Arts news

• The Big Data-Fication Of Everything Has Some Serious Flaws

  12-12-2016 23:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  In fact, the datafication of everything is reductive. For a start, it leaves behind whatever can’t be quantified. And as Cathy O’Neil points out in her insightful and disturbing book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, datafication often relies on proxies—stand-ins that can be enumerated—that bear little or no […]
  
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• Bill protecting works of art loaned by foreign institutions passes US Senate

  12-12-2016 23:21
  
  As the role of Russian hackers in the US presidential election comes under scrutiny, a bill protecting works of art on loan to the US from foreign institutions from seizure was passed by the Senate on Saturday, 10 December and is now waiting to be signed into law by President Obama. The legislation could end a years-long cultural cold war with Russia, which has refused to loan works since 2010 due to lawsuits filed in the US over objects seized during the Bolshevik Revolution.
  The bill was firm
  
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• Bill protecting works of art lent by foreign institutions passes US Senate

  12-12-2016 23:21
  
  As the role of Russian hackers in the US presidential election comes under scrutiny, a bill protecting works of art on loan to the US from foreign institutions from seizure was passed by the Senate on Saturday, 10 December and is now waiting to be signed into law by President Obama. The legislation could end a years-long cultural cold war with Russia, which has refused to loan works since 2010 due to lawsuits filed in the US over objects seized during the Bolshevik Revolution.
  The bill was firm
  
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• Golden Globes Surprise: Nominations Go To Youth Over Stars

  12-12-2016 22:59 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Awards shows have long tangled with a dilemma. As a venue for industry recognition, they tend to value dues-paying — rewarding personalities who have put together a long body of work and earned industry goodwill. But the shows also rely for income on a television world that tends to favor, particularly in its advertising dollars, […]
  
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• Study: Arts Schools' Impact On The UK Economy

  12-12-2016 22:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  The study by GuildHE, a representative body for higher education, found creative-focused universities and colleges generate at least £8.4bn each year by meeting the needs of employers for creative, qualified, trained workers.
  
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• ‘Endgame: Duchamp, Chess, and the Avant-Garde’ at Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona

  12-12-2016 22:28 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
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• San Francisco Symphony Cancels Tour To North Carolina In Protest

  12-12-2016 22:23 via feedproxy.google.com
  “In the months after HB2 became law, we have closely watched the fluctuating political landscape in hopes that the law would be overturned,” said Executive Director Brent Assink in a statement. “Because that has not yet happened, and due to pressing internal travel deadlines, the San Francisco Symphony has made the decision to cancel its […]
  
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• An Astounding List Of Drunk Great Composers!

  12-12-2016 22:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The list of heavy-drinking composers is worthy of Monty Python’s ‘Philosophers’ Song’. It includes Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Sibelius. There are no reports of Bach getting drunk — but during a fortnight’s trip to Halle in 1713 his beer bill came to 18 grossen, which suggests that he got […]
  
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• Untitled(the snobby teachers hate the snobby lawyers; the snobby doctors hate the snobby underpaid teachers.)

  12-12-2016 22:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  i didn’t see her face. she was thin. she had a pretty face and a big nose. i thought about them fucking. he with his brown skin and cerebral voice. she with her thin armsand smooth belly. she is going to live in maui. she wants to go back to school in ohau. i didn’t like him and i liked her. i liked his voice at times. other times his face annoyed me. it was too shiny and healthy. he was too supportive and followed up with advice. he should have been quiet and not listened. she was a
  
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• Sex, violence and Donald Trump

  12-12-2016 22:00
  
  Gordon Veneklasens Macdougal Alley townhouse, with its quiet downtown refinement, is just about the opposite of Trump Tower, but the president-elect was much on the minds of artists at the art dealers Christmas party there on 13 December. And if there has been one upside to Trumps election, its that Peter Saul, known for his cartoon-influenced paintings rife with sex and violence, has finally decided to start on a Donald Trump painting. Hes kind of a growth in this office, Saul said at the part
  
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• Royal Academy president to show new compositions in US

  12-12-2016 22:00
  
  The British painter and president of the Royal Academy (RA) Christopher Le Brun is presenting a two-part show of new pictures in the US next year. The exhibition, titled Christopher Le Brun: Composer, takes place at the Albertz Benda gallery in New York (2 March-15 April 2017) and at the Gallery at Windsor in Vero Beach, Florida (25 February-27 April 2017).One of the themes explored through the 28 paintings on view (12 in New York, 16 in Florida) is music and its relationship to his paintings.
  
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• Are Facts Knowledge? The Classic Essay Tries To Persuade

  12-12-2016 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "There are genres whose principal business is fact—journalism, history, popular science—but the essay has never been one of them. If the form possesses a defining characteristic, it is that the essay makes an argument (and does so, unlike academic writing and other forms, for a general rather than a specialized audience). That argument can rest […]
  
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• Philip Rylands steps down as director of Venice’s Peggy Guggenheim Collection

  12-12-2016 21:26
  
  The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has announced that Philip Rylands will step down from his role as director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and as the Guggenheim Foundations director for Italy in June next year. During his 16-year tenure, the Guggenheim Collection became the most-visited museum of Modern art in Italy and the second most visited museum in Venice.Rylands first joined the Guggenheim Foundation as the administrator of Venice collection following Peggy Guggenheims death in 19
  
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• Heart-pounding discovery of rare Leonardo da Vinci drawing

  12-12-2016 21:00
  
  On Monday 12 December, the Paris-based auction house Tajan announced a stirring discovery of a double-sided drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, the first such find in over 15 years. The work depicts Saint Sebastian bound to a tree on the recto, and optical studies in light and shadow and text by the Old Master on the verso. The artist referred to eight drawings of the saint in his tome of drawings, texts and scientific studies, the Codex Atlanticus (1478-1519) and this sheet is believed to be among th
  
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• Why Are Bookstores Thriving In Berlin?

  12-12-2016 20:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Despite the rise of the predatory online and mass-market bookseller, the dark specter of Amazon that has caused roughly one-third of indie bookstores in Britain to close in the last decade, Berlin is undergoing an analogue reading renaissance with more owner-run bookshops opening than shutting in recent times."
  
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• Iconic Bookstores Around The World That Are As Atmospheric As They Are Literary

  12-12-2016 20:18 via feedproxy.google.com
  "When you walk into the shop, the books appear to reach impossible heights and stretch clear into the distance, an effect created by the perfect symmetry of the dark wooden shelves and the clever use of mirrors on the ceilings and walls. In an amphitheater-like room for readings and lectures, the impression is amplified by […]
  
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• London's Gloomy Theatre Offerings Reflect A Deeply Unsettled World

  12-12-2016 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The present fears about climate change, terrorism and globalization’s political and economic fallout have exacerbated our horrible imaginings of the future. It would be unnatural if the theater didn’t register the collective consternation. But an overindulgence of London theater in the dying light of 2016 might persuade you to cash in your 401(k)."
  
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• Philip Rylands, Director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Since 2000, to Step Down in June

  12-12-2016 19:09 via artnews.com
  The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced today that Philip Rylands, the director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the foundation’s director for Italy, will step down from his positions in June 2017. A search for a person to … Read More
  
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• Healing Time: Richard Pousette-Dart’s Salutary Works Are Back in the Public Eye

  12-12-2016 19:04 via artnews.com
  Two exhibitions, at Del Deo & Barzune and Pace Gallery, and one relocated triptych marked the fall season in New York Read More
  
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• Clash Of The Titans: When Nabokov Debated Wilson

  12-12-2016 19:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  As we enter into the era of Trumped-down literacy, when “the life of the mind” seems almost like a quaint idea, it’s somehow thrilling to imagine a world where great intellects clashed, taking language seriously, meaning what they said, and being able to back their assertions with genuine knowledge.
  
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• Information Overload? New Survey Finds Most People Don't Feel Overwhelmed

  12-12-2016 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "A new Pew Research Center survey finds that, for the most part, the large majority of Americans do not feel that information overload is a problem for them. Some 20% say they feel overloaded by information, a decline from the 27% figure from a decade ago, while 77% say they like having so much information […]
  
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• The Irrepressible Jerry Saltz And The Future Of The Critic/Artist

  12-12-2016 18:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  There was a perfect storm: Saltz’s TV notoriety coincided with the advent of social media and the explosion of the art market onto a global stage stoked by the boogeymen of big bucks, glamour and lack of attractive alternatives in the financial markets.
  
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• ‘We Chafed at the Restrictions’: New York Times Art Editor Discusses the History, and End, of the Inside Art Column

  12-12-2016 17:52 via artnews.com
  On Friday, the New York Times debuted a new column in its arts pages, Show Us Your Wall, which will consist of interviews with collectors from a variety of fields where they open up about how they install their art collection … Read More
  
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• Defining Ambiguity, Ambiguously: A Panel Convenes to Consider the Artist as Activist-Critic

  12-12-2016 17:42 via artnews.com
  After the release this fall of its newest book, Social Medium: Artists Writing, 2000-2015, Paper Monument began to organize a panel discussion among a few of the artist-writers in the anthology’s pages. Originally, the panel was meant to focus on art … Read More
  
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• How Did Ads For Canadian Arts Organizations Show Up On Breitbart News?

  12-12-2016 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The ads’ appearance illuminates a vexing consequence of a growing method of ad buying on the Internet, in which companies often have no idea where their commercial messages are showing up or which publishers they are financially supporting."
  
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• Friends With Benefits: Sales From an Exhibition Aid the Foundation for Contemporary Arts

  12-12-2016 17:18 via artnews.com
  One recent weekday afternoon at David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea, the artist James Welling was in his element peering at a portrait of a photographer looking through a lens to a future that only the camera can see—a sort of … Read More
  
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• The Golden Globe Nominees Are Announced, With Some Notable Exceptions

  12-12-2016 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Mel Gibson is back, but movies from Tom Hanks' Sully to Denzel Washington's Fences and (surprisingly) Martin Scorsese's Silence get snubbed.
  
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• Beatrix Potter Was A Careful Scientific Recorder Of Mushrooms (She Also Happened To Write 'Peter Rabbit')

  12-12-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Her mushroom drawings hang in the Science Museum in London. "These drawings, most of them from the 1890s, are so accurate that even today, they are still consulted by scientists."
  
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• Art Fund judges: Jo Whiley and Hartwig Fischer

  12-12-2016 16:23
  
  The Art Funds prestigious Museum of the Year prize moves up a gear next year, with a 40% increase in total prize money to 140,000. For the first time, each of the shortlisted museums will receive 10,000 each (the winner, to be announced in July, will bag 100,000 as usual; the Victoria & Albert Museum in London was victorious this year). But its not just the prize money thats eye-catching. The judging panel includes high-profile names from the culture sector such as Hartwig Fischer, the
  
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• Art Fund judges: DJ Jo Whiley and Hartwig Fischer of the BM

  12-12-2016 16:23
  
  The Art Funds prestigious Museum of the Year prize moves up a gear next year, with a 40% increase in total prize money to 140,000. For the first time, each of the shortlisted museums will receive 10,000 each (the winner, to be announced in July, will bag 100,000 as usual; the Victoria & Albert Museum in London was victorious this year). But its not just the prize money thats eye-catching. The judging panel includes high-profile names from the culture sector such as Hartwig Fischer, the
  
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• The First-Ever Indigenous Comic Con Took Place A Few Weeks Ago, And It Was Impressive

  12-12-2016 16:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  From comics about life on the rez to video games about blood quantum to little girls who said they were superhero Water Protectors, the Comic Con featured nerd culture for Native peoples.
  
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• Zadie Smith, Accepting A Literary Award, Gives A Scorching Speech About Her Books And 'Multiculturalism'

  12-12-2016 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  "I did not realize that the life I was living was considered in any way provisional or experimental by others: I thought it was just life. And when I wrote a novel about the London I grew up in, I further did not realize that by describing an environment in which people from different places […]
  
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• The Sacramento Ballet Has Been On Shaky Footing, But Then A Patron Died And Left The Company... Everything

  12-12-2016 15:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  A gift the organizations didn't expect or look for, from a patron who had attended many private ballet functions and climbed the Great Wall with the dancers when they went to China, surprises - and helps - the Sacramento Ballet .
  
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• Twelve Of 2016's Biggest Classical Music Stories

  12-12-2016 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  WQXR in New York recalls the biggest stories in classical music this year. Stravinsky's back, baby! Plus strikes, deaths, promotions, conductors stepping down and much more.
  
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• The changeable Californian: on Richard Diebenkorn

  12-12-2016 15:29
  
  Richard Diebenkorn (1922-93) is the most high-profile member of the San Francisco Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1940s-60s and is considered one of Americas most important Modernist painters. He received wide acclaim in his lifetime, and interest in his art has remained constant in recent decades. Any comprehensive study of Modernism in America must include Diebenkorn. The question is, how is he to be categorised: figurative or abstract?Except for stays in New Mexico and Illinois, Diebenkor
  
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• Five Takeaways From The Critics Choice Awards

  12-12-2016 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  The race for the Oscars seems on, with a four-way race among four serious movies (La La Land, Moonlight, Jackie, Manchester-by-the-Sea) ... and a comedy contender out of left field as well.
  
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• Morning Links: Leonardo da Vinci Edition

  12-12-2016 15:01 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the art world Read More
  
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• The British Writer A.A. Gill, Acerbic And Brilliant Restaurant Reviewer, Has Died At 62

  12-12-2016 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  The writer, who battled alcoholism in his 20s but emerged one of the most elegant writers in the language, announced last month that he had cancer - and used his final column to rail at the British National Health System.
  
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• Tech Is In A Big Showdown, And It's Taking Place Inside Your House

  12-12-2016 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  Will Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or something entirely new win this round of understanding how humans speak naturally? (It's a big deal because real artificial intelligence depends on this point. Oh, and the machines are always listening.)
  
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• Poem of the week: RS Thomas on The Dressmakers by William Roberts

  12-12-2016 14:32
  
  A taut, sharp response to a single painting reflects on its erotic and mythological resonanceI return to it
  again: avid faces,
  conscious of the threads
  fate has spun; fingers
  with scissors to cut
  those threads and release
  the garment towards which
  the muscular lover
  helplessly is being drawn.Continue reading...
  
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• Are We Having A Bit Of A Cultural Moment For Comedians In Theatres?

  12-12-2016 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Yes, and it's because theatres are different venues from comedy clubs. One comedian: "There are some parts of [my show] that are very emotional just for the sake of being open, honest, and vulnerable onstage. ... I don’t know that that’s a quality that can fly in a stand-up club that has a two drink […]
  
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• We've Had Seven 'Live' Musicals On TV Now; What Have We Learned?

  12-12-2016 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  Here are five lessons, including the perhaps obvious pop singers aren't Broadway singers, and they don't show up well next to talent like Audra McDonald and Kelli O'Hara (but! They bring viewers!).
  
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• Theatre, Out Of Its (Scripted) Echo Chamber In The Wake Of Brexit And Trump

  12-12-2016 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Lyn Gardner isn't cool with the usual suspects thrashing it out on stage without considering their audience. "If the arts, and theatre in particular, wants to genuinely respond and enter into meaningful dialogues with those who feel excluded and disenfranchised, it needs to look outward not inward."
  
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• Mavis Staples Just Got A Kennedy Center Honor, But She Says Today Isn't So Different From The Civil Rights Era

  12-12-2016 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  The singer, who was barely into double digits when she started singing gospel music with her family, has thoughts about what's happening now: "I watch the news sometimes and I think I'm back in the '60s. It's all happening all over again. This kid Chance The Rapper, he's very good at explaining what's happening in […]
  
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• In Hallmark Christmas Land, Everyone Is White (And Straight), And It's Canada's Fault

  12-12-2016 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Um. "When asked to elaborate on the nature of his company’s difficulties regarding hiring actors and actresses of color, Abbott cited the fact that the majority of production takes place in Canada ... and the channel’s high volume of production."
  
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• Two Dutch Old Masters returned to heirs of Jewish dealer Max Stern

  12-12-2016 12:07
  
  Two Dutch Old Master paintings will today return to the heirs of Max Stern, a Jewish art dealer who was persecuted by the Nazis and forced to liquidate his gallery and flee Germany.The Max Stern Foundation, which oversees Sterns estate, will take possession of the paintings at a ceremony at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin. An anonymous tip from an art trade informer alerted the foundation that Ships in Distress on a Stormy Sea by Jan Porcellis (around 1584-1632) was for sale at Auktionhaus Metz
  
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• Two Dutch Old Masters returned to estate of Jewish dealer Max Stern

  12-12-2016 12:07
  
  Two Dutch Old Master paintings will today return to the heirs of Max Stern, a Jewish art dealer who was persecuted by the Nazis and forced to liquidate his gallery and flee Germany.The Max Stern Foundation, which oversees Sterns estate, will take possession of the paintings at a ceremony at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin. An anonymous tip from an art trade informer alerted the foundation that Ships in Distress on a Stormy Sea by Jan Porcellis (around 1584-1632) was for sale at Auktionhaus Metz
  
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• 'A black nightmare': Palmyra retaken by Isil militants

  12-12-2016 11:40
  
  Fears are growing over the fate of the ancient Roman city of Palmyra, following its recapture by Isil forces. On 10 December Isil militants launched an attack on Palmyra and the adjacent modern town of Tadmur, taking advantage of the fact that some Syrian government troops had been dispatched from there to fight at Aleppo, 200 kilometres to the north.President Bashar Assads government troops had seized the desert oasis of Palmyra in April, following an earlier ten-month Isil occupation. During
  
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• 'A black nightmare': Palmyra attacked by Isil militants

  12-12-2016 11:40
  
  Fears are growing over the fate of the ancient Roman city of Palmyra, following its recapture by Isil forces. On 10 December Isil militants launched an attack on Palmyra and the adjacent modern town of Tadmur, taking advantage of the fact that some Syrian government troops had been dispatched from there to fight at Aleppo, 200 kilometres to the north.President Bashar Assads government troops, with Russian military support, had seized the desert oasis of Palmyra in April, after an earlier ten-mo
  
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• Old Masters young guns dish out auction guesstimates

  12-12-2016 11:30
  
  To most people, Old Master paintings conjure up images of quiet, smoky, velvet-clad drawing rooms, but for how much longer? Fresh from its merger with younger Spanish dealers Jorge Coll and Nicols Corts, Colnaghi gallery hosted what was possibly the rowdiest night in Old Masters history last week. While Christies London was holding its evening sale around the corner in St James's, the gallery organised a private dinner for its younger collectors, on the promise that each of them would submit th
  
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