Arts news

• Alex Ross: The Value Of Critics In A Clickable World

  13-03-2017 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The trouble is, once you accept the proposition that popularity corresponds to value, the game is over for the performing arts. There is no longer any justification for giving space to classical music, jazz, dance, or any other artistic activity that fails to ignite mass enthusiasm. In a cultural-Darwinist world where only the buzziest survive, the arts section would consist solely of superhero-movie reviews, TV-show recaps, and instant-reaction think pieces about pop superstars. Never mind tha
  
  Read more

• More Museums Press To Speak ABout Issues Of the Day

  13-03-2017 22:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "In recent years, museums have been making a greater effort to have a voice in social activism and respond to pressing problems of the day. The big question is when and how art museums should take a public position and try to effect change, or at least initiate a community discussion on a topic."
  
  Read more

• Zaha Hadid luxury condo developer to create 15 galleries in New York’s Chelsea

  13-03-2017 22:00
  
  Chelseaonce considered the epicentre of the New York art worldhas in recent years become unaffordable for most galleries, with all but those at the very top forced to leave for cheaper neighbourhoods such as the Lower East Side or Tribeca. Now the developer behind the Zaha Hadid-designed luxury condos adjacent to the High Line, West Chelseas elevated park, hopes to lure 15 galleries to ground-floor spaces being built in and around the complex, which boasts 39 flats including a $50m pe
  
  Read more

• Virtual Insanity

  13-03-2017 22:00
  Humour is essential for engaging with, and enjoying, the work of Rabat-born, Brooklyn-based artist Meriem Bennani. While her work certainly contends with critical and serious issues (the identity and status of Muslim women in the contemporary mediasphere is a recurring theme) through playful and surrealist imaginings of the lives of others, humour acts as the axis around which her work is constructed. Her ongoing project Fardaous Funjab (2015), for example, is a mockumentary series about an ava
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• UAE goes to Venice

  13-03-2017 22:00
  
  A sense of play is very much at the fore at the UAEs presentation at this years Venice Biennale (13 May-26 November). Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play is curated by London-based Hammad Nasar, who is at Art Dubai this week to speak about the pavilion (with Kevin Jones at the Julius Baer Lounge on 15 March).
  His line up is notable for including, for the first time, UAE-national and resident artists, while the overall curatorial concept looks to examine artistic practices within the Emirate
  
  Read more

• Secret life of Paula Rego on show at Marlborough and on the Beeb

  13-03-2017 22:00
  
  Its not very cool to thank your Mum when you make a movie, declared Nick Willing before the lights went down at last nights (13 March) preview screening of the feature-length documentary film he has made about his mother, the artist Paula Rego. But you were quite extraordinary and hopefully this shows just how extraordinary you are, too. Indeed it does. Paula Rego: Secrets & Stories, which will be broadcast 25 March on BBC2, is an exceptional, intimate and utterly captivating film, tha
  
  Read more

• French museum lifts the veil on Rodin work not previously exhibited

  13-03-2017 22:00
  
  A sculpture by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is due to go on public display for the first time at the Muse Rodin in Paris this month, thanks to the efforts of conservators. Absolution (around 1900), an assemblage of three plaster sculptures with a piece of fabric draped over the top, is being shown alongside works by the German artist Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) in an exhibition marking the centenary of Rodins death.
  Christine Lancestremre, the head of collections at the Paris museum, says: I think i
  
  Read more

• First Emirati to create art in Antarctica

  13-03-2017 22:00
  Khorfakkan-based Abdullah Al Saadi sets sail this Friday, 17 March, on a 12-day adventure, the first Antarctic Biennale, dreamt up by the Russian artist and former submariner, Alexander Ponomarev. On the journey, a Russian ship is carrying 100 artists, visionaries, scientists, image-makers and supporters, who will debate, create, make music and document the ferment of activity on board and on land. 
  Al Saadi, whose work is about his own journeys and what he thinks about en route, does
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Asia Week broadens its horizons with 50 exhibitors

  13-03-2017 22:00
  
  Fifty galleries are taking part in Asia Week New York (9-18 March), the annual convergence of auctions and exhibitions of Asian art and antiques, including visiting dealers from Europe and Asia. The sharp increase in official participantsup from 16 galleries in the inaugural year of 2009suggests that dealers remain optimistic, despite the economic contraction in China,by far the largest driver of this market.
  According to Eric Zetterquist, a New York dealer in Tang and Song Dynasty ceramics for
  
  Read more

• Art for Tomorrow in Doha

  13-03-2017 22:00
  Doha hosted its first art fair this month to coincide with the third edition of the annual New York Times Art for Tomorrow (AFT) conference (10-13 March), both hosted at the W Hotel. START Doha invited four galleriesAurum Gallery (Korea), Montoro 12 Contemporary Art (Italy), Hafez Gallery (Saudi Arabia) and Anima Gallery (Qatar)for its inaugural edition and included an independent booth from the artist Owais Husain and a section dedicated to emerging Qatari artists organised by the Iraqi-Canadia
  
  Read more

• Art Dubai opens under new leadership

  13-03-2017 22:00
  
  This will be the arts writer, editor and consultant Myrna Ayads first year at the helm of Art Dubai (15-18 March), which this year features 92 galleries from 44 countries. Over the past five years, Art Dubai has seen visitor numbers rise from 20,000 to 25,000 and gallery application numbers increase by around 45%, proving its increasing importance in the global fairs landscape.
  This years winner of the Abraaj Group Art Prize$100,000is the Bangladeshi artist Rana Begum, who is heading up the pri
  
  Read more

• Art Dubai opens under new directorship

  13-03-2017 22:00
  You can achieve a lot in a decade. Art Dubai, which hit the ground running when it launched as the first contemporary art fair in the UAE in March 2007, is able to capture the essence of contemporary art practice in the region and is a key meeting point for the international arts community. In Myrna Ayads debut edition as fair director, the programme is fresh and dynamic, yet grounded and relevant. 
  The gallery halls are more tightly curated (evident in the addition of curators Sam Bardaoui
  
  Read more

• Art Dubai 2017

  13-03-2017 22:00
  Our daily edition from Art Dubai, including news, analysis, interviews and live reporting from the fair
  
  Read more

• Redbuds, Yellowwoods, and a Weeping Persimmon: Asad Raza Brings a Forest to the Whitney Biennial

  13-03-2017 20:49 via artnews.com
  This past weekend, in advance of the first official previews before a public opening on Friday, I took an elevator to the sixth floor of the Whitney Museum of American Art to lay eyes on the first Whitney Biennial to take over … Read More
  
  Read more

• LUMA Foundation Acquires Annie Leibovitz Archive

  13-03-2017 20:32 via artnews.com
  Today, the Zurich-based nonprofit LUMA Foundation announced that they will be housing the archives of renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz. The organization is planning a number of major projects dedicated to the trove, the first being “Annie Leibovitz Archive Project #1: … Read More
  
  Read more

• Getty Research Institute Acquires Allan Sekula’s Papers

  13-03-2017 20:16 via artnews.com
  The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles has acquired the photographer Allan Sekula’s papers. Taking up some 400 boxes, they include correspondence, records, photographs, research materials, archival notes, and more.A few decades before globalization was at the forefront of many artists’ minds, … Read More
  
  Read more

• Michelangelo and Sebastiano review – of gods and men

  13-03-2017 19:57
  
  National Gallery, London
  Placing Michelangelo’s work alongside that of his plodding friend highlights the artist’s astounding and visionary creativityHalfway through the National Gallery’s exhibition about artistic friendship you can read a letter from Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547) to Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) in which he describes a conversation with Pope Leo X. The pope was nice about Michelangelo’s incomparable talent, he says, but less so about his forbi
  
  Read more

• Puppies Puppies Is Selling $5 Lady Liberty Crowns at the Whitney Museum Gift Shop

  13-03-2017 19:02 via artnews.com
  At this year’s Whitney Biennial, between a disturbing Jordan Wolfson virtual-reality work, two flashy Jon Kessler sculptures, and a smelly Pope.L installation involving rotting baloney, it’s easy to miss Puppies Puppies’s contributions.In the main galleries are the artist’s “Triggers” sculptures, … Read More
  
  Read more

• Desires Unrestrained: Tala Madani Takes Irrepressibility to the Whitney Biennial

  13-03-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  In Tala Madani’s paintings, slightly overweight men pee, poop, and masturbate together. Her characters, almost always men, seem like they’re outside the restrictions of the everyday world—they can happily smear shit on each other and throw lassos around their distended … Read More
  
  Read more

• Morning Links: Poisonous Cheese Edition

  13-03-2017 14:00 via artnews.com
  Terrence MalickSong to Song, the new film from the reclusive director Terrence Malick, made its debut at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, where the movie is set. Though he’s earned a near-Pynchonian reputation for staying out of public … Read More
  
  Read more

• London's National Gallery gets first new display space in 26 years

  13-03-2017 11:23
  The first new gallery space created at the National Gallery in London in 26 years is due to open later this month (22 March) with a display dedicated to the 17th-century Old Masters, Rembrandt and Rubens (until 16 July). The new 200 sq. m space, known as Gallery B, was designed by the UK-based architects Purcell. The move opens up the ground floor in the main Wilkins Building, creating a route from the main entrance in Trafalgar Square to the rear of the building on Orange Street.
   
  The ina
  
  Read more

• Prawn sex … and other future sounds of Russia

  13-03-2017 08:00
  
  Bankrolled by an oligarch and staged in a derelict power station near Red Square, the Geometry of Now festival aims to bring Russia back to the heart of the avant-garde – with neon raves, black-robed gurus and bone-chilling industrial noiseLeonid Mikhelson, the richest man in Russia, stands on a balcony overlooking the main hall of GES-2, a disused power station, as Moscow’s art crowd mill around him. It’s the opening night of Geometry of Now, a festival of sound art and club c
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUKnews on Twitter!