturned by a Saudi court, which has ruled instead that he receive an eight-year prison sentence and 800 lashes.The artist, who was born in Saudi Arabia, was initially sentenced to death by a court in Abha, southern Saudi Arabia, in November. A panel of judges revoked the death penalty but upheld the apostasy conviction. 
  According to The Guardian, a memo written by Fayadh’s lawyer, Abdulrahman al
  
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• How Marin Alsop's classes for young women conductors are changing the face of the profession

  02-02-2016 17:36
  
  It's all about being powerful without apologising for it, she tells Jessica Duchen
  
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• Dinh Q Lê: The Colony review – a messy meditation on the Pacific guano trade

  02-02-2016 16:35
  
  Ikon gallery, Birmingham
  Drone’s-eye view of Peru’s historic guano trenches is cut, Kafka-esque, with recent footage from Vietnam and China in this latest Artangel commissionThis is shit, I thought – and not for the first time. An entire floor of Birmingham’s Ikon gallery is filled with the accumulated deposits of thousands of Peruvian boobies, who make their colonies on the Chincha islands off the south-west coast of the country. There’s not much rain. The stuff pi
  
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• One-Two Punch: The Rise of Joint Representation Has Dealers Sharing Artists All the Way to the Bank

  02-02-2016 16:00 via artnews.com
  If a collector wanted to buy a Frank Stella at Art Basel Miami Beach last December, he could have walked up to the booth of New York’s Marianne Boesky Gallery, which represents Frank Stella. Or, he could have walked up … Read More
  
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• Badlands Unlimited Opens Lower East Side Retail Outlet, Offering Books, Toiletries

  02-02-2016 15:20 via artnews.com
  Badlands Unlimited, the publishing house co-founded by Paul Chan, has opened a “one-of-a-kind retail outlet” (its tagline) on Manhattan’s Lower East Side called Y.oung P.ublishers 99¢ & Up. This store—I’m going to go ahead and call it a store, though … Read More
  
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• Mark Rothko’s Son on the Knoedler Trial: ‘I Didn’t Want to Be Sitting Here Today’

  02-02-2016 15:15 via artnews.com
  The artist Mark Rothko’s son, Christopher, testified Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, in the case focusing on a forged Rothko purchased by Domenico and Eleanore De Sole from the Knoedler gallery in 2004 for $8.3 million. The De … Read More
  
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• Trove of antiquities found in secret Swiss store—and they are linked to a disgraced British art dealer

  02-02-2016 15:07
  
  Swiss and Italian police have discovered a haul of priceless Roman and Etruscan antiquities in the Geneva Freeport widely reported to be linked to Robin Symes, a former British dealer with a chequered past.Forty five crates containing objects including two life-size sarcophagi, as well as fragments allegedly from Pompeii, were seized by Swiss authorities after a tip-off from the Carabinieri and have been returned to Rome. The artefacts, due to be unveiled at a press conference later this week,
  
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• Donald Trump bus subtly altered to read 'Make Fruit Punch Great Again', confusing supporters

  02-02-2016 15:01
  
  Note to politicians: dispose of your tour buses properly
  
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• Here Is the 2016 Exhibitor List for Art Basel

  02-02-2016 15:00 via artnews.com
  Well, what do you know, it’s the second day of February and we’re already talking about something that’s not happening until June. Usually a lead-up time this big is a bit unnerving, because June is so far from now that we … Read More
  
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• L'etoile, Royal Opera House, review: Direction is woefully devoid of wit and punch

  02-02-2016 14:56
  
  This preposterous opera bouffe should have been ideal fare for a bleak January night
  
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• The bee’s knees: UK’s Expo pavilion to come to Kew Gardens

  02-02-2016 14:53
  
  The UK’s pavilion at last year’s Milan Expo is coming to London in June, to be re-erected in Kew Gardens. Known as the Hive, the 17-metre-high aluminum lattice structure is an immersive, multi-sensory experience inspired by scientific research into the health of bees. Designed by the Nottingham artist Wolfgang Buttress, it cost £7m and will be on loan from the UK government until at least the end of 2017. The 40-tonne pavilion was dismantled late last year, after Expo closed,
  
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• Morning Links: Picasso Bust Edition

  02-02-2016 14:53 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the art world Read More
  
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• Paintings to go: Starbucks now sells art with its lattes

  02-02-2016 13:00
  
  Starbucks has started selling art from a new coffee bar in Chelsea, amid some of the biggest galleries in New York. The Fortune 500 company opened a branch in the neighbourhood in late November with an exhibition of paintings and drawings by the young US artist Robert Otto Epstein, each of which was on sale for between $1,000 and $3,000.“The space we’ve dedicated to art within our store enables emerging artists to gain exposure for their work in Chelsea,” says Lara Behnert, wh
  
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• Look Up Mumbai: exhibition invites public to experience city's architecture lying down

  02-02-2016 03:47
  
  In a 2013 Tedx talk, media artist and University of NSW professor Sarah Kenderdine spoke about the threats faced by cultural heritage around the world, from politically motivated destruction to climate change and mass tourism. ‘We must find strategies not only to preserve our heritage but to let its stories be rediscovered and reinvented,’ she said. ‘This is both an artistic and technical challenge.’Kenderdine’s latest collaborative work, Look Up Mumbai, is an immer
  
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• Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs at Sies + Höke

  02-02-2016 01:38 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
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