Arts news

• Ms Saffaa, protest art and the fledgling Saudi Arabia women's rights movement

  30-11-2016 23:51
  
  The Australia-based artist’s work is emblematic of the movement protesting against Saudi Arabia’s guardianship lawsThe Saudi visual artist Ms Saffaa is a petite woman with cropped hair framing a pixie face. Her mural, plastered on a studio wall at Sydney University’s College of the Arts almost dwarfs her.It is a riotous mix of calligraphy, graffiti and portraits featuring the women’s rights activists Manal Al-Sharif and Samar Badawi, both part of a nascent movement protes
  
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• Ms Saffaa on protest art and #iammyownguardian: 'Don't say Saudi women don't have a voice'

  30-11-2016 23:51
  
  The Australia-based artist’s work is emblematic of the movement protesting against Saudi Arabia’s guardianship lawsThe Saudi visual artist Ms Saffaa is a petite woman with cropped hair framing a pixie face. Her mural, plastered on a studio wall at Sydney University’s College of the Arts almost dwarfs her.It is a riotous mix of calligraphy, graffiti and portraits featuring the women’s rights activists Manal Al-Sharif and Samar Badawi, both part of a nascent movement protes
  
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• Dr. Rosario I. Granados Named Associate Curator of Spanish Colonial Art at Blanton Museum

  30-11-2016 22:55 via artnews.com
  The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, announced today that Dr. Rosario I. Granados will be its associate curator of Spanish colonial art and religious material culture. Granados’s position is underwritten by the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, … Read More
  
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• Rauschenberg’s legacy lives on in art made from junk at Art Basel in Miami Beach

  30-11-2016 22:00
  
  Art Basel has a grittier feel this year, and not just because construction crews are renovating the Miami Beach Convention Center. As a survey of work by the US artist Robert Rauschenberg opens at Tate Modern in London today, galleries are presenting a rejoinder to the candy-coloured, shiny and bejewelled works for which the fair is best known. Amid the glitz, there is an array of assemblages by artists from across the generations who take a cue from Rauschenberg by transforming junk destined f
  
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• Rauschenberg’s legacy lives on at Art Basel in Miami Beach

  30-11-2016 22:00
  
  Art Basel has a grittier feel this year, and not just because construction crews are renovating the Miami Beach Convention Center. As a survey of work by the US artist Robert Rauschenberg opens at Tate Modern in London today, galleries are presenting a rejoinder to the candy-coloured, shiny and bejewelled works for which the fair is best known. Amid the glitz, there is an array of assemblages by artists from across the generations who take a cue from Rauschenberg by transforming junk destined f
  
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• Rachel Maclean: Selfie Portrait

  30-11-2016 22:00
  Once you have seen Rachel Macleans videos and digital prints, you never forget them. Set in landscapes somewhere between a dystopian video game and the saccharine world of childrens television programmes like the Teletubbies, they feature a cast of extreme characters performed entirely by Maclean herself. Using green-screen film technology, she performs in flamboyant costumes and make-up against landscapes formed from a collage of found images she manipulates digitally, creating imaginary world
  
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• Munich’s Haus der Kunst turns the clock back to Zero Hour in 1945

  30-11-2016 22:00
  The end of the Second World War, with the defeat of Germany and Japan, ushered in an era of such profound change that we are still living in the aftermath today. Fears that growing nationalismDonald Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK, movements in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia and beyondwill mirror the rise of the far right in the 1930s are just one such example. The effect of the war on art after 1945 was similarly great. Although the German philosopher Theodor Adorno famously suggeste
  
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• Louvre’s global role expands under Jean-Luc Martinez

  30-11-2016 22:00
  
  Jean-Luc Martinez has introduced a number of high-profile initiatives at home and has made the Louvre Abu Dhabi a priority since he was named the director of the Louvre in early 2013.  The Greco-Roman antiquities specialist was thrust on to the international stage when French President Franois Hollande asked him to devise a 50-point plan to protect heritage in areas of conflict. Martinez will speak on the subject at a conference in Abu Dhabi this month, where an international partnership t
  
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• 'It literally prints in air': SHoP Architects on creating the world's largest 3D-printed object

  30-11-2016 22:00
  
  Visitors to this years Design Miami fair (until 4 December) are due to be welcomed by the worlds largest 3D-printed object: a lattice-like pavilion made from biodegradable bamboo filament, designed by the New York-based firm SHoP Architects. The commission, called Flotsam & Jetsam (2016), comes as part of the fairs third annual Visionary Award, presented in co-operation with the Italian watchmakers Officine Panerai, recognising SHoP for its evocative architecture, philanthropic initiatives,
  
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• Gun fired at Arthur Rimbaud sells for €434,000

  30-11-2016 22:00
  
  The gun that the poet Paul Verlaine used to try to kill his lover, the poet Arthur Rimbaud, sold at Christies, Paris, on 30 November, for 434,000 with fees, more than six times its upper estimate of 70,000. The one-of-a-kind piece, arguably one of literary historys most famous weapons, was modestly priced and sparked a lengthy bidding war before selling to an anonymous buyer over the phone.After running away from Paris together to find refuge in London, the pair fought so much that Verlaine lef
  
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• Giles Waterfield: Novelist, scholar and champion of struggling museums and the stately homes of England

  30-11-2016 22:00
  
  Giles Waterfield, who died on 5 November, aged 67, was the champion of the struggling museum. As the director of Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London (1979-96), he pioneered most of the now-familiar methods required to keep an economically unviable institution afloat; he grew the Friends organisation, scrounged from local schools, initiated an exhibition programme and managed to package every activity, however core, as a fundraising opportunity. His Adopt an Old Master scheme (based on anima
  
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• Scenes From Art Basel Miami Beach, Part 2

  30-11-2016 21:44 via artnews.com
  As Art Basel Miami Beach opened to VIP collectors today, politically-oriented art could be seen throughout the convention center, some of it brand new.Click on the first image to start the slide show.
  
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• Preview Art Basel Miami Beach 2016, Part 2

  30-11-2016 21:41 via artnews.com
  The 15th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach opens Thursday, December 1, with VIP previews beginning today. The 2016 edition of the fair, which runs through Sunday, December 4, will bring 269 galleries from 29 countries to city. Part 2 of … Read More
  
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• Closure of New Art Gallery Walsall would be a devastating blow | Letter from 35 artists and gallery directors

  30-11-2016 20:15
  
  We are writing to express our deep concern about the threatened closure of the New Art Gallery Walsall as a result of cuts to public funding (Report, 26 October). Since it opened in February 2000, just before Tate Modern in London, the gallery has become a symbol of the social and economic regeneration of Walsall. It has been proof that the nation is committed to the principle that everyone should have access to the arts wherever they live in the UK.The gallery is the home of the world-famous Ga
  
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• Art world heavyweights protest over fate of New Art Gallery Walsall

  30-11-2016 20:15
  
  Grayson Perry among signatories of letter that expresses concern about possible closure because of local government cutsLeading figures in the British art world, from Grayson Perry to incoming Tate director Alex Farquharson, have written a letter to the Guardian protesting against the potential closure of a gallery in the West Midlands that has been a prototype for others.The New Art Gallery Walsallfaces closure after local government funding cuts left the council needing to make £85m of s
  
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• Preview NADA Miami Beach 2016

  30-11-2016 20:09 via artnews.com
  The 14th edition of NADA Miami Beach, put on annually by the New Art Dealers Alliance, opens to the public on Thursday afternoon, with a VIP preview earlier in the day. The fair, which returns to the Deauville Beach Resort after … Read More
  
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• Blaze of Glory: the grand tradition of burning the American flag

  30-11-2016 19:33
  
  Donald Trump has tweeted that he wants to jail anyone who sets fire to the stars and stripes. But this act of protest has a special place in US historyJimi Hendrix did not need a match to burn the American flag. All he needed to desecrate Old Glory was an electric guitar. When Hendrix started to play the national anthem at Woodstock in 1969, the audience must have been baffled. Patriotic bullshit, man! But as he played The Star-Spangled Banner, he distorted it to produce increasingly painful, ha
  
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• Rear of the year: meet the Italian behind the Turner prize buttocks

  30-11-2016 19:12
  
  It’s the most talked-about work of 2016. But the buttocks doorway up for the Turner prize is a copy. The architect who first designed it reveals the full storyIf the Turner prize had been decided by Instagram, then Andrea Hamilton’s Project for Door (After Gaetano Pesce) would be a shoo-in to win on Monday. Since mid-September, the UK’s favourite spot for a selfie has been beneath this pair of large, splayed buttocks. Related: Turner prize 2016 exhibition review – bleak a
  
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• Basel-goers Greeted by Giant Sam Durant Proclaiming ‘End White Supremacy’ at Blum & Poe’s Booth

  30-11-2016 19:07 via artnews.com
  Yesterday ARTnews reported that, in light of the results of the presidential election, many booths had taken a more political tack and planned to infuse the fair with a topicality not usually seen in sunny Miami Beach.Well, that topicality is … Read More
  
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• Researchers: Speaking A Second Language Makes Your Brain Smarter

  30-11-2016 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "In recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age."
  
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• Museo del Prado’s director Miguel Zugaza steps down after 15 years

  30-11-2016 18:21
  
  The director of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Miguel Zugaza, is to leave next year to return to his previous role in charge of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. In a resignation letter addressed to Spains minister of education, culture and sport, Zuzaga said that after 15 years he considers the goals established during [his] term of office to have been fulfilled.
  The Prado is now embarking on a new and exciting phase in anticipation of its 2019 bicentenary, Zugaza says. Last week the museum announc
  
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• Sergei Polunin's Rise, Fall, And Return To Dance - And What He Thinks About It Now

  30-11-2016 18:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  This preview of the documentary Dancer gives a good overview of the story of "ballet's James Dean" - with quotes like this one about his troubled period in London: "At first, I didn't want to talk to the media, I feel like I was shaken into talking to them, then they became [a sounding board]. ... I started using the media as psychiatrists, I guess, they were someone to talk to."
  
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• The Underappreciated Art Of Painted Movie Backdrops

  30-11-2016 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Paradoxically, the painted image often looks more realistic than the photographic image. Scenic artists can manipulate backings by adjusting light, color, and texture, helping to support the movie camera’s constructed image. Some information and details can be selectively accentuated, while others can be deemphasized. A photograph, on the other hand, is static and has a tendency to contradict the artifice of the rest of the setting."
  
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• Rhizome Announces New Grant, Board Members, Including Martine Syms, and Hires

  30-11-2016 17:26 via artnews.com
  It’s been a whirlwind long year for the Rhizome, which is wrapping up its 20th anniversary year with quite a bang.Over the past 12 months, the New York–based digital arts organization relaunched its website, received a $600,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to fund its … Read More
  
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• That Alleged Caravaggio They Found In An Attic Is Totally Not Genuine - But It Should Be In A Museum Nevertheless

  30-11-2016 17:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  Same for that notorious fake Vermeer that fooled Hermann Goering, argues Noah Charney, who wrote the book on art forgery. He lays out his case against the painting found under a roof in Toulouse, then lays out a case for it - as art, if not as real Caravaggio.
  
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• Scenes From Art Basel Miami Beach, Part 1

  30-11-2016 16:56 via artnews.com
  Art Basel Miami Beach opens to VIP guests on Wednesday, but there was no shortage of previews and parties leading up to the main event. Below, a look around some of the events Tuesday evening in Miami Beach. Among the … Read More
  
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• '.art' Is Becoming A Real Internet Address

  30-11-2016 16:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  The domain name is officially launching early in 2017, though a few websites with the address are already online. The 60+ early adopters of the address include some of the most prominent museums in the world (Guggenheim, Tate, Centre Pompidou, LACMA, ...). So far, there's only one organization from beyond the visual arts world, though more may come.
  
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• Why Oscars Season, Like Christmas-Shopping Season, Keeps Getting Earlier And Earlier

  30-11-2016 16:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  "When the early ceremonies give out their awards, often the only people who've seen the films are critics, festivalgoers, and (sometimes) their own voting bodies. Are these awards about recognition, or are they about advocacy, or are they about attempting to steer a conversation? Or they, at this point, just about being first?"
  
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• How to Fix the Art World, Part 4

  30-11-2016 16:00 via artnews.com
  Welcome to Part 4 of ‘How to Fix the Art World.’ If you are just now tuning in, here are the links to Parts 1, 2, and 3, and here’s a little background:Back in August my staff and I embarked … Read More
  
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• National Board Of Review Honors 'Manchester By The Sea' And 'Moonlight'

  30-11-2016 15:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  The Board is one of the quirkier awards-giving bodies in the American film world, but their top prizes this year went to two Oscar frontrunners. Even so, there were the usual surprises ...
  
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• Jury Finds Creators Of 'Jersey Boys' Guilty Of Copyright Infringement

  30-11-2016 15:16 via feedproxy.google.com
  The verdict is that the musical's creators used, without permission, substantial portions of an unpublished autobiography by Tommy DeVito, a founding member of the group The Four Seasons. The jury held that 10% of the show's success is attributed to the unauthorized material - which could lead to a big cash award to DeVito's widow.
  
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• The Met Gives Up On Getting A New Opera Out Of Osvaldo Golijov

  30-11-2016 15:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  After the wild success of his Pasión según San Marco, Golijov was one of the first composers Peter Gelb commissioned when he became the company's general manager. Alas, Golijov seems to have a years-long case of composer's block; this is by no means the first time he hasn't been able to complete a major commission.
  
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• 5,000-Year-Old City Unearthed In Egypt

  30-11-2016 14:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  The first reports on this find in English, which came out just as the Thanksgiving holiday was starting, said that the ruins archaeologists found near Abydos in southern Egypt were 7,000 years old. That seems to have been a mistranslation from the initial news release in Arabic. Even so, this is one of the earliest settlements yet found in the country.
  
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• Morning Links: Forest Edition

  30-11-2016 14:36 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the world Read More
  
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• 'The Pérez Art Museum Miami Just Got A Lot More Pérez - $15 Million Worth'

  30-11-2016 14:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The longtime arts supporter for whom the 3-year-old public museum is named, Jorge Pérez, has pledged a multimillion-dollar gift to the museum over the next 10 years with specific instructions. The goal: to acquire the works of Cuban and Latin American artists and bolster the museum's endowment."
  
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• Pioneering Countertenor Russell Oberlin Dead At 88

  30-11-2016 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  He was the first male alto to make a solo career in the U.S.; in the 1950s and '60s he was at the forefront of the early music revival, singing everything from 12th-century English music through Bach and Handel (not to mention Oberon in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream). And he didn't use falsetto; alto was his natural range.
  
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• Artists, Afraid Of What Trump Administration Will Bring, Direct Their Pleas To Ivanka

  30-11-2016 14:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "She has become known in the art world as a progressive figure and as someone who seems to care much more about culture than her father does." Yet the group, even as it goes so far as to march in front of her apartment building, doesn't expect much direct effect from their efforts.
  
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• Takin' it to the streets

  30-11-2016 14:00
  
  The Argentine property developer Alan Faena is describing why the Faena Districthis new branded neighbourhood in Miami Beachis, for him, utopia. I feel its the perfect site between the north and the south. Its fertile ground for a new cultural movement, a place where ideas intersect with the community. Miami is one of the most important cities in the USit is a great place to talk to the world.
  If Faena is right, then utopia may look a lot like a carnival. To inaugurate his new complex, the deve
  
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• Miami’s museum-building boom is in full swing

  30-11-2016 14:00
  
  Museums across Miami are expanding. By the time Art Basel in Miami Beach rolls around next year, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) and the Bass Museum will have new homes, with the Rubell Family Collection due to follow in 2018.
  The Rubell museum, which has operated out of Wynwood since 1993, announced plans this week to relocate to a 100,000 sq. ft space in the Allapattah neighbourhood, a five-minute drive away. Due to open in December 2018, the new buildinga former Drug Enforcement Admi
  
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• Miami news in brief

  30-11-2016 14:00
  
  Yours for $21.4m: a 65ft-wide glass mural of LeninTalk about a heavy subject: a 6,500-pound East German stained glass mural depicting the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin has been unveiled in Miami. Richard Otfried Wilhelms Peace Around Our World (1982-83) was commissioned for the offices of the Stasi (the East German secret police). The 10ft-tall, 65ft-wide piece, which is decorated with 55 pounds of gold, now belongs to the German dealer Thilo Holzmann, who hopes to sell it this week for
  
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• Julio Le Parc's American moment

  30-11-2016 14:00
  
  At 88 years old, Julio Le Parc is having a moment. The artist is enjoying his first solo US museum show at the Prez Art Museum Miami (Pamm). The exhibition, Julio Le Parc: Form into Action (until 19 March 2017), is the culmination of a banner year for the kinetic and Op Art pioneer. Le Parc has had two solo shows in New York this autumn: one at Galerie Perrotin, and another at Galeria Nara Roesler (Julio Le Parc, 1959-70, until 17 December). Nara Roesler is also showing his work at Art Basel in
  
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• Artist Sun Xun communes with nature for new commission, plus more Miami gossip

  30-11-2016 14:00
  
  The answer is blowin in the windThat surfside structure between the W hotel and the bar Free Spirits that resembles the skeleton of a beached whale is, in fact, the Beijing-based artist Sun Xuns commission for the luxury Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet. Reconstruction of the Universe (2016) is an impressive installation-cum-dance floor featuring bamboo and a 3D film meticulously animated with woodcuts by a team of 100. (The awls they used to make the film are jammed, perhaps cathartically, in
  
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• Ethan Stiefel Is Making A Ballet About The Space Program

  30-11-2016 13:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  Washington Ballet director Julie Kent commissioned him to create a work for the JFK centennial celebrations at the Kennedy Center - but, as he says, "I didn't want to do JFK: The Ballet." (Think of the fights over who'd get to dance Jackie and Marilyn.) He came up with the idea for what to do instead (where else?) on one of his motorcycle odysseys.
  
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• The Never-Ending Story: Indian Publishing Finds Its Mother Lode For Popular Fiction, Right Where It's Always Been

  30-11-2016 13:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "In the age of [James] Patterson, [Harry] Potter and Game of Thrones, Indian authors have brought their own special flavours to the table: mass-market fiction based on reinterpretations of the two great Hindu epic narratives, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata." Readers are devouring it, and it's becoming very big business.
  
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• Zaha Hadid's successor ruffles feathers

  30-11-2016 11:50
  
  Miami was special to the late superstar Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, who died in the city earlier this year and whose super-luxury One Thousand Museum residential tower dominates Biscayne Boulevard just across from the Prez Art Museum Miami. But her company, Zaha Hadid Architects, is embroiled in a bitter row over a speech made by its director Patrik Schumacher at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin earlier this month. The architect ruffled feathers by saying that social housing should be
  
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• Van Gogh Museum criticises experts for 'easygoing attitude' towards authentication

  30-11-2016 11:24
  
  The battle between the Van Gogh Museum and two of the most experienced experts on the artist has intensified. This follows publication of the book, Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook, which was released by Abrams on 15 November. It reproduced 65 drawings said to have been done in 1888-90.
  The museums latest statement on 29 November criticises Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov (the author) and Ronald Pickvance (who wrote the foreword) for their excessively easygoing attitude... towards questions o
  
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• Cuban artists react to Fidel Castro’s death

  30-11-2016 11:00
  
  Cubas artists are still coming to terms with the death of the countrys former leader Fidel Castro on 25 November. The anti-Castro artist and human rights activist Danilo Maldonado Machado, known as El Sexto, has been missing since Monday. His family told his gallery, Pollock Fine Art, that they believe he was beaten and abducted from his Havana home. Meanwhile, several activist groups in Cuba have suspended their activities in anticipation of a police crackdown, according to a statement from th
  
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• Argentina’s art scene comes to the fore in Miami

  30-11-2016 10:59
  
  VIPs on the hunt for the next big thing at Art Basel in Miami Beach would do well to train their eyes on Argentina. As the Prez Art Museum Miami presents the first US survey of the Mendoza-born Modernist Julio Le Parc and the Buenos Aires-born developer Alan Faena unveils his new cultural centre in Miami Beach, the country seems poised for a breakthrough.It is not all down to luck. Argentinas newfound presence in Miami is part of a concerted effort by galleries, government officials and philant
  
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