Arts news

• Opera's Newness Problem - The New Stuff Competes Head To Head With Masterpieces

  17-01-2017 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Opera lovers routinely avoid new works for just this reason: They’re not going to be on a par with the masterpieces that still make up the bulk of the operatic canon. Part of the problem is the delivery mechanism: New opera is less available than a new book and, generally, a lot more expensive. Wouldn’t it be great if new opera were presented like a film festival? Yes — and more and more festivals are trying it."
  
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• For Freedoms To Begin Residency at PS1; Controversial ‘Make America Great Again’ Billboard Goes Up

  17-01-2017 23:02 via artnews.com
  Today, a controversial billboard created by the artist-run super PAC For Freedoms is being installed inside MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens. The billboard, which measures a sprawling 36 by 10.5 feet, will be officially on view as of this … Read More
  
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• For Freedoms To Begin Residency at PS1

  17-01-2017 23:02 via artnews.com
  A billboard created by the artist-run super PAC For Freedoms is being installed inside MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens. The billboard, which measures a sprawling 36 by 10.5 feet, will be officially on view as of this coming Friday, January … Read More
  
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• Hollywood Politics? Sure, But The Stories That Get Made Have Everything To Do With The Box Office

  17-01-2017 22:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Movies that show struggles against prejudice, poverty, ignorance, oppression and fear reflect liberal values only in the sense that “reality has a well-known liberal bias”, said Marty Kaplan, quoting Stephen Colbert. “If there were big money to be made telling stories celebrating home schooling, semi-automatic rifle ownership, the bullying of gays, white supremacism, misogyny or xenophobia, Hollywood would be racing to make them.”
  
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• Sotheby's declares 'Parmigianino' a forgery

  17-01-2017 22:00
  
  Another "Old Master" linked to Giuliano Ruffini, the Frenchman at the center of an investigation into a series of suspected forgeries, has been declared a fake by Sothebys. This time, the auction house has had to reimburse $672,000 to the buyer of a Saint Jerome, which was sold at auction in New York in January 2012 as a work from the circle of Parmigianino.
  Sothebys says that a "technical analysis", led by Orion Analytical, in Williamstown, Massachusetts "established that the work was undoubte
  
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• See the ‘holy grail’ of American porcelain at New York Ceramics & Glass Fair

  17-01-2017 22:00
  
  An 18th-century hard-paste porcelain punch bowl that has been called the holy grail of American ceramics will be on view this week at the New York Ceramics & Glass Fair at the Bohemian National Hall (19-22 January). The bowlalong with around 85,000 other artefactswas unearthed during an archaeological dig conducted in 2014 by the Commonwealth Heritage Group at the present site of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, which opens on 19 April. The discovery marks the first ph
  
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• Row in Rome over proposed plan to fence-off Spanish Steps

  17-01-2017 22:00
  
  Calls to restrict access and charge a fee to sit on the Spanish Stepsa monumental 18th-century Roman travertine stairway connecting the Piazza di Spagna and the Piazza Trinit dei Monti that has served as a major meeting point and passageway for centurieshave met with harsh criticism.
  Paolo Bulgari, the president of the jewellery house, says access to the flight of steps, which bridges two areas of Romes city centre, should be controlled. The company recently paid nearly 1.5m to restore the step
  
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• Must-see shows in January 2017

  17-01-2017 22:00
  
  Monet
  Fondation Beyeler, Basel22 January-28 MayWhenever a new Claude Monet show appears, the question it inevitably prompts is, why? What more can we possibly learn about one of the most exhibited artists in history? In the case of the Fondation Beyelers exhibition, marking 20 years of the Swiss gallery, the answer is a great deal. A key aim of the show is to present Monet as a more intellectually curious artist than he is often given credit for. Monet theoretically is much underrated in compar
  
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• Israel can hide archaeological activity in West Bank, court rules

  17-01-2017 22:00
  
  Israeli excavations in the West Bank and the loan of artefacts discovered there, without Palestinian co-operation or approval, have long rankled with Palestinian heritage experts. Now, a ruling by Israels Jerusalem District Court at the end of November further disenfranchises Palestinians, they say. The ruling authorises Israeli archaeologists to dig in the West Bank anonymously and to lend artefacts found on site to Israeli institutions without disclosing these loans.
  In archaeology publicatio
  
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• Calder’s mercury fountain was a close-run thing in 1937

  17-01-2017 22:00
  
  Sandy Calders mercury fountain, along with Picassos Guernica, were unveiled in Paris in 1937. Getting both of the works installed on time in the Spanish Republics Modernist pavilion in the Paris International Expo in 1937 was a close-run thing. The architects realised at the last minute that a steel column was in the way of Picassos great mural, which he painted for the expo as a protest to the bombing of the Basque town by the German airforce, which Hitler sent to aid Francos Nationalist force
  
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• Berlin and Biesenbach, 25 years on

  17-01-2017 22:00
  
  When the KW Institute for Contemporary Art was established in Berlin 25 years ago, the Berlin Wall had just come down and Klaus Biesenbach, its founding director, was still a medical student. What began as a student-run project in an abandoned factory evolved into a leading contemporary art institution, giving birth to the Berlin Biennale and some of Germanys most acclaimedand controversialexhibitions. As KW celebrates its quarter-century and reopens this weekend after extensive refurbishment,
  
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• Art fairs feel the heat at Barcelona conference

  17-01-2017 22:00
  
  Dealers growing dependence on art fairs came in for criticism at the 5th Talking Galleries conference that was held in Barcelona this week (16-17 January). In his keynote speech, the Salzburg- and Paris-based dealer Thaddaeus Ropac, who opens in London in April, said that galleries should do 75% of their business in their own spaces, rather than at fairs. Galleries can make a good 50% of their annual sales on the art fair circuit, sometimes as much as 70%, according to the conference organisers
  
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• Any way the wind blows

  17-01-2017 22:00
  The Museum of Sex is probably best known for its bouncy castle shaped like breasts, and while it may not be fair to malign something trying to be sex positive as a tourist trap, lets be real: we all know what dildoes look like. Enter Known/Unknown: Private Obsessions and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art (until 16 September), a new exhibition that looks a little more like what youd find in a real museum, with work by the likes of Henry Darger and Thornton Dial. A standout piece is a weathervane by
  
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• Dame Julia Peyton-Jones becomes a mother for first time aged 64

  17-01-2017 21:39
  
  Peyton-Jones, who was director of the Serpentine Galleries for 25 years, is ‘delighted’ by birth of her daughter Pia, says Evening StandardDame Julia Peyton-Jones, who made her name as director of the Serpentine Galleries for 25 years, has become a mother for the first time at the age of 64.Peyton-Jones, who announced she was stepping down from her post in October 2015, told the Guardian at the time that she was planning to work independently in contemporary art and architecture, and
  
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• The Books That Have Experimented With What A Book Is

  17-01-2017 21:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  Irma Boom has been undertaking "a quixotic, endless undertaking of creating a library of what she called 'only the books that are experimental.' Above her studio here, the recently opened library is made up almost entirely of books from the 1600s and 1700s, and the 1960s and ’70s.
  
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• Congolese Music Has Been Adopted By All Of Africa (But Wow, The Political Problems...)

  17-01-2017 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Music is probably Congo’s most influential export, though nowhere near as lucrative as copper or gold. Whereas in the West the country’s name inspires pictures of child soldiers fighting bloody battles, in most of Africa it is associated with “rumba Lingala” (Lingala is the language of the Kinshasa street). This upbeat music has become genuinely pan-African in the 60 years since Congolese musicians were first inspired by Cubans."
  
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• How Do You Remain Civil In An Uncivil World?

  17-01-2017 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "For better or worse, we must accept that civility 'does not exist outside of politics as an independent force,' ... but rather is just as much the 'subject of political struggle' as everything else."
  
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• Mark Greif Worries About The Problems Of Trying To Have A "Life Of The Mind" In Today's Culture

  17-01-2017 19:25 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The reality is, for our generation, if you care about the life of the mind, you’re just going to have to keep doing it, and who knows where you’ll be doing it? Is it going to be as an adjunct? On a tenure track? At Gotham Writers Workshop? As a journalist? As long as you can keep it going in your own head without going mad, you’ve got something."
  
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• Gladys Nilsson at Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

  17-01-2017 19:24 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
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• Warhol Foundation Names Igor DaCosta Board Chair, Adds Pasternak, Lerner, Ha to Board

  17-01-2017 19:08 via artnews.com
  The Andy Warhol Foundation has elected Igor DaCosta the chair of its board and brought on three new board members: Paul Ha, Ruby Lerner, and Anne Pasternak. DaCosta, who is succeeding Larry Rinder in the top spot, is currently managing director … Read More
  
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• Warhol Foundation Names Igor DaCosta Board Chair, Adds Pasternak, Lerner, Ha

  17-01-2017 19:08 via artnews.com
  The Andy Warhol Foundation has elected Igor DaCosta the chair of its board and brought on three new board members: Paul Ha, Ruby Lerner, and Anne Pasternak. DaCosta, who is succeeding Larry Rinder in the top spot, is currently managing director … Read More
  
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• People Are Extremely Loyal To Groups That Haze Newcomers - Why?

  17-01-2017 19:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Why do unpleasant hazing practices manage to remain so appealing that individuals are willing to risk legal punishment, injury and even death to keep the practices alive?" Anthropologist Christopher Kavanagh looks to the phenomena of cognitive dissonance, social glue and "costly signals" for explanations.
  
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• Marguerite Humeau Wins 2017 Zurich Art Prize

  17-01-2017 19:00 via artnews.com
  The Museum Haus Konstructiv has awarded the French-born artist Marguerite Humeau the Zurich Art Prize, which is given annually to an artist whose work balances “the cultural heritage of constructivist-concrete and conceptual art” with contemporary trends. She will now receive $80,000 toward … Read More
  
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• Presidential Libraries As Political Monuments

  17-01-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The collections are of value to historians, but can self-aggrandizing presentations even be considered drafts of history? They are really ante-historical. Or anti-historical. They resemble the self-tributes that royalty once erected. Former presidents create monuments celebrating their own excellence, and the results are managed in perpetuity by the National Archives."
  
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• Testing The Detroit Institute Of Arts' New Augmented Reality App

  17-01-2017 18:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  "At a media preview on January 9," writes Sarah Rose Sharp, "the Detroit Institute of Arts introduced Lumin, a new interpretive guide developed in partnership with Google and an augmented reality (AR) platform creator called GuidiGO. Subsequently, a tempest of conflicting emotions was triggered in the soul of this arts writer."
  
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• What Charlie Hebdo Teaches Us About Freedom Of Speech

  17-01-2017 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Understanding Charlie Hebdo in context does not mean always liking it, but for those struggling to affirm their commitment to free speech in today’s climate, the paper’s example is worth exploring and, yes, celebrating."
  
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• Portland's Disjecta Contemporary Art Center Fires Its Founder, And The Recriminations Fly

  17-01-2017 17:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  "On New Year's Eve, the organization's founder and executive director, Bryan Suereth, was officially dismissed by Disjecta's board of directors, following disputes over his leadership and an eleventh-hour attempt by supporters to keep him at the helm." Said disputes over Suereth's leadership are by no means over, though even he and his supporters acknowledge that he can be confrontational.
  
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• William Peter Blatty, Author Of 'The Exorcist', Dead At 89

  17-01-2017 16:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  He sold vacuum cleaners, drove a beer truck, joined the Air Force and USIA, and spent the '60s writing comic novels and screenplays in L.A. before creating the book and film that changed the horror genre and conquered pop culture.
  
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• Will a hard Brexit spell disaster for London's cosmopolitan art scene?

  17-01-2017 16:16
  
  Art is the definitive globalised marketplace, and London’s dealers are at its centre. Is the UK’s spectacular period of cultural eminence about to collapse?At London’s Frieze art fair last autumn some friends from Vienna and Lahore took me to the Deutsche Bank VIP lounge. There we ate – what else? – micro portions of fish and chips, an ironically British gourmet snack in surroundings that stressed the global nature of the art economy.Now the postmodern canapes are g
  
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• Peter Gelb Cancels One Of Met Opera's New Productions For Next Season

  17-01-2017 16:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  The company's general manager says that "postponing" the new Verdi Forza del destino staging, a co-production with English National Opera, by Calixto Bieito will save the financially troubled Met $1 million. (Gelb didn't mention that Bieito is probably the most controversial, not to say notorious, of the directors with new productions planned for 2016-17.)
  
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• 'Fun Home' Book/Lyrics Writer Lisa Kron Wins $100,000 Kleban Prize

  17-01-2017 15:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  Kron, who took home two Tony Awards for Fun Home, received the 2017 Kleban for "most promising musical theater librettist"; the prize for "most promising musical theater lyricist" went to 36-year-old Daniel Zaitchik (Picnic at Hanging Rock).
  
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• National Book Critics Circle Finalists Announced, And There's One Huge Snub

  17-01-2017 15:16 via feedproxy.google.com
  Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon, Louise Erdrich, Ann Patchett, Jane Mayer, Robert Pinsky, Marion Coutts, and Peter Orner are there; Margaret Atwood's getting a lifetime achievement award - but conspicuously missing is one of 2016's biggest successes, a National Book Award winner and Oprah pick.
  
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• Australia's Leading Baroque Music Festival Shuts Down, Owing Performers $400,000

  17-01-2017 15:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  Brisbane Baroque was a huge hit with audiences, critics, and awards bodies (it won five Helpmann Awards including one for the best opera production in all of Australia), but musicians and creditors went months without getting paid and the festival's executive director checked himself into a psych ward.
  
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• Morning Links: ‘Nasty Women’ Edition

  17-01-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the art world Read More
  
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• Hoard Of Gold Coins Found Inside Antique Broadwood Piano

  17-01-2017 14:48 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The gold was recently discovered by a tuner inside a Broadwood upright piano which had originally been sold in 1906 by a musical instruments shop in Saffron Walden, Essex."
  
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• Will Frieze chairman Robert Devereux’s collection of art from Africa and the diaspora return to the continent?

  17-01-2017 14:46
  
  Robert Devereux, the chairman of Frieze and a collector of contemporary art connected to the African continent, as he describes it, is showing part of his collection for the first time in public next month.
  The exhibition, When the Heavens Meet the Earth, features more than 35 works from his 350-strong collection, which is usually housed in a restored merchants house in Lamu, Kenya. It opens at The Heong Gallery at Downing College, Cambridge, where Devereux studied history, on 25 February (unti
  
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• Will former Frieze chairman Robert Devereux’s collection of art from Africa and the diaspora return to the continent?

  17-01-2017 14:46
  
  Robert Devereux, the former chairman of Frieze and a collector of contemporary art connected to the African continent, as he describes it, is showing part of his collection for the first time in public next month.
  The exhibition, When the Heavens Meet the Earth, features more than 35 works from his 350-strong collection, which is usually housed in a restored merchants house in Lamu, Kenya. It opens at The Heong Gallery at Downing College, Cambridge, where Devereux studied history, on 25 Februar
  
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• Feminism and playfulness at heart of United Arab Emirates pavilion in Venice

  17-01-2017 14:39
  
  Five established and emerging artists will represent the United Arab Emirates at the 57th Venice Biennale this summer in an exhibition focusing on aspects of play in contemporary art practice, says the curator Hammad Nasar. The exhibition, Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play (13 May-26 November), will be overseen by the influential Abu Dhabi-based philanthropic organisation, the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation.Nasar co-founded Green Cardamom, the London-based non-profit focused on
  
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• Artist Who Nailed His Scrotum To Red Square Flees Russia After Rape Charge, Seeks Asylum

  17-01-2017 14:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  Pyotr Pavlensky - the protest artist who not only fastened his junk to the pavement in front of the Kremlin but also physically sewed his lips together while Pussy Riot was in prison and set fire to the front door of Russia's secret service headquarters - has fled to France with his wife and children after an accusation of sexual assault (which he says was trumped up) and a seven-hour interrogation at Moscow's airport.
  
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• Independent Brussels Releases 2017 Exhibitors List

  17-01-2017 14:16 via artnews.com
  Good morning! Hot on the heels of British Prime Minister Theresa May’s major speech on Brexit earlier today, here’s a bit of news from the Continent. Independent, the art fair company that stages shows every year in New York during Armory … Read More
  
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• Dispatches From The Art World In A Turkey Gone Mad: 'It's Not Chaos, But The Atomization Of Life'

  17-01-2017 14:16 via feedproxy.google.com
  "What is a stake in Turkey today is not politics in any general manner; it's a delusion that, under the banner of religion, is swallowing up the whole of reality. ... Conversations with artists reveal a dark mood, and everyone across the class spectrum is focused on one topic: When to leave? Where to go? How to get a visa? What to do in the meantime?"
  
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• Tomás Saraceno’s project takes flight at Davos

  17-01-2017 14:15
  
  The Argentine artist Toms Saraceno is bringing his own brand of environmentally friendly art to the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, the high-powered annual meeting attended by around 3,000 heads of government, business leaders, scientists and economists. Since 2003, Saraceno has focused on fossil-fuel free flight, creating a series of floating, air-fuelled sculptures made of silver and transparent Mylar (test flights were conducted in Germany and Bolivia, among other locations). Saracen
  
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• One Of Europe's Last Professional Yiddish Theaters Hangs On In Bucharest

  17-01-2017 14:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  These days many of the actors have to learn the language after they get cast, and they spent two years out of their building after the roof fell in, but the plays (now with titles in Romanian) keep coming, as they have since 1940 - and the company is now run by one of the country's great actresses, Maia Morgenstern.
  
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• Dance Classes For The Blind At The Royal Ballet

  17-01-2017 13:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The participants range from young adults to senior citizens and have varying degrees of sight, but they all agree on the positive effects" - better balance, improved range of motion - "of the class. Sessions include a mix of barre and center work, as well as some weight-sharing and partnering exercises." (video)
  
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• Indonesia's First Contemporary Art Museum To Open This Fall

  17-01-2017 13:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN), the first institution of its kind in Indonesia, has announced that it will officially open to the public in Jakarta in November 2017 after delays in the construction of [its] landmark multi-purpose building."
  
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• Russian protest artist Pyotr Pavlensky seeks political asylum in France

  17-01-2017 11:56
  
  The St Petersburg-based protest artist Pyotr Pavlensky, famous for nailing his scrotum to Moscows Red Square, has fled to France where he plans to apply for political asylum. The radical artist left Russia in mid-December with his partner, Oksana Chalyguina, and their children, after the opening of a criminal investigation brought against him for sexual assault.On Monday, 16 January, Pavlensky told the Russian opposition television channel Dojd that a complaint had been filed against him and hi
  
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• Maria Balshaw's Tate appointment confirmed by prime minister

  17-01-2017 11:00
  
  Official naming of key figure in cultural renaissance of Manchester as first woman director will be welcomed in arts worldMaria Balshaw is to become one of the the most important figures in British arts after her appointment as the new director of Tate was approved by the prime minister.She is the first woman to be appointed director of Tate and starts on 1 June.Related: Maria Balshaw: the Tate's new director-electContinue reading...
  
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• In her own words: Maria Balshaw, new director of Tate

  17-01-2017 10:53
  
  As 2016 drew to a close, we asked Maria Balshaw, the director of Manchester Art Galleries and the Whitworth at the University of Manchester, to pick her highlights of the year. Last week, the news leaked that she will succeed Nicholas Serota as the next director of the Tate, which its trustees confirmed today, 17 January.Balshaw is due to take up the post in June, the first woman to fill the post. Last June, she told us why Jeremy Deller's "ghost soldiers" and Anya Gallaccio's "ghost tree" were
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.16.17

  17-01-2017 09:07 via feedproxy.google.com
  Art Is As Art Does
  A recent dinner conversation with friends rolled around to the question:  “What is art?” A long conversation ensued.  Someone offered up Wikipedia’s definition ... This group of arts administrators was unsatisfied. ... read more
  AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2017-01-16Monday Recommendation: John Coltrane
  John Coltrane, Live At Birdland (Impulse)On this observance of Martin Luther King’s birthday, we recommend an album that John Coltra
  
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• Is the Ringling Museum's Velázquez the real deal?

  17-01-2017 09:00
  
  Curators at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Florida hope that infrared scans will help to prove that its portrait of Philip IV of Spain is by the 17th-century Spanish master Diego Velzquez. The paintings attribution has divided experts since the 19th century, with opinions oscillat[ing] wildly between people who are super in favour of it and people who say absolutely not, says Virginia Brilliant, the Sarasota museums curator of collections.
  New research may help tip the scale. Usin
  
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