Arts news

• With a Display of New Work from Its Collection, MoMA Takes a Political Turn

  17-03-2017 22:47 via artnews.com
  What can “Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection,” the Museum of Modern Art’s show of recent acquisitions by 15 contemporary artists, tell us? For one thing, MoMA wants to position itself, at least in part, as a political institution. The issues … Read More
  
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• Nobel Laureate Poet Derek Walcott, 87

  17-03-2017 21:27 via feedproxy.google.com
  Derek Walcott, whose intricately metaphorical poetry captured the physical beauty of the Caribbean, the harsh legacy of colonialism and the complexities of living and writing in two cultural worlds, bringing him a Nobel Prize in Literature, died early Friday morning at his home near Gros Islet in St. Lucia.
  
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• Why Is The Classical Music World Obsessed With Lower Case Titles And Names?

  17-03-2017 21:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "These small grammatical rebellions strike some as poetic and others as pretentious — at least when the titles are given as their composers intended. (They are rendered inconsistently in many publications, including the one you are reading, that strive to follow standard grammar rules.)"
  
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• Jack Gray, 89, Fought For The Rights Of Writers Of Screenplays

  17-03-2017 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Jack Gray devoted most of his life to protecting the rights of freelance scriptwriters for film, radio and television in this country –a group he believed were the most vulnerable to exploitation in the creative industries. A talented playwright himself in his younger years, he gradually gave up imaginative writing in favour of reports, speeches and policy papers for the cause he passionately believed in.
  
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• Are You More Creative When You're Alone Or When You're With Others?

  17-03-2017 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Human beings are most creative when we get time by ourselves and then time with one another. The way to maximize creative potential is to flow between being alone and being in a group, and back again. When you’re alone, you’re essentially building a woodpile in your brain. Then, when you join a group, you’re igniting a shower of sparks that might light it up. Of course, you sometimes need to go be alone again in order to let the sparks you’ve started generating get close
  
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• Netflix Is Changing Its Rating System (It Won't Help)

  17-03-2017 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "On paper, news that Netflix is phasing out the stars in favour of a thumbs up/thumbs down system should be heartening. From later this year, we’re told, Netflix subscribers will be asked one simple question: essentially, did you like this or not? Click the thumbs-up button and Netflix will suggest similar titles for you to watch; click the thumbs-down and it’ll make that sort of thing harder to find during future visits. Percentages will also be introduced, to show you how suited yo
  
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• Time for a declaration of war – on happiness | Letters

  17-03-2017 19:25
  
  Pointless wars | Nuclear weapons ban treaty | Boris Johnson’s hair | Fish | Guardian merchandise |Naked statues | First classNicholas Searle is right to warn against a “war on terror” (To defeat terrorists we have to get inside their minds, 17 March), as demonstrated rigorously by Professor Louise Richardson in What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Terrorist Threat. Hence the observation that, since the war on drugs led to in increase in drugs crime, and the war on terror led
  
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• Why Cutting The NEH, NIH, Research, Is Stupid

  17-03-2017 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Half a century ago the National Endowment for the Humanities was established on the assumption that world leadership could not solely be based on superior power, wealth, and technology, but must also be premised upon worldwide respect for our country’s qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit. Like its scientific counterparts (the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health), the NEH was established as a depoliticized research institution. Decis
  
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• Indie Band Yo La Tengo to Take Requests and Play Them Live on the Radio for WFMU

  17-03-2017 18:54 via artnews.com
  In a sort of recurring rite for rock nerds and aficionados of music in whatever form, the beloved indie band Yo La Tengo will field requests and wing their way through them live on the radio. As part of a … Read More
  
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• Netflix Suggests Interactive Storylines - But Do Audiences Really Want This?

  17-03-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "It seems to me to misunderstand the fundamental appeal of television; that it is bedtime stories for grownups. You plonk yourself in front of the screen to be entertained. That doesn’t mean being fed pap; contemporary television is increasingly a feast for the upper reaches of the mind as well as the primitive bits that would be just as happy banging a stick on a stone. But it does mean being presented with a finished product: a complete, satisfying entity with a beginning, a middle and a
  
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• Betty Boop Was Black And White: Here Are The Two Jazz Singers On Whom The Cartoon Sex Symbol Was Modeled

  17-03-2017 18:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  Writer Gabrielle Bellot introduces us to Helen Kane, "Baby" Esther Jones, and the court case over Betty Boop that revealed her origins.
  
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• ‘Whose Streets? Our Streets!: New York City, 1980-2000’ at Bronx Documentary Center, New York

  17-03-2017 18:00 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.Today’s show: “Whose Streets? Our Streets!: New York City, 1980-2000” was on view at the Bronx Documentary Center in New York from January 14 to March 5—and continues to live … Read More
  
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• Can art redress economic inequality? A new white cube museum on a former Congo plantation aims to find out

  17-03-2017 17:52
  
  A new museum due to open on 21 April in the Congolese forest aims to repatriate the white cube space. Built on a former palm oil plantation of the English-Dutch company Unilever, a major sponsor of museums in the UK and the Netherlands, the White Cube is part of the Lusanga International Research Centre for Art and Economic Inequality in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Designed pro-bono by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), it is the Dutch firms first museum in Africa.
  At the hea
  
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• Techno, people power and seahorse sex – the week in art

  17-03-2017 17:43
  
  New works by Gillian Ayres go on show, Tate Modern hosts 10 days of art in the Tanks and the Hepworth is the height of fashion – all in your weekly art dispatchGillian Ayres
  New paintings and woodcuts by the 87-year-old abstract artist are accompanied by her phenomenal 1972 work Untitled (Cerise), a nearly six-metre wide epic of suggestive colour.• Alan Cristea gallery, London, from 16 March-22 April.Continue reading...
  
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• Cut Big Bird? Political Forces Align To Fight It

  17-03-2017 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The telephone survey of 1,001 registered voters, conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic polling firms and released Thursday as Trump’s budget landed, showed 73 percent opposing federal cuts for public television; meanwhile, 83 percent, including 70 percent of those who voted for Trump, wanted Congress to find budget savings elsewhere. NPR, meanwhile, has also found a powerful Republican ally in Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that grants
  
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• Chromophobia - Western Architecture Is Paralyzed By A Fear Of Color

  17-03-2017 17:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  David Batchelor: "As with all prejudices, its manifest form, its loathing, masks a fear: a fear of contamination and corruption by something that is unknown or appears unknowable. This loathing of colour, this fear of corruption through colour, needs a name: chromophobia."
  
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• Pope.L’s Bologna-Filled Whitney Biennial Installation Stinks—And Then Some

  17-03-2017 16:48 via artnews.com
  At Whitney Biennial previews this week, many were quick to note that Pope.L’s installation smelled really bad. The reason for this was the 2,755 slices of bologna pinned to its walls, which, even on day one, already appeared a little … Read More
  
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• George Will: Hell, Ya, Let's End The NEA (What Is "Art" Anyway?)

  17-03-2017 16:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Let’s pretend, counterfactually, that the NEA no longer funds the sort of rubbish that once immersed it in the culture wars, e.g., “Piss Christ” (a photograph depicting a crucifix immersed in a jar of the artist’s urine) and “Genital Wallpaper” (don’t ask). What, however, is art? We subsidize soybean production, but at least we can say what soybeans are. Are NEA enthusiasts serene about government stipulating, as it must, art’s public purposes that
  
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• Safra Foundation gives $1m to Washington’s National Gallery of Art to support art scholars

  17-03-2017 16:24
  
  While the Trump administration has proposed eliminating federal funding for the arts and culture, a private charitable foundation continues its work to support arts research and scholarship. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has received a $1m gift from the Edmond J. Safra Foundation to fund a professor post at the museums Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA).
  The gift sustains the Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professorship, which was established in 2002. Since then, 15
  
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• Want To Maximize Box-Office Income? Make Your Ticket Pricing As Complicated As You Can Get Away With

  17-03-2017 16:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  "This doesn't mean that prices shouldn't be presented simply. Your pricing should be 'swan-like': serene on the surface, with all the paddling going on underneath to maximise the opportunity for income." Consultant Tim Baker discusses applying the concept of "marginal gains" to ticket pricing.
  
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• The Secret Life And Love Of A Lexicographer

  17-03-2017 15:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  With the first chapter of her new book, Kory Stamper of Merriam-Webster describes how she came to work for the venerable dictionary and offers a look at the complicated process of getting the reference work together.
  
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• From the Archives: The Enthusiastic, Energetic Cuban Art Scene Comes to MoMA, in 1944

  17-03-2017 15:30 via artnews.com
  Currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is “Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950,” the biggest survey of Cuban art in America since a 1944 Museum of Modern Art exhibition. In mind of the … Read More
  
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• Did Lucrezia Borgia's Daughter Write These Anonymous Sacred Works?

  17-03-2017 15:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  Very possibly. Musicologist Laurie Stras writes about a carefully but anonymously published collection of motets, all for treble voices, from 16th-century Italy; about the life of Sister Leonora d'Este, born four years before her notorious mother died; and about why she thinks that Leonora wrote this music but would have to keep her name off of it. (includes video and audio)
  
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• Ten Woman Composers From History That You Probably Don't Know About

  17-03-2017 14:48 via feedproxy.google.com
  In assembling this list, critic Alexandra Coghlan made it a point to avoid the names that always come up (Hildegard of Bingen, Clara Schumann, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre), but ranged from 9th-century Byzantium to 17th-century Milan (a nun, no less) to the Depression-era U.S. (includes sound clips)
  
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• This New York City Ballet Principal Is Helping Put More Cracks In Ballet's Glass Ceiling

  17-03-2017 14:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  Ashley Bouder is spearheading a project to create programs choreographed by women to music by woman composers. She explains to Chloe Angyal (who made her cry) why this is so important.
  
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• Congolese Plantation Workers Art League to Open Art Center on Former Plantation

  17-03-2017 14:30 via artnews.com
  The story of the African equatorial region known today as the Democratic Republic of Congo is one marred by colonial extraction. Next month, in a rare attempt to reverse this historical trajectory, a museum space designed by the Office for … Read More
  
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• 'It's Not An Attack On The Arts, It's An Attack On Communities': Kennicott On The Trump Budget Cuts

  17-03-2017 14:17 via feedproxy.google.com
  "These cuts aren't about cost savings - they're far too small to make even a ding in the federal budget. They are carefully calculated attacks on communities, especially those that promote independent thinking and expression, or didn't line up behind the Trump movement as it swept to power through the electoral college in November. But the president's proposed budget also includes attacks on communities that did indeed support Trump but that are too powerless to resist."
  
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• A Great Collection Of Impressionist Art Takes Its Place In Kansas City

  17-03-2017 14:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  The Bloch Collection - amassed by one of the co-founders of H&R Block and containing works by Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin, Cezanne, Seurat, and Pissarro - is now on view in specially renovated galleries at the Nelson-Atkins Museum.
  
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• Morning Links: National Endowment for the Arts Edition

  17-03-2017 14:00 via artnews.com
  The 2017 Whitney BiennialRoberta Smith has filed her review of the 2017 Whitney Biennial. “This show’s strength and focus make it doubly important at a time when art, the humanities and the act of thinking itself seem under attack in … Read More
  
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• The Desert Project That Christo Has Been Planning For 40 Years

  17-03-2017 13:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Comprising 410,000 multi-coloured aluminium barrels," - the Mastaba, to be erected at an empty desert site in Abu Dhabi - "would be the largest sculpture in the world, and, unlike many of Christo's projects, permanent."
  
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• Dozens Of Theatres Lobby The Guardian To Reinstate Its Theatre Blog

  17-03-2017 13:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "More than 40 UK theatres, including the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sheffield Theatres and the Royal Exchange, have signed a letter to The Guardian calling on it to reinstate Lyn Gardner's theatre blogs. Gardner is currently contracted to write 150 blogs a year for The Guardian, however these will cease next month to cut costs."
  
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• James Cotton, 81, King Of The Blues Harmonica

  17-03-2017 13:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  Known by his colleagues as "Mr. Superharp" ("mouth harp" is another name for harmonica), Cotton made his instrument integral to the blues, making landmark recordings with Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf before forming his own band, which influenced an entire generation of blues-rock musicians.
  
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• Whitney Biennial 2017: Trump's shadow looms over politically charged show

  17-03-2017 13:00
  
  A particularly biting set of pieces, including a Statue of Liberty holding up an unlit torch, help to symbolize an arts community raging against the presidentThis week, President Trump released his “America first” federal budget plan, which intends to completely wipe out the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is the first time a president has ever proposed their complete obliteration. Related: Trump's proposal to end arts endowment is la
  
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• Scotland wins £4m fight to keep Monarch of the Glen painting

  17-03-2017 13:00
  
  Sir Edwin Landseer masterpiece secured for national collection after flurry of donations from around the worldOne of the most recognisable and reproduced paintings of Scotland, Sir Edwin Landseer’s The Monarch of the Glen, has been acquired for the country after a £4m fundraising campaign.It was announced in Edinburgh on Friday that a threat of the painting being sold abroad had been averted. Continue reading...
  
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• Monarch of the Glen saved from auction block after £4m fundraising drive

  17-03-2017 13:00
  
  Edwin Landseer’s grandiose work remains on public display in Scotland thanks to Lottery, art fund and public contributionsOne of the most recognisable and reproduced paintings of Scotland, Sir Edwin Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen, has been acquired for the country after a £4m fundraising campaign.It was announced in Edinburgh on Friday that a threat of the painting being sold abroad had been averted. Continue reading...
  
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• Henry Fuseli’s Julia Appearing to Pompey in a Dream: hell hath no Fury

  17-03-2017 13:00
  
  Pompey’s late wife is depicted as coming to him as a Fury in the 18th-century artist’s unsettling early work Continue reading...
  
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• 'Four-minute warning: time to boil your last egg' – 100 years of anti-war protests

  17-03-2017 13:00
  
  From Paul Nash’s barbed wire truths to Tony Blair’s blazing selfie, the Imperial War Museum is exploring anti-war art and demos. What difference did they make?“Don’t you hear the H-bomb’s thunder / Echo like the crack of doom?” This song is painful as well as rousing when heard now on film footage of the first Aldermaston marches of 1958 and 1959; they look like a vision of lost innocence. This is partly on account of the wholesome quality of their participant
  
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• Britain's Leading Theatre Magazine Launches New Awards To Recognize Debuts

  17-03-2017 13:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The Stage Debut Awards will recognise actors, writers, directors, designers and composers making their professional theatre debuts in the UK. Nominees will be considered in nine categories, including best director, designer and composer as well as best actress and actor in a play and in a musical. A panel of industry experts will decide the winners in each category. There will also be the opportunity for the public to vote on the award for best West End debut."
  
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• Louise Erdrich, Matthew Desmond Win National Book Critics Circle Awards

  17-03-2017 12:44 via feedproxy.google.com
  "More than 30 years after winning a National Book Critic Circle award for her first novel, Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich has won again.LaRose, the tale of two Ojibwe families linked by tragedy, took the NBCC fiction prize Thursday night in New York."
  
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• Doomed Arctic expeditions and stars collide to create 'quietly powerful' show

  17-03-2017 12:42
  
  Artist Siobhan McDonald named UN Climate Action Programme’s first artist of the week with ‘beautiful and intelligent’ mixed media exhibition CrystallineBarely 24 hours after the word had got out, Siobhan McDonald was sitting at a sunny Paris café terrace last Saturday still coming to grips with having just been named the UN Climate Action Programme’s first artist of the week in its new #Art4Climate series.“The first I knew about it was when I opened my comput
  
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• Arctic expeditions and stars collide to create 'quietly powerful' show

  17-03-2017 12:42
  
  Artist Siobhan McDonald named UN Climate Action Programme’s first artist of the week with ‘beautiful and intelligent’ mixed media exhibition CrystallineBarely 24 hours after the word had got out, Siobhan McDonald was sitting at a sunny Paris café terrace last Saturday still coming to grips with having just been named the UN Climate Action Programme’s first artist of the week in its new #Art4Climate series.“The first I knew about it was when I opened my comput
  
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• Rodney Graham: That’s Not Me review – starring role in his own method-acting dramas

  17-03-2017 12:39
  
  Baltic, GatesheadThe Canadian artist goes the long way round to create wry and deeply complex videos, films and photographs that keep the viewer guessing
  All comfy in his striped pyjamas, Rodney Graham sleeps across the back seat of a car, driven through the night. Dimly visible, and dreaming sweet dreams on a double dose of a narcotic sleeping draught, he is like an exhausted child being taken home after a too long day. Are we nearly there yet?Graham always goes the long way round in his videos
  
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• New Jersey High School Wins National 'Courage In Theatre' Award For Its 'Ragtime' (And Raves From New York Pros, Too)

  17-03-2017 12:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Musical Theatre International selected [Cherry Hill High School East] 'for its perseverance and dedication to the arts in the face of adversity,'" for facing down objections to the use of the n-word in Ragtime's script. "It was only the third time that the New York-based licensing agency has given the award since it was established in 2007." There was plenty of praise for the production, too, with several professionals saying it was the best high school production they'd ever seen.
  
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• From Imagine Moscow to Ten Days Six Nights: this week’s best UK exhibitions

  17-03-2017 10:30
  
  An avant-garde display marking the centenary of the tragedies of the Russian revolution, plus the rock festival of art exhibitions at Tate Modern Continue reading...
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.16.17

  17-03-2017 08:40 via feedproxy.google.com
  NEA Funding: Beyond Votes, We Must Grow the Applause
  The President’s budget proposal to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts is merely an “opening argument.”  A very long legislative process now begins which will, hopefully, culminate in a budget that reflects moderation ... read more
  AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2017-03-16It’s A Matter of Taste-And Touch And…
  If three, as the old saying goes, makes a trend, the museum world is past that and into
  
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• Making viral art out of hardware – tech podcast

  17-03-2017 08:00
  
  Interrupting the march of technology through art
  Ever heard of a “MacBook selfie stick”? How about Tinder VR goggles? What about a salmon phone? These are the innovations of two digital artists Tom Galle and Moises Sanabria, whose Instagram accounts showcase their take on new tech and how it’s affecting us. Tom and Moises speak to Leigh about how their work has gone viral, their take on meme subcultures, and why their work is different from iPhone destruction videos. Continue r
  
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• Copulating seahorses and a lavish snail ballet: the underwater wonders of Jean Painlevé

  17-03-2017 08:00
  
  They may have infuriated the censor, but these beautiful films and photographs of cavorting creatures caused a sensation in the 30s. As Ikon’s new exhibition shows, they have been overlooked for too longSee more of Jean Painlevé’s marine lifeIn the course of his lifetime, the aquatic French film-maker Jean Painlevé hung out with Man Ray and Alexander Calder, showed his work in galleries alongside the surrealists, and inspired George Balanchine to choreograph a lobster b
  
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