Arts news

• KGB prison doors given questionable cultural heritage status

  18-05-2016 23:56
  A prosecutor who is seeking a guilty verdict against political performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky presented a unique argument in a Moscow court on Wednesday. According to charges read out by Anton Sizov, the door of the Federal Security Service or former KGB on Moscow’s Lubyanka Square, damaged when Pavlensky set fire to it last November, is a cultural heritage site because “leading figures of science and culture were imprisoned here”.
  The prison was known as a site where diss
  
  Read more

• Pablo Bronstein at Tate Britain, London

  18-05-2016 23:20 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
  Read more

• Where did it come from? On developments in icon painting

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  Among the most complex problems in medieval painting is the nearly simultaneous emergence of the so-called maniera greca in 13th-century Tuscany and Umbria, and similar styles in the Crusader states and the Byzantine Empire and its client states, including Armenian Cilicia—a field which has come to maturity in the current generation of scholars. Jaroslav Folda has spent much of his scholarly life working at this intersection of Mediterranean visual cultures. In Byzantine Art and Italian P
  
  Read more

• Where did it come from?

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  Among the most complex problems in medieval painting is the nearly simultaneous emergence of the so-called maniera greca in 13th-century Tuscany and Umbria, and similar styles in the Crusader states and the Byzantine Empire and its client states, including Armenian Cilicia—a field which has come to maturity in the current generation of scholars. Jaroslav Folda has spent much of his scholarly life working at this intersection of Mediterranean visual cultures. In Byzantine Art and Italian P
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• The new London mayor Sadiq Khan woos the culture sector

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  Sadiq Khan gathered the great and good from all branches of the London’s culture sector at a City Hall reception last night (18 May)—less than a fortnight after being sworn in as the capital’s new mayor—where he declared “culture is the DNA of the city, it is the glue that binds us together” and pledged that “right from the start, supporting the arts and creative industries will be a core priority for my administration, right up there with housing, the
  
  Read more

• The French connection: on Windows on the City at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  Windows on the City: the School of Paris, 1900-1945, at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which brings together more than 50 paintings and sculptures by Modern masters including Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Marc Chagall and Wassily Kandinsky, is a reminder of an earlier age, when artists, dealers and collectors of various nationalities converged on the single artistic centre of Paris. Yet the art it spawned was more plural than singular. “The most evident commonality may be the resista
  
  Read more

• Photo London takes over Somerset House

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  Photo London, now in its second edition, is leading the charge to make London a centre for the photography market. This year, exhibitor numbers have grown from 70 to 85 thanks to an additional pavilion in the courtyard of Somerset House. Co-founder Michael Benson said at the fair's press launch that the fair knew it had to find more space as early as last July, shortly after the inaugural event, because of the high volume of applications from galleries worldwide. "The curatorial committee had 2
  
  Read more

• New light shed on craftsmen who captured sea life in glass

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  For more than 70 years, the Dresden-based father and son glassblowers Leopold (1822-95) and Rudolf Blaschka (1857-1939) churned out thousands of intricate models of botanical and marine specimens for international universities and museums.In the 1880s, Cornell University in upstate New York was quick to snap up a collection of 577 marine invertebrates. Today, much of this is in storage because of its fragile condition. But thanks to conservators at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, aroun
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• ‘It’s a bigger story’: Frances Morris outlines her global vision for Tate Modern

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  The appointment of Frances Morris as Tate Modern’s new director in January was greeted with near-unanimous approval. Unlike her three predecessors, Morris is a Tate insider who joined as a curator in the Modern collection in 1988, the same year as the Tate museums’ director Nicholas Serota. She may have a low public profile, but she is widely respected throughout the art world—especially by artists—and behind the scenes has already done much to expand and define the Tate
  
  Read more

• Further exploration at Herculaneum could ‘stagger the imagination’

  18-05-2016 23:00
  A group of British, American and French scholars is calling for the immediate resumption of excavations at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, which was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79. The villa, which is near Pompeii, was first explored in the 1750s when archaeologists discovered the only intact library of texts from the Classical era. The papyri found so far are Greek works of philosophy; the hope is that other Greek texts as well as Latin ones by some of the greatest writers
  
  Read more

• For $40, you could own a Koons

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  “Here’s your chance to own a limited-edition piece by one of the world’s greatest living artists,” the Google Store boldly states of Jeff Koons’s new collaboration with the tech giant, a phone case for the Nexus mobile, in an edition of 6,000, with one of three designs based on Koons’s Gazing Ball series. A steal at $40—it launched the same week Koons’s One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series) (1985) fetched at $15.3m at Chri
  
  Read more

• Flavour in the grain and on the surface: on the Ellsworth Kelly catalogue raisonné

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  “He thought you learnt more by looking at something in detail rather than looking at a huge amount of things.” The art historian Yve-Alain Bois once had this to say about his former teacher, the literary theorist Roland Barthes, whose guidance is everywhere present in Bois’s magisterial first volume of the catalogue raisonné of paintings and sculpture by the American artist Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015). The book comes close to realising a dream Bois once had about Barnet
  
  Read more

• Dr Carrie Mae Weems shares wisdom with SVA graduates

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  The artist Carrie Mae Weems dished out some wisdom to the new graduates of the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York as the speaker for this year’s commencement exercises, held Wednesday, 18 May, at Radio City Music Hall. “I should say I’d like to thank the Academy,” Weems joked, taking the podium. “You get to graduate at Radio City Music Hall. How fabulous is that?”
  Weems quickly turned existential, pondering the question: “How do you measure a life?
  
  Read more

• A major minor master: Jonathan Brown on Anthony van Dyck at the Frick Collection

  18-05-2016 23:00
  
  The Frick Collection is justly renowned for its focus exhibitions, which take as their point of departure works in the permanent collection, which are contextualised by a number of choice loans. (Full disclosure: I have participated in five of these exhibitions.) These shows compel visitors to focus on a small number of objects before museum fatigue sets in. They are guided missiles, not blockbusters. In this instance, there are eight portraits by Van Dyck, purchased by Henry Clay Frick, six of
  
  Read more

• Whitney celebrates 1 year in its new Meatpacking home

  18-05-2016 22:46
  
  Following its 2016 gala last night, the Whitney Museum’s annual Studio Party brought together collectors, artists and patrons to celebrate the museum’s first anniversary in its new Renzo Piano-designed home in the Meatpacking District. The Louis Vuitton-sponsored event honoured Robert J. Hurst, the current chair of the trustees’ executive committee, which oversaw the capital campaign for the construction of the new building. Guests snapped selfies in a 3-D photo booth, danced
  
  Read more

• Milwaukee Art Museum Names Marcelle Polednik Director

  18-05-2016 21:02 via artnews.com
  Following recent news that the Milwaukee Art Museum had received an $8 million endowment to fund a new directorship, the museum has announced the appointment of Dr. Marcelle Polednik as the first Donna and Donald Baumgartner director following a rigorous … Read More
  
  Read more

• Dr. Robert Mintz Named Deputy Director, Art and Programs at Asian Art Museum

  18-05-2016 20:41 via artnews.com
  San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum announced today that Dr. Robert Mintz will now be its Deputy Director, Art and Programs. Mintz starts his position at the museum on July 5.Mintz comes from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where he … Read More
  
  Read more

• Art project behind the Ladybird books parody craze | Letters

  18-05-2016 19:53
  
  Regarding Zoe Williams’ review of How It Works: The Dad (Review, 14 May), many Guardian readers are probably unaware that the original satire on the Ladybird children’s education series was an art project written and illustrated by Miriam and Ezra Elia – We Go to the Gallery – and published under their own imprint, Dung Beetle Books. When the book first appeared in 2014, Penguin erupted in fury and demanded that the entire print run be withdrawn and destroyed. When this d
  
  Read more

• Pratt President Thomas F. Schutte Will Resign In 2017

  18-05-2016 19:36 via artnews.com
  Thomas F. Schutte, the president of Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute—a top school for art, design and architecture—announced today that he will step down following the 2016–17 academic year. Schutte has been at the helm of Pratt for 23 years, and will be … Read More
  
  Read more

• Leslie-Lohman Museum’s Hunter O’Hanian Named Executive Director of College Art Association

  18-05-2016 19:30 via artnews.com
  The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art announced today that its director, Hunter O’Hanian, has accepted a position at the College Art Association, the New York–based organization devoted to fostering an academic discussion about art and its purpose. Starting … Read More
  
  Read more

• Who’s Who by Gonsalves Mpili

  18-05-2016 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  I met her in her pictures,Saw her in my dreams written by my mind,Her eyes are sharp that of an eagle,She switched on my calmness,Which provided electricity,To her big city,A question to myself,What big city?A heart.
  During the night,As I look upon the stars,I was having a chit chat with the moon,Our conversation ended up,When the sun arrived for it’s job,Moon being my advisor,It told me,Friendship is a ship with two captains,It will sink,If the two aren’t doing business of words,It
  
  Read more

• Consumer Reports: Simon Denny

  18-05-2016 17:30 via artnews.com
   Simon Denny is a New Zealand-born artist who currently lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Serpentine Gallery, London; MoMA PS1, New York; and Portikus, Frankfurt. In 2015, Denny represented New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale. He … Read More
  
  Read more

• Suzanne Weaver Named Curator of Contemporary and Modern Art at San Antonio Museum of Art

  18-05-2016 16:00 via artnews.com
  The San Antonio Museum of Art has announced the hire of Suzanne Weaver as the museum’s new Brown Foundation Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, effective June 20. In her new role, Weaver will lead the growth of the institution’s … Read More
  
  Read more

• ‘I Dream of Being Obscure’: Tracey Emin On Her New Show At Lehmann Maupin

  18-05-2016 15:30 via artnews.com
  Tracey Emin has had what you might call an on-again, off-again relationship with painting. After having an abortion in 1990, she stopped painting entirely and destroyed all of the art she had created in graduate school. Of her painting cessation, … Read More
  
  Read more

• Essex Flowers to Blossom in Chinatown With Relocation to Monroe Street

  18-05-2016 15:30 via artnews.com
  Essex Flowers, the artist-run collective and gallery that opened in 2013 in the basement of a Lower East Side flower shop on Grand Street before moving around the corner to Ludlow Street late last year, will uproot itself from the … Read More
  
  Read more

• Martin Creed: 'I keep hair. And I'm afraid of cheese'

  18-05-2016 15:00
  
  In an exclusive preview of his new show, Turner winner Martin Creed gives us a guided tour round old cars, smashed chairs and plastic bags from under his fridgeImmaculate in a grey suit, Martin Creed strides towards me in the car park at Durslade Farm, home of Hauser & Wirth’s Somerset gallery. He could be a businessman out on his lunch break on a spring day. Then I notice the spatters and whiplashes of paint all over his clothes, the splodges of colour on his plastic sandals. His hair
  
  Read more

• Morning Links: Roman Shipwreck Edition

  18-05-2016 14:59 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the world Read More
  
  Read more

• A two-hour, virtual reality-enhanced walk through London that challenges you to reconsider space and time

  18-05-2016 12:11
  
  Photographer Robin Mellor's art app recognises that you are within range of a billboard and plays a soundscape that is bespoke to that photograph
  
  Read more

• Adel Abdessemed’s new bird sculpture nests in a Peckham car park

  18-05-2016 11:33
  
  The Algerian-born artist Adel Abdessemed’s latest work—a sculpted carrier pigeon bearing a Blackberry and set of explosives —is unveiled this week on the top floor of the multi-storey car park in central Peckham, south London.
  The permanent piece, commissioned by the non-profit organisation Bold Tendencies, is entitled Bristow after the long-running cartoon in the London newspaper the Evening Standard, which depicted the everyday activities of a humdrum, maverick buying clerk
  
  Read more

• Tehran museum’s historic photography collection emerges from the shadows

  18-05-2016 11:09
  
  Western museums have worked hard to secure loans from Iran’s collection of Modern art works, including major pieces by Picasso, Warhol and Pollock that have not been shown outside the country for 40 years.  But the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art also houses a historic photography collection that has been largely overlooked by the media.“It’s extraordinary, about 100 objects,” says Donna Stein, an art historian and curator who worked at the Tehran museum in t
  
  Read more

• Where there's muck: Artangel artist wraps Houses of Parliament in latex

  18-05-2016 10:00
  
  Permission for artwork – the largest ever to be installed in Westminster Hall – took six years to obtain, and will showcase 200 years’ worth of dirt and dustLondon’s most historic – and possibly dustiest – buildings, the Houses of Parliament, are to become home to a monumental artwork that will collect and showcase the dirt that has lined the walls of the Palace of Westminster for hundreds of years. The work, created by the Spanish artist Jorge Otero-Pailos an
  
  Read more

• Where there's muck: Artangel artist to wrap Houses of Parliament in latex

  18-05-2016 10:00
  
  Permission for artwork – the largest ever to be installed in Westminster Hall – took six years to obtain, and will collect 200 years’ worth of dirt and dust
  London’s most historic – and possibly dustiest – buildings, the Houses of Parliament, are to become home to a monumental artwork that will collect and showcase the dirt that has lined the walls of the Palace of Westminster for hundreds of years. The work, created by the Spanish artist Jorge Otero-Pailos an
  
  Read more

• My art is a personal antidote for the effects of colonisation | Katie West for @IndigenousX

  18-05-2016 04:19
  
  Every person is a cultural being, says Katie West, who will use her time on @IndigenousX to discuss assimilation, authenticity and how art helps her cope with anxietyAs I write, my first ever solo exhibition, Decolonist, is underway as part of Australia’s leading festival for emerging contemporary art – Next Wave Festival 2016. This project has been the major focus of my life for the past 18 months and I was lucky enough to also take part in Next Wave’s kickstart program, which
  
  Read more

• The holy trinity of cultural crises continues under Malcolm Turnbull | Paul Daley

  18-05-2016 03:59
  
  How does Australia want to be seen and to see itself? The attacks on our national institutions, the arts and science limit our ability to answer that Australian cultural identity is balanced at the edge of a cliff.This country’s scientific advancement, its artistic communities and the national institutions that curate its stories and make it possible to tell new ones are buckling under what can only be seen as ideologically driven federal government funding cuts. Related: Australian electi
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUKnews on Twitter!