Arts news

• What Germany’s tough new law could mean for the antiquities market

  26-06-2016 23:00
  
  Antiquities dealers in Germany are fighting to head off a new law they fear could deal a death blow to a trade already in terminal decline.
  The cultural property protection law is due to go through the upper chamber of the German parliament on 8 July. If passed, it will bring in the worlds strictest import and export restrictions on cultural objects, says Vincent Geerling, the chairman of the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art. His association is one of 20 in the newly formed A
  
  Read more

• Very sharp, but not long enough

  26-06-2016 23:00
  
  The Metropolitan Museum of Art has now published Islamic Arms and Armor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by David Alexander, with contributions from Stuart Pyhrr, the former curator, and Will Kwiatkowski, the Oriental languages and epigraphy scholar. While it would be hard to find two better qualified scholars to assist in the preparation of such a catalogue, the book is for the most part written by David Alexander, described rather modestly by the museums director, Thomas Campbell, as being r
  
  Read more

• Object lessons: Christie’s 250th anniversary auction

  26-06-2016 23:00
  
  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Portrait of Jane Morris (around 1870)
  Estimate 300,000-500,000
  As befits Christies 250th anniversary auction, this coloured chalk study pulls together several strands of British art history. Rossetti, the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, depicts his long-time muse Jane Morris, the wife of the Arts and Crafts champion William Morris, in a portrait that later belonged to L.S. Lowry. The painter of industrial Britain owned at least 16 works by Rossetti, including
  
  Read more

• Brexit: “We have chosen the way of Hogarth over Turner”

  26-06-2016 23:00
  
  Brexit changes everything: our politics, economics, even our national psyche. In art historical terms, we have chosen the way of Hogarth over Turner. And, yes, our art will probably be different, tooor at least the way we organise it, display it and, of course, sell it.Primarily (and Im sorry to be so utilitarian) it all comes down to money. It seems reasonable to assume, given the precipitous falls in the pound and world stock markets, that a period of economic uncertainty or contraction lies
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Last Week’s Don’t-Miss AJ Stories: Brexit Edition

  26-06-2016 21:49 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Clearly Brexit is a cultural decision, and it will have a big impact… A new jazz scene emerges and re-energizes the art form… There’s a practical reason there are so few women ballet choreographers… Christo’s simple idea wows the world… Has public radio figured out a compelling future?
  
  Read more

• Holzer’s poetry set in stone on Ibiza

  26-06-2016 20:21
  
  The Spanish island of Ibiza is the latest destination for US artist Jenny Holzers trademark LED light works which are on show at two spaces, the Lune Rouge and Art Projects Ibiza (Are you Alive? Until 17 December). The LED pieces incorporate the artists Truisms series (1977-79) as well as transcriptions of US government documents (a series of new footstools and benches crafted from stone such as Azul Bahia are also inscribed with some of the Truisms maxims including Everyones work is equall
  
  Read more

• The Artist’s Muse Is An Artist Too

  26-06-2016 18:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “We wanted to explore this exploitative Victorian hangover that has kidnapped the idea. A muse can simply be someone who unlocks someone else’s creativity, not a dominant objectification.”
  
  Read more

• Comedian Aziz Ansari Speaks Out About Trump’s Campaign

  26-06-2016 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “As far as these problems go, I have it better than most because of my recognizability as an actor. When someone on the street gives me a strange look, it’s usually because they want to take a selfie with me, not that they think I’m a terrorist.”
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Taking Performance Outdoors Makes A Big Difference In Audience

  26-06-2016 17:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Outdoor arts achieves what the rest of the arts sector and theatre aspires to but seldom delivers: an audience that is representative of the population as a whole. Not only that, but 97% rated their experience of outdoor arts as either very good or good.”
  
  Read more

• Watching A Company Grapple With Its Origin Story And Real History

  26-06-2016 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Slavery and whiskey, far from being two separate strands of Southern history, were inextricably entwined. Enslaved men not only made up the bulk of the distilling labor force, but they often played crucial skilled roles in the whiskey-making process. In the same way that white cookbook authors often appropriated recipes from their black cooks, white distillery owners took credit for the whiskey.”
  
  Read more

• A Jazz Musician In New York: Almost Famous, Almost Broke

  26-06-2016 17:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “If jazz is a notoriously tough sell, bass players are even tougher. Essential as the instrument is to time and rhythm, and as voluptuous its presence on the bandstand, it often fades into the background.”
  
  Read more

• What Happened To One Young Dancer After The Fallout At The Pennsylvania Ballet

  26-06-2016 16:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “He continued to attend company class those final weeks and got ready for the next phase of his life. Which will not include ballet.”
  
  Read more

• A Fiery Tribune Column Says George Lucas’ Arrogance Is The Reason For Museum Plan’s Failure

  26-06-2016 16:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “George Lucas didn’t court Chicagoans. He never made the equivalent of a visit to the front parlor to ask if he might build his narrative arts museum (whatever that was) in the city’s front yard. He seemed to consider city approval a matter of entitlement.”
  
  Read more

• Refugees Living In New York Set Up Their Own Symphony

  26-06-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “I was hoping that this project would showcase the importance that refugees continue to play in our culture and society while also raising funds for those in need.”
  
  Read more

• How Dolly Parton Writes Songs Now That She’s 70

  26-06-2016 16:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “I can’t think unless I’ve got a pen or a pencil in my hand, with a big old yellow legal pad.”
  
  Read more

• The art on your sleeve: visual artists on album covers

  26-06-2016 12:00
  
  The best record covers are often as much a part of the whole work as the songs themselves. We asked six artists to choose the designs that inspire themUsually rock bands try to show how cool they are, how tough they are, how arch they are. But Sparks are full-on weird. The band was formed by two brothers and their covers are all pretty off the hook – like the one where they’re tied up at the back of a speedboat or getting married to each other on Angst in My Pants. Indiscreet is the
  
  Read more

• Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck – review

  26-06-2016 09:00
  
  National Gallery, London
  The private art collections of great painters reveal an enthralling continuity of vision going back centuriesIn later life, Degas was not just France’s greatest living painter but conceivably its greatest art collector too. He owned masterpieces by Ingres, Delacroix, Van Gogh and Manet. He bought paintings by Courbet, bargained for Gauguins and, with exceptional prescience, purchased works from Cézanne’s very first show.By the time of his death in 1917
  
  Read more

• Jamal Penjweny: rose-tinted dreams from Iraq

  26-06-2016 09:00
  
  The Iraqi artist rewrites his country’s suffering by sketching ‘pink dreams’ over black-and-white photographs of ordinary peopleJamal Penjweny is a shepherd turned artist who represented Iraq at the 2013 Venice Biennale, and whose work has appeared in the New York Times and National Geographic. Born in 1981, in a village in present-day Kurdistan, he now lives in Sulaymaniyah on the Iraq-Iran border, where he is working hard to establish the Juniper Art House, a gallery he hopes
  
  Read more

• The new British caretaker of Italian culture

  26-06-2016 01:05
  
  Museum director James Bradburne is revolutionising how the people of Milan relate to their art heritageEvidently at home in his trademark waistcoat and round glasses, James Bradburne strides through the Pinacoteca di Brera as museum staff bustle around him. The British director of one of Italy’s most famous art galleries is overseeing a revolution, he says, and is just days away from the latest exhibition, devoted to images of the dead Christ.Bradburne, who holds both British and Canadian
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUKnews on Twitter!