Arts news

• The biggest challenges facing London’s new museum directors

  20-02-2017 22:00
  
  The incoming directors of Londons Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and the Tate join institutions in good shape, but still face significant challenges. Tristram Hunt, who assumed his role at the V&A yesterday (20 February), is a social historian and, until last month, a Labour Member of Parliament. He has never worked in a museumlet alone run one. Maria Balshaw, who takes over the Tate in June, has much more institutional experience. She became the director of Manchesters Whitworth Art
  
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• String theory: Spanish refugees inspired Henry Moore’s 1930s stringed sculptures

  20-02-2017 22:00
  People tend to associate the British artist Henry Moore (1898-1986) with the monumental bronzes for which he is famous. Words such as tiny, purple and yellow do not immediately spring to mind, but that is precisely what visitors to the San Diego Museum of Arts new interactive Visible Vaults gallery can expect to find. One of the US museums latest acquisitions is a six-inch-tall bronze sculpture with purple and yellow strings from a small but important series of experimental stringed sculptures t
  
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• Rashid Johnson in the director’s chair

  20-02-2017 22:00
  
  The New York-based artist Rashid Johnsonwhose work, which often explores black history and the contemporary African American experience, has included video art, painting, sculpture and installationwill make his feature film directorial dbut with an adaptation of Richard Wrights influential 1940 novel, Native Son. The book looks at the inexorable power of racism and class through the story of Bigger Thomas, a young African American man from a poor area of Chicago. The script adaptation, by the P
  
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• Avian architecture at the Broad MSU

  20-02-2017 21:59
  
  Marc-Olivier Wahler, who took up the reins as the director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (Broad MSU) in East Lansing last year, discussed a very unusual type of museum visitor at a press conference in New York last week: birds. The museum plans to partner with around 50 top architects to design and build birdhouses on the grounds of the museum and in the surrounding community by the end of the year. The various species of migratory birds that pass through M
  
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• New Yorker Report: Inside Reinventing The Oscars (Some Historical Perspective)

  20-02-2017 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Throughout the spring of 2016, Academy librarians worked overtime scrutinizing older members’ credits, as the board of governors fielded frantic calls from members asking if they were marked for demotion. When the board held its elections last summer, a handful of candidates ran on an anti-reform platform, among them the composer William Goldstein, who railed against the Academy’s response to “false accusations of implied racism.” They all lost, and Boone Isaacs was re&e
  
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• The Post-Circus Circus

  20-02-2017 19:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  The circus, for many, represents nostalgia for a “simpler” past — although that past can be tricky to reconcile with the injustices embedded in history. Still, there's something inherently entertaining about a circus. So the new circuses aim to define what that is...
  
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• "Genius" Never Works Alone

  20-02-2017 19:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "We still cling to the notion that groundbreaking creative work happens in isolation. And there's no shortage of productivity experts who will rush to point out that the toughest, most high-value work takes mastery and deep focus—that distractions are bad, and that most distractions result from other people, all being forced to collaborate and failing miserably at it."
  
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• How Alan Aldridge made the 60s swing – in pictures

  20-02-2017 18:50
  
  The graphic artist’s swirling, kaleidoscopic images – made for everyone from the Beatles to Andy Warhol and the Who – perfectly captured those heady days of psychedelia Continue reading...
  
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• Will "The Great Wall" Establish China As A Global Movie Powerhouse?

  20-02-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Filmed entirely in China, the film is a $150-million (U.S.) attempt to prove that with enough money and talent, some of the brightest entertainment minds on both sides of the Pacific can assemble a film that audiences in both China and the West want to watch. It is also perhaps the most visible flagpost in a sweeping attempt to build China into an even greater entertainment power, one with the technical capacity and storytelling savvy to win over audiences far and wide."
  
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• The Radical Reimagining Of "Who" Shakespeare Was

  20-02-2017 18:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "It’s no longer controversial to give other authors a share in Shakespeare’s plays—not because he was a front for an aristocrat, as conspiracy theorists since the Victorian era have proposed, but because scholars have come to recognize that writing a play in the sixteenth century was a bit like writing a screenplay today, with many hands revising a company’s product. The New Oxford Shakespeare claims that its algorithms can tease out the work of individual hands—a p
  
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• Why Great Critics Are Sometimes Wildly Wrong

  20-02-2017 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "So how does it happen — how can someone on the order of Voltaire (we can insert many other illustrious names here) end up missing the mark so completely? We first need to dispense with the most obvious and least savory explanation, that the nasty judgment is directed more toward the writer than his or her work."
  
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• European Union Baroque Orchestra Decides To Relocate Out Of Britain Because Of Brexit

  20-02-2017 17:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  General manager Emma Wilkinson said that while no one knows what the future may look like, the orchestra decided that moving to Antwerp now would be wise. She fears that the loss of free movement would make life for musicians very difficult: “I do worry that European orchestras will not be inviting talented British musicians to work with them. It will just be too bureaucratically difficult.”
  
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• 'Spider-Man' art thief jailed over Paris heist

  20-02-2017 17:01
  
  Vjeran Tomic and two others sentenced and fined for stealing five 20th-century masterpieces from Musée d’Art ModerneA burglar known as Spider-Man has been jailed in Paris for eight years after one of the most daring art heists in recent years.Vjeran Tomic and two accomplices were also fined €104m (£88.6m) over the theft of a Matisse, a Picasso, a Braque, a Léger and a Modigliani from the Musée d’Art Moderne in 2010. Related: The French job – Pari
  
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• Richard Schickel, Long The Film Critic At Time, Has Died At 84

  20-02-2017 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  "In a career spanning five decades, thousands of reviews and dozens of books, Schickel chronicled Hollywood’s changing landscape, from the days when studios reigned with stars such as Katharine Hepburn to the rise of independent directors who summoned a new wave of realism that distilled the yearnings of a turbulent nation. A reviewer for Time magazine, Schickel had a legion of followers; he could be incisive and at times bruising in praising or panning a film."
  
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• Does The Cleveland Orchestra Have A Future In Miami?

  20-02-2017 16:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  Or rather, is its future going to be trimmed? "Miami is expensive. Everything from lodging and food to transportation costs a pretty penny down there, and the orchestra is an enormous outfit. If saving money is a goal, an effective move would be to reduce the amount of time the ensemble spends there."
  
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• Greece Is Having A Moment

  20-02-2017 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  That is, ancient Greece: "The times we are living in have forced us to acknowledge that there is a darkness in humanity. ... The Greek tragedies, those stories of darkness and obsession and revenge, resonate because we’re living in dark times and these are dark stories."
  
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• How A Writer Can Be Harrowing Without Giving Her Soul Away

  20-02-2017 15:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  Finding essays outside one's personal experience "would be work that was harrowing in another sense of the word, which originally referred to preparing fields for planting by breaking up the soil. A true harrowing essay would dig deeper, ultimately performing a generative function."
  
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• Against The Odds, These Two Actors Appear Together In Two Best Picture Nominees

  20-02-2017 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  In a banner year for movies with black actors in the lead, Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monáe both created breakthrough performances in "Moonlight." They cemented their year with their work in "Hidden Figures." For Ali, the recognition comes after decades of a steady acting career; for Monáe, a successful musician, "Moonlight" was her first time onscreen.
  
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• One Neuroscientist Wants To Understand Why People Who See UFOs Seem To Feel Really, Really Good

  20-02-2017 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  Wait, what? Instead of becoming hostile or paranoid or more like Fox Mulder, 85 percent of people who believe they've encountered UFOs or aliens "become more humane, experience a oneness with the world. They become less interested in organized religion, they become more spiritual, they have less interest in monetary values, and become more sensitive to the ecological welfare of our planet, among many other psychospiritual outcomes."
  
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• The City Of Bath Has Its Arts Grants Slashed 100 Percent, And Equity Appeals To The Secretary Of Culture

  20-02-2017 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Equity says, "The council has committed an act of cultural vandalism in Bath that will result in a new dark age for arts and culture in the region."
  
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• On Presidents’ Day, a Chance to Reflect

  20-02-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  As the nation takes rest on the occasion of Presidents’ Day, let us pause to reflect on what has transpired in the U.S. since the election. Below, a rundown of a select few recent articles on the art world’s tenor and tone … Read More
  
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• The Art Market: A Partner (Witting Or Un-) In Crime

  20-02-2017 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  The secrecy of the seller might have to go the way of an expectation of no selfies at museums, but for better reasons: "This sort of discretion — one founded in a simpler time, when only a few wealthy collectors took part in the art market — is not only quaint but also reckless when art is traded like a commodity and increasingly suspected in money laundering."
  
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• Remember The Suzuki Method? What Is It, Really?

  20-02-2017 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Take learning by ear, combine it with some out-of-control pop psychology, and mix in experimentation and perhaps some flat-out lies of biography, and you'll get this pedagogy that powers much of North American violin teaching.
  
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• Abba Tor, The Engineer Who Made Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal Even Better, Has Died At 93

  20-02-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  "'Concrete is dumb,' Mr. Tor said. ... 'It doesn’t know for whom it is being poured.' Engineering necessity gave birth to one of the most inviting facets of the terminal’s undulating interior: ribbons of skylights along the joints that were opened among the four vaults. The skylights turn what might have been a heavy blanket into something luminous and billowy."
  
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• Public asked to photograph ‘secret collection’ of works stored in homes across the UK

  20-02-2017 14:11
  
  A new initiative is urging people to locate and photograph 36,000 works in UK collections, which are publicly accessible as part of a tax-relief scheme. The new project, known as Open Inheritance Art (OIA), encourages the public to track down works available for viewing under the little-known Conditional Exemption Tax Incentive scheme run by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
  These works are exempt from inheritance tax or capital gains tax under the condition that they are maintained, kept in the
  
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• A Playwright And Director Who Somehow Fought Through Mutual Dislike To Become Artistic BFFs

  20-02-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  How Qui Nguyen started Vampire Cowboys, realized he would never be "mature," wrote the play Vietgone, and found director May Adrales for a partnership made in theatre paradise.
  
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• The Choir For The Tone Deaf That Sings In The Heart Of Opera Country

  20-02-2017 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  The director, a mezzo-soprano in the symphony choir of Milan, says that it's rare for people to be truly tone deaf - though in Italy, a land with little public music education, they may believe themselves to be so. She says, "Most people who come to the choir only have to learn how to listen, though that is the most difficult thing."
  
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• If You Want Misty Copeland's Shoes, You'd Best Be Prepared With Some Cash

  20-02-2017 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Basically, "signed pointe shoes often become gift-shop items or special giveaways for ballet fans. But Copeland’s worn-out shoes are different. The principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre has achieved rare celebrity status." In an auction that closes today at 7 pm Eastern, they - and some other memorabilia - are being sold as a Washington Ballet fundraiser.
  
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• JR's giant public art gets first show in Middle East

  20-02-2017 13:16
  
  The French artist JR, best-known for his giant art works on city walls, gets his first major retrospective in the Middle East with an exhibition opening at QM Gallery Katara in Doha next month (9 March-31 May 2017).The show will feature video and photographic documentation of JRs most famous public works such as Women Are Heroes (2008), for which he pasted portraits of women from conflict zones on to street walls; Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games (2016), where the artist created giant installa
  
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• Arts Groups Make Battle Plans For After Trump's Cuts

  20-02-2017 13:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  Sure, federal funding for the arts in the United States is already at a low, but it's"much-needed money that supports community projects, new works and making the arts accessible to people in different parts of the country and to those who are not wealthy. And after years of culture-war debates in which conservatives took aim at the programs, questioning their value, arts groups are pressing the case that the federal money they receive supports organizations — and jobs — in all 50 st
  
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• Royal Academy of Arts launches partnership with more than 60 galleries

  20-02-2017 13:06
  
  Mayfairs galleries can feel intimating, even to the seasoned art collector. But now the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is hoping to shake the London areas stuffy image through a new partnership with more than 60 galleries and auction houses as part of the rebranded Mayfair Art Weekend.Our aim is to open up our schools, the collection and our buildings and make them all more accessible to the public, says Kate Goodwin, the RAs curator of architecture who is on the board of Mayfair Art Weekend. We wa
  
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• If IMDb Could Figure Out A Way Around The Trolls, The Message Boards Wouldn't Have To Die

  20-02-2017 13:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  No, IMDb, the conversation has not all moved to social media - even a social media administrator could tell you that: "There is a definite sense of community on the boards. You won’t be able to use the site in the same way." But the site's admins might (with reason) think that racist trolling has gone way too far. So as of today, Feb. 20, all of the content will disappear.
  
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• Recovered ancient artefacts—ransacked during war—to feature at the Iraq pavilion in Venice

  20-02-2017 12:14
  
  Forty ancient objects drawn from the collection of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, including items looted from the institution after the US-led invasion in 2003, will go on show in the Iraq pavilion this summer at the Venice Biennale (Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti; 13 May-26 November).
  The exhibition, titled Archaic, will also include works by six contemporary artists and two late Modern masters, and has been organised by the Ruya Foundation, a Baghdad-based non-governmental body that also
  
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• From Frankenstein to feminism: how electricity powered our imaginations

  20-02-2017 12:00
  
  A new exhibition charts the changing place of electricity in our lives, our homes and in literatureImagine an invisible power. A force that can affect the world at a great distance, cause damage and healing, bring objects to you, show you images of faraway lands, cast light in dark places, even – sometimes – bring the dead back to life. There used to be a name for a force like that; the name was magic. But of course, that flexible, useful, intangible power has now been our servant fo
  
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• British Museum-trained Iraqi archaeologist assesses Isil destruction of Nimrud

  20-02-2017 12:00
  
  An Iraqi archaeologist who was recently given emergency training by the British Museum is leading a rescue operation in Nimrud, the Assyrian site which was almost totally destroyed by Isil extremists. The archaeologist has been appointed by Iraqs State Board of Antiquities and Heritage to investigate the damage and stablise what can be saved. In April 2015 Isil militants destroyed the ninth-century BC palace of Ashurnasirpal II with its magnificent gypsum reliefs. Last September they flatt
  
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• Louvre exhibition debunks 'isolated genius' myth of Vermeer

  20-02-2017 11:18
  
  The myth of Johannes Vermeer as an isolated artist, confined to his home city of Delft, looks set to be shattered. A new exhibition, opening at the Louvre on Wednesday (22 February), emphasises that he was deeply influenced by other Dutch genre painters of his time. Vermeer and Delft have until now been firmly linked in the history of art. There is little documentary evidence that the painter travelled far. Scholars (and novelists, such as Tracy Chevalier) have studied the ties between him
  
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• White Night Melbourne: spontaneous moments stand out on night of unsettling ironies

  20-02-2017 06:38
  
  Dazzling light art and music collided with uncomfortable truths as issue of homelessness came to the foreA protest here, a scuffle there, a bottleneck on Flinders Street, a cheeky alleyway spew. Save for the occasional flare of controversy, Melbourne’s fifth White Night – which opened up the city’s main roads and gardens for light, music, art and half a million pedestrians – largely went off without a hitch.The 12-hour event ran from dusk until dawn on the unseasonably co
  
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• What defunding the NEA would mean for US museums

  20-02-2017 05:39
  
  As the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) faces an uncertain future, arts groups are bracing for the loss of federal grants that support hundreds of exhibitions, performances, residencies and local arts councils each year. Its fate could soon be decided: the South Carolina congressman Mick Mulvaney, known for his hard-line views against government spending, was narrowly confirmed to lead the Office of Management and Budget this month. President Trump is expected to submit his proposal for th
  
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