Arts news

• When Artists Ran Upstart Galleries In The East Village (It Didn't Last Long)

  11-01-2017 23:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "It was a diverse scene that held out a hint of utopian promise at a time when Abstract Expressionism was waning and new categories had not yet hardened: It included many more women than the uptown art world; it was not completely white; abstraction and figuration jostled side by side (if not always comfortably), along with genre-bending sculpture; and the gloriously messy birth of modern performance art took place in the midst of it all."
  
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• August Wilson - He Could Put All Of America In A Room

  11-01-2017 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Is it crazy to think the younger black postmodernists — these interrogators of blackness, these satirists of race — have an intellectual luxury afforded them by Wilson’s dogged devotion to place and history? What made Wilson such an Olympian figure was that he could fit the whole country in an office or a backyard and make the bigness of his ideas seem life-size. As for what he would have had to say about this mutability matter? I’d like to think he’d probably have
  
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• Galerie Perrotin Will Debut New Lower East Side Space With Show From Iván Argote

  11-01-2017 22:31 via artnews.com
  Last spring, it was announced that Galerie Perrotin would be moving in New York from its Madison Avenue location to a new space on the Lower East Side, which, at 25,000-square-feet, is seven times the size of its former home. Today, … Read More
  
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• Box Near The Queen's Seats In Royal Albert Hall Offered For £2.5 Million

  11-01-2017 22:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Nicholas Shaw of Harrods Estates said it was "the most expensive box we have ever offered for sale". The box is on the western side of the auditorium and has approximately 849 years remaining on its lease.
  
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• ‘Yokohama 1868–1912’ at Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt

  11-01-2017 22:13 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.Today’s show: “Yokohama 1868–1912: When Pictures Learned to Shine” is on view at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt through Sunday, January 29. The exhibition, comprised of more than … Read More
  
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• What We've Learned About David Bowie Since He Died

  11-01-2017 22:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  "From clues to his cancer hidden in Blackstar's artwork to his mortal fear of Tina Turner, some astounding new Bowie facts have come to light over the last year."
  
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• Life is changed, not ended: how the Medieval English dealt with death

  11-01-2017 22:00
  
  I had the recent disquieting experience of attempting to bury cremated human remains in the midst of a gale. Inevitably, while trying to return the last vestiges of a human being to the ground whence he had come, a proportion of the ash was blown to the four winds. This would not have been an experience known to the late-Medieval mind, and its prospect would surely have aroused horror in those whose theology of death was clear, and for whom the liturgy surrounding dying followed well-worn and co
  
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• German baking company Dr Oetker returns painting sold due to Nazi persecution

  11-01-2017 22:00
  
  Dr Oetker, a family-owned German manufacturer of baking products, muesli and frozen pizza, says it will return a painting by Hans Thoma in the company art collection to the heirs of Hedwig Ullmann, a Jewish art collector who fled Nazi Germany before the outbreak of the Second World War.The painting, Springtime in the Mountains, was one of a series of four panels by Thoma depicting the four seasons that graced the walls of the Ullmann familys Frankfurt villa. Hedwig Ullmann was forced to sell it
  
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• From Yorktown to York Avenue

  11-01-2017 22:00
  
  In 1788, Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper no. 68 that the Electoral College was meant to stop people with talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity from becoming president. Oh well. On 12 January, Sothebys held a press preview for its auction of the Founding Fathers letters and invited members of the cast and crew from the hit Broadway musical that bears the statesmans name (the shows star, Javier Muoz, stopped by a couple of days earlier). Among the documents are
  
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• Estorick Collection gets a new look

  11-01-2017 22:00
  
  The Estorick Collection, a gallery of early 20th-century Italian art in north London, is due to reopen on 13 January after a 600,000 refurbishment. The museum has added a new conservatory and upgraded and reinstalled its galleries. The inaugural exhibition examines the experience of British forces in Italy during the First World War and comprises loans from Londons Imperial War Museum (War in the Sunshine: The British in Italy 1917-1918, until 19 March).The Estoricks collection was donated by t
  
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• Credence and credulity: on Islamic art and the supernatural

  11-01-2017 22:00
  
  This intelligent work, partly a brief catalogue of an exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (until 15 January), partly a trio of studies by leading scholars, tackles an area of Islamic culture that is rarely addressed: the relationship between formal religion and actual practices. Formality is, of course, a complex matter in itself for, although the Quran supplies the underlying bedrock of Islamic belief, it has been laid over at different times and in different places with strata of interp
  
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• A packed farewell to Giles Waterfield at St Martin-in-the-Fields

  11-01-2017 22:00
  
  The great 18th-century church of St Martin-in-the-Fields near Trafalgar Square was packed to the rafters yesterday afternoon (11 January) to celebrate the life of the writer and curator Giles Waterfield who died unexpectedly from a heart attack in November last year. Such was the crowd that there was concern not everyone would fit into the capacious church crypt for the reception afterwardsbut they did. As the director of Dulwich Picture Gallery, from 1979-96, Giles transformed what had become
  
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• Report: Maria Balshaw To Be Named Tate Museum Director

  11-01-2017 21:56 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Balshaw has been director of the Whitworth Art Gallery since 2006. She became joint director of the Whitworth and the Manchester Art Gallery in 2011. In 2014, she in effect became Manchester’s cultural attache when she took on the role of strategic lead for culture at the city council. At the Whitworth, Balshaw has led the much-admired £15m redevelopment of the gallery, helping to breathe new life into the collections and dramatically increasing visitor numbers. It won the 2015 muse
  
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• A Fierce Debate About How Language Is Made (Why All The Passion?)

  11-01-2017 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Looking back now, it is astounding that the point that has so inflamed my academic critics was my claim that the Pirahãs lacked subordinate clauses. You would have thought I had spit on a crucifix during church. I had, of course, expected someone to point out flaws in my reasoning or to give clear examples of data that I had missed or to conduct field research to test my claims. This is the norm in academic debates. But in the first round of criticisms, lasting for five years, what came
  
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• The Onion Plans Takeover Of All Media (This Is A Real Story, More Or Less)

  11-01-2017 21:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "In its first major studio pact after getting investment from Univision last January, the satirical media brand has partnered with Lionsgate for a three-film development deal that runs through 2018." (Don't miss the quote from the Onion Studios VP.)
  
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• Major Publishers Come Under Fire For Far Right Political Books

  11-01-2017 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Every major publishing house has a conservative imprint — Penguin Random House has two, Sentinel and Crown Forum — and maintains a stable of right-wing authors who may not attend literary festivals or mingle at the National Book Awards but command a sizable audience in red state America. Most mainstream publishers try to claim partisan neutrality and publish books across the political spectrum. But occasionally, publishers get dragged into a political scrum."
  
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• The Coen Brothers Start Their First TV Project

  11-01-2017 20:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The filmmaking brothers are partnering with Annapurna Television on Western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. The duo, who wrote the script based on an original idea, will direct the project."
  
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• House Republicans Fight To Remove Student Painting In US Capitol Depicting Civil Unrest

  11-01-2017 19:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The tiff spiraled out of control Tuesday, with House Republicans acting on two separate occasions to pull the artwork down from a tunnel in the Capitol complex, after it was rehung by Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), whose young constituent painted it."
  
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• A History Of The Tomboy (She Goes Back About 450 Years)

  11-01-2017 19:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  The term first appeared in the mid-16th century, and it acquired its current meaning (a young girl interested in what are seen as "boyish" pursuits) by the 1590s. Elizabeth King follows the (stereo-) type through the age of slavery and emancipation and the Victorian era to late 20th-century feminism - and she considers whether the tomboy figure has outlived its usefulness.
  
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• Pace Gallery Now Represents Loie Hollowell

  11-01-2017 18:50 via artnews.com
  Pace Gallery announced today that it now represents New York-based artist Loie Hollowell. For Hollowell’s first outing with the gallery, a selection of her recent paintings will be on view in Pace’s booth at the FOG Design+Art fair in San Francisco, … Read More
  
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• Maria Balshaw: the Tate's new director-elect

  11-01-2017 18:50
  
  The 47-year-old was director of Manchester City Galleries and was awarded a CBE in 2015Maria Balshaw, who is expected to replace Sir Nicholas Serota as director of Tate, has been working in the arts for more than 15 years.Since June 2006, the 47-year-old has been director of the Whitworth in Manchester, where, according to its website, she has coordinated “a challenging programme of historic, modern and contemporary exhibitions that capitalise on the Whitworth’s university location a
  
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• Can The Louisville Orchestra Help Mend A Divided Kentucky?

  11-01-2017 18:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  Conductor Teddy Abrams: "I thought, ‘wait a minute, instead of focusing on how to get a larger share of the state budget — which by the way is next to nothing; I think we get $30,000 from the state —  maybe we should focus on getting an orchestra to serve the entire state and start using culture to break down some of these divides ….  Because this just can’t go on. It’s ridiculous: Here are people living right next to each other who can’t have
  
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• The Little Rituals People Use To Ward Off Bad Luck Aren't Just Arbitrary

  11-01-2017 18:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  Elizabeth Landau: "Otherwise reasonable people enact all kinds of rituals to promote good luck or cast off the bad, especially in situations of uncertainty. Three different Facebook friends of mine say they touch the outsides of the airplanes they are boarding before takeoff. Chimney sweeps are considered good luck in Germany, and another former colleague of mine would try to touch them when she was a girl growing up there." What's behind this is something called "embodied cognition."
  
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• Geroge Lucas Selects LA As Home For His $1 Billion Museum

  11-01-2017 17:26 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Lucas’ personal collection of fine and popular art, including ephemera related to his “Star Wars” franchise, will fill a futuristic-looking new museum planned for L.A.’s Exposition Park, which beat out a competing design for Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. The rivalry had pitted the two cities in the competition not only for Lucas’ collection and the tourism it will bring, but also for the thousands of jobs that backers said the project will create."
  
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• Frieze New York Announces 2017 Exhibitor List

  11-01-2017 17:07 via artnews.com
  Armory Week may still be two months away, but already the Frieze New York art fair has revealed its 2017 exhibitor list. With more than 190 galleries participating this year, the fair will open on Randall’s Island on May 5.Alongside … Read More
  
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• All The Events At Hamburg's New Concert Hall - Yes, *All* Of Them - Are Selling Out

  11-01-2017 17:07 via feedproxy.google.com
  The director of the Elbphilharmonie says that tickets to performances by resident ensembles, touring orchestras like the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony, chamber music, new music and jazz alike are all bought up within hours. He's even selling "blind date" tickets to concerts by artists to be named later - and people are buying those, too.
  
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• Europe thought it had a monopoly on artistic genius. Hokusai proved it wrong | Jonathan Jones

  11-01-2017 17:05
  
  Japanese artists’ style was admired by Europe’s 19th-century avant-garde, but these prints and drawings reveal the inspired individuality they overlookedIn Jeff Wall’s 1993 photograph A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), a disparate group of people are caught in a wild breeze. They seem liberated by the blast: as papers go flying about in comic disarray a businesslike man in a dark coat, white shirt and tie responds to the gust with ecstatic abandon, set free from his constra
  
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• Hilary Taylor obituary

  11-01-2017 17:00
  
  Our friend Hilary Taylor, who has died after a stroke aged 62, was an artist, teacher, healer and animal lover who always saw the best in others.She was very generous, sharing techniques and giving away and swapping her artwork, which went through many changes: detailed pen drawings, wooden toys, quirky decorations, Christmas cherubs sporting Doc Martens and dungarees, papier-mache furniture, bowls and figures, pastel painting, collages, comic strips and a seemingly never-ending range of self-ma
  
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• 'Its Shell Holds An Unexpected World Inside': An Art Critic Visits Hamburg's New Elbphilharmonie

  11-01-2017 16:57 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The architects trick visitors into the daunting [eight-story] climb by changing the subject with a fun house of surprising events. The entrance leads past a decorative digital wall to a long ride on an escalator through a tunnel spotted with mirrored discs. Visitors land at a wide terrace, ... [and] another escalator leads to an outdoor piazza ... [which] marks the start of a modern version of the Spanish Steps in Rome."
  
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• The Vanishing School Librarians Of Philadelphia

  11-01-2017 16:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  "How many full-time, certified librarians would you guess one of the nation's largest school systems - a district with 220 schools and 134,000 students - employs?" The low number is horrifying - and down by 27% from a year ago and 94% (that's not a typo) from 2015.
  
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• Tate welcomes Maria Balshaw – a leader of charm, guts and skill

  11-01-2017 16:06
  
  Only the brave would attempt to follow the towering Nicholas Serota, but Tate’s new director-elect – currently head of Manchester’s Whitworth – is a formidable cultural champion Sir Nicholas Serota, director for nearly 30 years of Tate, is one of the most towering figures in the UK and international cultural world: the man who opened Tate Modern and turned contemporary art in Britain from a minority sport undertaken by eccentrics into a part of everyday culture, embraced
  
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• 'Keeping God Out Of The Gallery': Does The Contemporary Art World Discriminate Against Overtly Religious Work?

  11-01-2017 16:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  Says one Christian artist, "One major Washington [D.C.] dealer said to me, 'Ed, I've liked your work for years, but I don't want to mark my gallery with your subject matter.'" Says another, whose work treats Judaic themes, "I've been told by dealers all the time, 'I don't want that crap in my gallery.'" And the reason may not be outright prejudice so much as a particular, now-standard ideal of what new art is and isn't supposed to be.
  
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• Should Simon And Schuster Be Publishing Alt-Right Hatemonger Milo Yiannopoulos's Book? (A Debate)

  11-01-2017 15:48 via feedproxy.google.com
  Ben Mathis-Lilley: "His project of mainstreaming white nationalism is one that Simon & Schuster should be embarrassed to lend its reputation to."Amanda Katz: "The book was acquired by S&S's conservative imprint Threshold Editions, which has published plenty of other authors and books that lefty readers might find offensive to their values. Yiannopoulos has a big audience. Why shouldn't they put out his book?"
  
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• Quite A Few Conservative Imprints Declined To Publish Milo Yiannopoulos - For Solid Business Reasons

  11-01-2017 15:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  They passed on the book not out of any outrage at Milo's flamethrowing (these are the people that publish Ann Coulter), but because they decided skipping the book was a good business decision. Katy Waldman got several of them to explain why.
  
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• ‘Radical Juxtapositions’: Adam Pendleton and Yvonne Rainer in an Exchange of Memory and Motion

  11-01-2017 15:30 via artnews.com
  Of all the words and images rushing through ceaseless streams of data—news bytes, obituaries, tweets, pictures—which kinds of documents matter? In his videos, paintings, and writings, Adam Pendleton reaches into the stream and grasps at fragments, combining them in ways that … Read More
  
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• Reports: Maria Balshaw Will Succeed Nicholas Serota as Tate Director

  11-01-2017 15:23 via artnews.com
  With a few weeks to go before Tate’s director, Nicholas Serota, steps down to become the chairman of Arts Council England, the Standard is reporting that Tate may have found his successor: Maria Balshaw, who is currently director of the Whitworth museum, one of Manchester, England’s most … Read More
  
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• Sacramento Ballet Board Dumps Artistic Directors After 30 Years

  11-01-2017 15:18 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The Sacramento Ballet board of directors has announced the company's 2017-18 season will be the last for co-artistic directors Ron Cunningham and Carinne Binda. ... It will be their 30th season with the organization." While Cunningham and Binda aren't fighting the decision, they're stating publicly that the board made it and they aren't ready to go.
  
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• High art: New York's High Line to introduce new artwork plinth

  11-01-2017 15:16
  
  A soon-to-be-constructed section of the disused railway line turned public space will see a special plinth devoted to temporary art installations The High Line, an elevated railway turned park in New York City, is getting a new addition and with it, a new, permanent location for temporary art installations – the High Line Plinth.
  As those who have visited the High Line know, it has already been the home to various temporary art installations – from Tony Matelli’s startlingly li
  
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• Can An Orchestra Bridge A State's Political Divides? The Louisville Orchestra's Music Director Means To Try

  11-01-2017 15:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  Teddy Abrams: "I thought, 'wait a minute, instead of focusing on how to get a larger share of the state budget - which by the way is next to nothing; I think we get $30,000 from the state - maybe we should focus on getting an orchestra to serve the entire state and start using culture to break down some of these divides.' Because this just can't go on. It's ridiculous: Here are people living right next to each other who can't have a meaningful dialogue, and who assume nothing will ever change."
  
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• Morning Links: ‘Here Comes the Treacle Museum’ Edition

  11-01-2017 14:59 via artnews.com
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
  
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• Online Startup Artspace Lays Off Three-Quarters Of Its Staff

  11-01-2017 14:48 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Artspace, a startup that launched in 2011 with the aim of facilitating online sales for galleries and nonprofits, will part with the bulk of its staffers," particularly on the editorial side.
  
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• Why Broadway's (And Broadway Tours') Box Office Is At An All-Time High

  11-01-2017 14:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  Alexis Soloski: "What accounts for the remarkable rise in revenue and attendance ... that the last several years have witnessed? The answer probably relies on both the type of entertainment Broadway has been offering and the new strategies it has found to price and sell its wares."
  
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• Buffalo's Abandoned Train Station Is An Art Deco Treasure

  11-01-2017 14:17 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Opened in 1929 for the New York Central Railroad, the Buffalo Central Terminal was every bit as grand and opulent as Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal, Philadelphia's 30th Street Station and Washington DC's Union Station." (In fact, its architect is the same one who designed Grand Central.) One group is trying not only to restore it, but to get Amtrak to move in again.
  
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• Frank Loesser's Do-It-Yourself Musicals For World War II GIs

  11-01-2017 14:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "For PFC Frank Loesser and PFC José Limón, their contributions to the war effort took the form of a series of musicals, created for the soldiers to produce and perform themselves.The aim was to boost morale among troops stationed in places where the USO couldn't go." Now some of those plays are being revived. (audio)
  
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• "I Don't Like To Be Without An Opera On My Desk," Says Philip Glass

  11-01-2017 13:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  And that would explain why he's managed to produce more than 30 of them - in particular the chamber operas he writes between major commissions. "I've found that experimental theatre companies are prepared to take on these things, and it is a handy form to work in, not requiring huge budgets."
  
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• What Ballerinas Want In Shoes For Off-Hours

  11-01-2017 13:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  "'We can't walk barefoot, ever,' explained Sara Mearns, a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet. Megan Fairchild, a principal dancer at the same company, echoed that sentiment: 'We get up out of bed in the morning and put shoes on. We don't go anywhere without something that's shock absorbing.'" (includes video)
  
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• Speculation grows that Tate’s next director will be Maria Balshaw

  11-01-2017 12:44
  
  Maria Balshaw, the director of the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester and Manchester City Galleries, is set to become the new director of Tate, according to a report in The Times newspaper after speculation yesterday in the Evening Standard newspaper. Balshaw will replace Nicholas Serota who announced he was stepping down last September after 28 years in charge, and would be the first woman to hold the post.
   
  But a Tate spokeswoman says that the process is ongoing; Balshaw declined to co
  
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• George Lucas's LA museum brings new hope to art's storytellers

  11-01-2017 12:35
  
  The Star Wars director reinvigorated cinema with sheer storytelling panache – can he do the same for an art world obsessed with concept and abstraction?A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas was a gifted film director. The release of Star Wars in 1977 – long before we had to call it Part IV or A New Hope – was a seismic event in modern culture that abolished the difference between art and entertainment. Related: LA wins battle to host Star Wars creator George
  
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• Star Wars creator George Lucas picks Los Angeles over San Francisco to build $1bn museum

  11-01-2017 12:26
  
  In the battle between Los Angeles and San Francisco the force was with the former yesterday (11 January) when George Lucas announced plans to build a museum to house his collection of art and memorabilia in Exposition Park. The Star Wars creator abandoned plans to establish the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago last summer after a two-year legal fight with conservationists, setting his sights on California instead.The decision to build the futuristic-looking museum in Los Angeles comes a
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.10.17

  11-01-2017 11:11 via feedproxy.google.com
  What’s fear got to do with it?
  In 2014 the Wyncote Foundation commissioned Lutman & Associates to research digital adoption by legacy cultural institutions. ... When I spoke about the report at conferences and meetings, arts leaders’ responses were frequently that they knew they “should be” engaging digitally, but they feel overwhelmed about beginning. Surprisingly, the most frequent response from arts leaders was not excitement, but instead fear. ... r
  
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