Arts news

• Trump’s promise of Reagan-style tax reforms causes alarm

  08-01-2017 22:00
  
  Our first priority is going to be the tax plan, Steven Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs executive and Hollywood producer, who is the son of the New York-based art dealer Robert Mnuchin, told the reporters gathered at Trump Tower at the end of November, soon after his nomination as the new secretary of the treasury by US president-elect Donald Trump. His promise of legislation that would result in the largest tax changes since Reagan caused concern among collectors and the institutions that ben
  
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• The art market in 2017: perplexing times for pundits worldwide

  08-01-2017 22:00
  
  Making predictions about the art market in 2017 is one of the most challenging tasks I have ever undertaken, with so many variables that have either happened or are still in the works. Past events, such as the UKs vote to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as US president, and forthcoming elections in Europe, which could see populist politicians take power, are overturning the established order and creating enormous uncertainty about the future. Pundits worldwide are scra
  
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• How the estate of Thailand’s missing ‘Silk King’ was among the winners of Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act

  08-01-2017 22:00
  
  Buried in the 800-plus pages of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, a private collectors estate is singled out for special relief from a hefty tax bill. It belonged to Jim Thompson, the American businessman and former intelligence officer who became known as Thailands Silk King for revitalising the industry there and opening it to the global market through moves like furnishing the original costumes for the Broadway hit The King and I (1956). Trained as an architect, he also built a major collection of te
  
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• Restoring A Millennia-Old Repository Of Rome's Jewish History, At Long Last

  08-01-2017 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  A budget allocation, meant to restore the catacombs of Jewish residents of Rome from more than two millennia ago, has finally been realized, 10 years after it was first approved. "One of the grander niches has small columns at each corner and a frescoed cross vault with a depiction of a menorah. There are images of sacred Jewish symbols, including an ark with the scrolls of the Torah, and several inscriptions referring to synagogues in the city."
  
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• Snowed In? How About Settling In To Watch This 1964 Communist Ballet?

  08-01-2017 17:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The Red Detachment of Women, which was adapted from a 1961 film of the same name, was based on the true experience of an all-female Special Company of the Red Army during the Chinese Civil War. They survived a brutal attack on Hainan Island while their male counterparts did not, and were honored by Mao himself."
  
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• Hopes for sustaining Hull's cultural momentum rest on the Blade

  08-01-2017 17:41
  
  Vast turbine blade, made at Siemens factory, is the first artwork commissioned to mark Hull’s year as UK’s city of cultureFor drivers heading east on the A6 near Hull in the early hours of Sunday morning, it may have been something of a shock. A 75-metre-long object resembling a giant pointed tusk, perched on two slow-moving lorries, is a rare sight on the Yorkshire roads.This was the Blade, the vast turbine arm that has been installed in the centre of Hull, the first major artwork c
  
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• Dear Creative People: A 10-Point Plan For Getting Your Work Done In The Age Of The Soon To Be President

  08-01-2017 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Author John Scalzi with a 10-point plan, including get off the internet for a while. Also, stop repeating the lie that chaos will lead to good art. "People who don’t make their living through creative endeavors often suppose turbulent times make for great art, but the truth is that for many artists, being worried or anxious or depressed steals away the ability to create. The new reality of Trump’s America means a lot of creatives have to readjust — find a new balance to get bac
  
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• Who Will Win - And Who Should Win - At The Golden Globes?

  08-01-2017 17:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  The low-down on La La Land, Manchester By the Sea, Moonlight, Arrival, and so. much. more. Despite his prediction that Manchester WILL win best drama, this critic says, "a win for Moonlight would certainly be a satisfying rebuke to the new fashion for crude and ugly reactionary politics – and a vote for humanity."
  
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• How To Sound Book-Smart At Your Golden Globes Viewing Party Tonight

  08-01-2017 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  We can't say it better than this: "If you happen to be attending a Golden Globes party with a bunch of book people (or just want to snob up the room a bit), here’s what you need to know, from the literary origins of the nominees to a few frankly outrageous literary snubs. Add a stiff drink, and you’re good to go."
  
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• Looking At The Entirety Of Nikolaus Harnoncourt's Career, Through The Recordings

  08-01-2017 16:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  James Oestreich: "Neither a composer himself nor active in contemporary music, he was as radically fixated on the musical past as Mr. Boulez was on the future. Yet he exerted a powerful influence on the present, having helped to negotiate a fruitful truce between mainstream practice and the early-music movement with his historically informed performances. The evidence lives in his recordings, said to number more than 500."
  
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• The Shakespeare Detective Who Has Determined That Shakespeare Was, Indeed, Shakespeare

  08-01-2017 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  When she's not making big data discoveries that slay the conspiracy theories about who else might have written the plays, the scholar Heather Wolfe is creating things like Project Dustbunny, "one of her initiatives at the Folger Shakespeare Library, [that] has made some extraordinary discoveries based on microscopic fragments of hair and skin accumulated in the crevices and gutters of 17th-century books."
  
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• Thanks, Harry Potter (And Girl On The Train), For Saving British Book Sales Once Again

  08-01-2017 16:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Nielsen BookScan reports that a total of £83.3m worth of print books were sold in the run-up to Christmas, which marks the highest since 2007." Perhaps not entirely coincidental that the (previously) final Harry Potter book was published in ... 2007.
  
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• Nat Henthoff, Jazz Critic, First Amendment Defender, And Author, Has Died At 91

  08-01-2017 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  The longtime Village Voice writer earned this glorious paragraph in his NYT obit: "The Hentoff bibliotheca reads almost like an anthology: works by a jazz aficionado, a mystery writer, an eyewitness to history, an educational reformer, a political agitator, a foe of censors, a social critic. He was, indeed, like the jazz he loved — given to improvisations and permutations, a composer-performer who lived comfortably with his contradictions, though adversaries called him shallow and unscrupu
  
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• A ghost in kiss curls: how Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun share a mask

  08-01-2017 16:00
  
  The National Portrait Gallery is bringing together the works of two artistic visionaries exploring the complexities of identity in different erasThe unmissable art exhibitions of 2017With hearts on her cheeks, kiss curls on her forehead and cupid’s bow lips, Claude Cahun stares out at us in a small black and white photograph, taken in 1927. Her gaze is steady. Do you dare look at me, she seems to say, meeting the photographer’s gaze. The phrase I AM IN TRAINING DON’T KISS ME is
  
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• Amazon's 'No Cashier' Bookstore Has Humans Watching From Behind The Scenes

  08-01-2017 15:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  Sure, you can just pick up stuff - sandwiches, drinks, er, books - and walk out, as long as you have the app. And the store is supposed to "see" what you picked up. But sometimes it can't, so "Amazon staff is asked to help out when the system used in the new Amazon Go store can’t make a determination."
  
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• How To Incite - And Deal With - Youth Audience Rebellion In The Theatre

  08-01-2017 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Should playwrights be making theatre that caters to twentysomethings? Or should theatres simply spend more time putting any play they do in context? Or is this all pandering? "We don’t want to create a nation of inactive blobs who passively sit by; we want to create a community of activists who, when they see someone being victimized, jump up and speak out."
  
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• How The Playwright And The Director Made 'Moonlight' Out Of One Very Tough Miami Neighborhood

  08-01-2017 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  Movie writer and director Barry Jenkins grew up a year older and just a block or two away from playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney - but somehow they didn't meet until Jenkins was working on the movie that's rocketing through awards season and audience emotions. "They remember the same swinging tree, dancing at jams held in the amphitheater, and the annual turkey bowl."
  
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• New York's Municipal Art Society Suddenly Ousts Its New President

  08-01-2017 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Is money involved? Perhaps.
  
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• Do You Love The Bari Sax? Here Are 25 Great Performances To Warm Up A Snow Day

  08-01-2017 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  It's an unwieldy "low-register behemoth that requires voluminous breath, careful control and formidable stamina," and here are many minutes of its best moments so far.
  
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• The Woman Who Played The Quiet, Determined Mildred Loving Says That Court Decision Is Every American's History

  08-01-2017 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The film Loving, about the court decision that struck down anti-micegenation laws in the United States, stars Ethiopian actor Ruth Negga, who says, "People like Richard and Mildred often are one of many untold stories. And we have a duty to revisit these stories and share them."
  
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• Should The City Of Prague Take Alphonse Mucha's Epic Painting Cycle On Tour?

  08-01-2017 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  His grandson says no - and sues the city to stop the loan to a museum in Tokyo. "Prof. Karel Stretti, who leads the restoration department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, said the largest of the 'Slav Epic' pieces measures 26.5 feet by 20 feet, meaning handlers would have to remove it from its frame and roll it up, which could crack the paint."
  
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• What's Better: Beating Temptation, Or Never Feeling That Temptation To Begin With?

  08-01-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  A study involving 250 children and 400 adults finds that children aged 3-8 believe one side is better, while anyone older than 8 - but especially adults - has exactly the opposite conclusion.
  
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• As The Golden Globes Approach, Moonlight And Manchester Clean Up At National Society Of Film Critics Awards

  08-01-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Moonlight got the top honor as a film and for its director, Barry Jenkins, and a couple of other awards, and Manchester-by-the-Sea snagged most of the rest, leaving La La Land in the cold.
  
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• Smithsonian Visitors Top 30 Million In 2016, Thanks To Reopened Renwick And New Museum Of African American History

  08-01-2017 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  But despite the great numbers - the best total since 2012 - the numbers for visits to about half of the Smithsonian Museums were down from 2015.
  
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• How The U.S. Got A New 'One Day At A Time'

  08-01-2017 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The showrunner for the new Netflix-owned-and-produced comedy says, "I knew that I wanted to write something personal, I knew I wanted to write a multi-cam, and no joke, the first phone call I got was, 'Hey, Norman Lear wants to sit down and talk about doing a remake of One Day at a Time.' Yeah, the stars aligned."
  
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• David Bowie day at the V&A—on his 70th birthday

  08-01-2017 11:34
  
  Today would have been David Bowies 70th birthday (its hard to believe that the music genius died almost a year ago, on 10 January). The Victoria & Albert Museum has organised a wealth of events on 8 January celebrating the rock god, from a choir performance of groundbreaking Bowie tracks such as Heroes, to a guitar session led by Nigel Jones which focuses on the chord structures on the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The day will close with a screeni
  
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• How Hockney made it to America

  08-01-2017 10:36
  
  An exhibition of David Hockneys very early work due to open at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert gallery in London next month (David Hockney: The Complete Early Etchings 1961-64; 3 February-10 March) will reveal numerous nuggets about the fledgling career of Yorkshires most famous artist son. For instance, the Hockney scholar, Marco Livingstone, points out in an illuminating catalogue essay how young David managed to get to the States. The first trip [Hockney] made to the USA in the summer break in 1961,
  
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• John Berger 1926-2017: an appreciation

  08-01-2017 09:00
  
  Kate Kellaway recalls a charmed meeting in Paris with the writer, critic and artist – who died last week at 90 – for what turned out to be his last major interviewI first rang John Berger more than a year ago – I had been given his number by his publisher to arrange a date to meet him in Paris. I mentioned that November was a busy month, to which he responded in a warm, conspiratorial tone: that was good – because he would be away throughout the month and could not say wh
  
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• Hull: City of Culture 2017 review – prepare for a whale of a time

  08-01-2017 09:00
  
  From old masters to new visionaries, this year’s City of Culture offers a wealth of sensual treats amid a tide of human historyRembrandt lived in Hull. That, at least, is one speculation about a mysterious period in the late 1650s when his whereabouts remain unknown. To escape personal and financial chaos, he supposedly takes a quick ship across the North Sea and sets up shop in the cobbled streets of the old town. A sighting is even recorded. According to the antiquary George Vertue, writ
  
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