Arts news

• How Sotheby’s Increased Its Profits In A Downturn

  12-08-2016 23:53 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Pictures at $70 million are good P.R., but the revenues are in the middle market,” he said, where sellers tend to pay full commissions and guarantees are nearly unheard of. “That’s the most lucrative way to do business.”
  
  Read more

• Depressing: Racist Fan-Bullying On Social Media Is Becoming Commonplace

  12-08-2016 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Online harassment has become a depressingly common workplace hazard for people of color in the public eye. The incident illuminates some strange similarities between the bands of internet trolls stalking the web and the legions of online fans seeking to stir up some drama.”
  
  Read more

• Artist Betsy Davis ends her life under California’s doctor-assisted dying law

  12-08-2016 22:56
  
  The California multi-media and performance artist Betsy Davis was among the first people to end her life last month under the states new doctor-assisted dying law. The 41-year-old, who was diagnosed three years ago with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrigs disease, planned a two-day party on 23-23 July for her friends and family, who gathered at her home in Ojai, California to say goodbye.You are all very brave for sending me off on my journey, Davis wrote in an email invite to her guests. Thank you
  
  Read more

• Why It’s Important To Broadly Define Philosophy

  12-08-2016 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “So which is it? Is academic philosophy in danger of withdrawing ever further into itself? Or is philosophy, in daily practice and in the academy, at a high point—accessible to more people than ever, and spilling over its disciplinary boundaries?”
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• How Iván Fischer Became A Great (And Unconventional) Conductor

  12-08-2016 21:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The so-called great orchestras – the old, great orchestras – like to preserve certain musical values such as their sound. They think: ‘This is us, this is our trademark.’ Now a conductor comes and he has limited influence on the so-called great orchestra. So they attract conductors who love to wave their hands while not changing anything. Sometimes when you go to famous orchestras, you feel as if you are working with a prima donna singer who has her sound, and your
  
  Read more

• Two Years After Life-Threatening Crisis, Atlanta Symphony Reports Budget Surplus

  12-08-2016 20:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The ASO announced yesterday that it closed the 2015-16 fiscal year with a budget surplus for the second straight year. ASO spokeswoman Tammy Hawk said the final budget numbers won’t be released until a final audit is complete. In addition, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Musicians’ Endowment Fund has raised over $20 million and is expected to reach its $25 million goal this year.”
  
  Read more

• Why Do Some Composers Want To Write Music To Drive Us Crazy?

  12-08-2016 19:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Satie knew that the prospect of performing this composition was so daunting, he wrote a note above the score that said one should “prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities. It’s as if he knew he had devised an art piece that is a cudgel to lay up against the side of the listeners’ heads with a force and fervor they can’t deserve.”
  
  Read more

• Who’s Really Buying Vinyl Records? Old Lonely People, Mostly

  12-08-2016 19:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Those who have recently purchased a vinyl album are most likely to be aged between 45 and 54, apparently. In fact, those in the 18-24 age group are the least likely. It is not just an act of hoarding by hobbyists, either – it has emotional significance: older vinyl buyers are slightly more likely to keep their feelings to themselves (56% of vinyl buyers versus 53% of all UK adults) and enjoy being alone (69% of vinyl buyers versus 66% all UK adults).”
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• New York’s El Museo del Barrio loses another director

  12-08-2016 18:55
  
  El Museo del Barrio in New York announced today that its executive director, Jorge Daniel Veneciano, is stepping down at the end of the month to pursue new opportunities, according to the press release. In his place, the museum will be co-directed by Berta Coln, the deputy director of institutional advancement, and Carlos Glvez, the deputy executive director.Veneciano leaves the museum after only two and a half years, having started in March 2014. He came to New York from the Sheldon Museum of
  
  Read more

• Why The Music Industry Is Going To War Against Internet Platforms

  12-08-2016 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Rampant piracy is the narrative being pushed by the music industry in its letter to Congress, but the truth is more complicated. Read between the lines of the letter, and a larger, more lucrative and familiar problem appears: The royalties that an artist or songwriter gets each time a stream of their song is played are declining.”
  
  Read more

• Julian Rosefeldt on making Manifesto: 'Contemporary art has become a circus'

  12-08-2016 18:18
  
  The German artist explains why he chose Cate Blanchett to immortalise the angry screams of some passionate young men, giving old words new meaningCate Blanchett and I first bumped into each other through a mutual friend a few years ago and decided we wanted to do something together. What an offer! It wasn’t that I needed a Hollywood star. There are artists who have worked with celebrities and it becomes all about that: the celebrity performing. I had zero interest in that. For what I had i
  
  Read more

• So, Is The Design At The Rio Olympics Any Good?

  12-08-2016 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The collapsed sailing ramp has been hauled out of the water, a Russian diplomat has heroically killed a carjacker (or maybe not), and 450,000 condoms await action in the leaky athletes village. Beset by construction problems and delays and with preparations decreed the ‘worst ever’ by the International Olympic Committee, how is the architecture and design of the XXXI Olympiad shaping up so far?”
  
  Read more

• ‘Omul Negru’ at Nicodim, Los Angeles

  12-08-2016 17:40 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
  Read more

• A Full-Throated Defense Of Humanities In A Skills-Obsessed Education Economy

  12-08-2016 17:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Economic arguments for the value of a humanistic education will not save the humanities, and we should stop making them. The value of the humanities as the heart of a university education does not lie primarily in “transferrable skills” nor in the “critical thinking” that employers presumably want. Instead, a core education in the humanities gives students the intellectual space to grapple with questions of enduring importance.”
  
  Read more

• El Museo del Barrio Executive Director to Step Down

  12-08-2016 17:12 via artnews.com
  Jorge Daniel Veneciano, the executive director of New York’s El Museo del Barrio, will step down at the end of the month, museum officials announced in a press release. Berta Colón, the deputy director of institutional advancement, and Carlos Gálvez, the … Read More
  
  Read more

• The World’s Largest Collection Of Braille Music Is Finally Being Digitized

  12-08-2016 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Digitizing braille music isn’t as easy as just scanning the page. The tactile notations require multiple steps for accurate transcription, and their history of touch means the dots are sometimes smashed or otherwise unreadable.”
  
  Read more

• The Great Fire of London, punk at 40 and a golden rhino – the week in art

  12-08-2016 16:59
  
  Edinburgh steps back in time to prehistoric Scotland, Guantánamo shapes interior design, and Rem Koolhaas gets profiled by his son – all in your weekly art dispatchFire! Fire!
  An epochal event that marks the birth of modern Britain as Christopher Wren rebuilt the capital in its wake is explored in this family-friendly survey of the Great Fire of London. Find out how the Monument to the fire’s outbreak doubles up as a telescope, among other gems in the ashes of history.
  •
  
  Read more

• Tunisia’s Religious Jazz, And The Dangers It Faces After The Revolution

  12-08-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Stambeli, a uniquely Tunisian hybrid of musical genre, healing practice, and religious ceremony, [is] deeply rooted in the history of a specific community: the descendants of slaves brought to the region from sub-Saharan Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It also has close links to Sufism.” But the changes in the country since the Arab Spring (notably the Saudi-funded spread of Salafism) are combining with older ethnic prejudices to put a lot of pressure on stamb
  
  Read more

• Pioneering war photographer Gerda Taro's images vandalised in Leipzig

  12-08-2016 16:02
  
  An open-air display of images by the war photographer Gerda Taro has been vandalised in Leipzig, Germany, Monopol reports. The works, which depict scenes of conflict including the Spanish Civil War, were covered in black paint on the night of Wednesday, 3 August.
  The exhibition organisers, f/stop festival, say in a statement: How a work of art is handled in the public space is always a litmus test for the state of a community. Unlike the protected space of a museum or gallery, a work in the pub
  
  Read more

• ‘Cloud Atlas’ As Published In US Is ‘Astonishingly Different’ From UK Version

  12-08-2016 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2004, Cloud Atlas is already complicated enough: telling the story of six interlocking lives and hopping back and forth across centuries and genres. But differences between the US and UK editions highlighted by [a professor] in a journal article published on Wednesday on the Open Library of Humanities run to 30 pages of examples.”
  
  Read more

• Between the Two Poles of Love and Hate: On Vito Acconci’s Uncomfortable, Disturbing Performances, in 1972

  12-08-2016 16:00 via artnews.com
  In honor of MoMA PS1’s show “Vito Acconci: Where Are We Now (Who Are We Anyway?), 1976,” which looks at the first few years of the performance and video artist’s career, we turn back to 1972, when Acconci had one … Read More
  
  Read more

• Serial Drama Made The Age Of Peak TV; Why Is The Genre Running Out Of Steam Now?

  12-08-2016 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Matt Zoller Seitz: “Every revolution has casualties. In this one, it’s the hour-long, serialized drama that unveils its story over multiple seasons, and that fueled the so-called Golden Age of serious-minded, scripted TV; a form that, until recently, moved the needle on TV as an art form and dominated the cultural conversation. When discussing the serial drama in 2016, you can feel a sense of fatigue settling in.
  
  Read more

• Habitat: Museum Guards

  12-08-2016 15:30 via artnews.com
  Without museum guards, museums couldn’t exist—it’s as simple as that. For our Crime issue, we turned the spotlight on the people who not only act as key players in the implementation of an institution’s security system, protecting works from theft … Read More
  
  Read more

• Hollywood (And Jared Leto) Have Ruined Method Acting

  12-08-2016 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Leto’s stories [of his behavior on the Suicide Squad set] show how going to great lengths to inhabit a character is now as much a marketing tool as it is an actual technique – one used to lend an air of legitimacy, verisimilitude, and importance to a performance no matter its quality. Leto’s Joker is the latest evidence that the prestige of method acting has dimmed – thanks to the technique’s overuse by those seeking award-season glory or a reputation boost,
  
  Read more

• Morning Links: Helen Torr and Arthur Dove Edition

  12-08-2016 15:13 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the art world Read More
  
  Read more

• Meryl Streep Explains Our Fascination With Florence Foster Jenkins

  12-08-2016 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “In 1944 at the age of 76, Foster Jenkins sold out Carnegie Hall – more than 2,000 people were turned away from the door – with a recital of opera arias that she performed off key. Listen to Streep recount this history in the audio above and watch the entire interview in the video below.”
  
  Read more

• Could Software Generate Journalism (Or Even A Good Facsimile Of It)?

  12-08-2016 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “What about telling a story? Not like cookie-cutter data chunks turned into sentences, but a tale with a lot of context and information. Could an algorithm someday write a breezy 2,000-word article like this one? Nobody can currently claim that throne, but one company that appears to be closer to that goal than most is an Israeli firm called Articoolo.”
  
  Read more

• The Monkey-Selfie Copyright Case Is Back In Court, With A Primatologist Weighing In (Guess On Whose Side)

  12-08-2016 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Five years ago in Indonesia, a crested macaque named Naruto found a photographer’s unattended digital camera and took what became known worldwide as the “monkey selfie.” Last year, PETA filed a lawsuit arguing that Naruto was legally the creator of the image, which should be considered its intellectual property. PETA lost the first round, but the appeal is now in court.
  
  Read more

• An Unknown Language Was Discovered Three Years Ago, Hiding In Plain Sight In A Big City – And Now There’s A Race To Save It

  12-08-2016 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The leader of the effort to preserve Hawaiian Sign Language is being led by its last native user. But there are conflicts – cultural and personal as well as practical – making the job even more difficult.
  
  Read more

• Raymond Pettibon’s No Title (The Greayt Power…), 2016

  12-08-2016 14:00
  
  The American artist emerged to prominence in the 80s punk rock scene and was fascinated by Joan CrawfordThe style is scratchy, suggesting old-fashioned illustration, cartoon and doodle. The turquoise and purple colouring vibrates like a bad trip. Then there’s the text: fragmentary, poetic, overblown, funny spelling. This ink drawing of Joan Crawford could only be the handiwork of Raymond Pettibon. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Meet The Keeper Of Frederick Ashton’s Ballet Legacy

  12-08-2016 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Carrie Seidman talks with Anthony Russell-Roberts, Ashton’s nephew and the inheritor of the rights to his works, about preserving and reviving his dances, what Ashton loved about New York, and how Sarasota, Florida became the modern-day standard-bearer for Ashton’s choreography.
  
  Read more

• 52 Portraits: A Year Of Solo Dance Videos

  12-08-2016 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The subjects of this Sadler’s Wells project, whose episodes are being posted online weekly through 2016, “range from the 29-year-old dance-maker Alexandrina Hemsley to the 91-year-old choreographer Robert Cohan, and from performance artist Hetain Patel to Royal Ballet principal Zenaida Yanowsky.”
  
  Read more

• Art Dealers In $2 Million Lawsuit Over Mysterious Work That May Not Yet Even Exist

  12-08-2016 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “An unnamed artwork by a mysterious artist is at the center of a $2 million lawsuit against dealer David Zwirner by Old Master dealer Fabrizio Moretti via his the London company, Blue Art Limited, which accuses Zwirner of breach of contract, fraudulent concealment, and inducement.”
  
  Read more

• Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.11.16

  12-08-2016 11:38 via feedproxy.google.com
  How Do You Test For The Arts?
  It’s a more difficult question than you might think. There’s a maxim in the education world that only subjects that are tested are funded. Thus the imperative for arts education champions to get the arts included in required standardized tests. … read more
  AJBlog: diacritical/Douglas McLennan Published 2016-08-11Rewind: Another Look at William Merritt Chase
  Do we need to become reacquainted with William Merritt Chase? I’m afraid we do. &hell
  
  Read more

• The ten best… things to do this week

  12-08-2016 10:00
  
  From The Get Down to No Man’s Sky: your at-a-glance guide to the next seven days in culture across the UKThe Get Down Related: Why Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down is a rapper’s delightRelated: Alice Birch: ‘Being called an armchair feminist made me furious’Related: People Just Do Nothing: how to make it in the cutthroat world of pirate radioRelated: Ira Glass: 'I feel like I’m actually sort of scared all the time'Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Birds on a wire: the spooky cormorants of Tokyo – in pictures

  12-08-2016 08:00
  
  Photographer Yoshinori Mizutani was freaked out by the ever-growing numbers of birds massing on overhead wires, and began capturing their ‘grim warning to modern society’ Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Theatre Repertory Companies Have Mostly Disappeared. But When You Experience Them…

  12-08-2016 01:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Seeing plays in repertory sparks conversations in the mind between shows, between periods. And it’s also distinctly satisfying — sometimes even astonishing — to watch an actor you’ve seen in, say, a Shakespeare tragedy performing a day or so later in a classic American musical.”
  
  Read more

• TV Reporters Press CBS TV Exec: You’re Doing Terrible At Diversity!

  12-08-2016 00:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “You guys have been aware of this diversity problem for a while. We’ve been talking about it at press tours for years. How can you come up with a slate where every star is a white male? You don’t have any showrunners of color, and you’ve had years to fix this.”
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUKnews on Twitter!