Arts news

• B. Wurtz at Lulu, Mexico City

  20-03-2017 23:06 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.Today’s show: B. Wurtz’s 2017 solo exhibition is on view at Lulu in Mexico City through Saturday, April 15.
  
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• ICA London Appoints New Deputy Director and Chief Curator

  20-03-2017 22:39 via artnews.com
  The Institute of Contemporary Art in London has appointed Katharine Stout as deputy director and Richard Birkett as chief curator, both effective this spring, as reported by Artforum. Since 2013 Stout has served as head of programming at the ICA. In that … Read More
  
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• YBA mentor Michael Craig-Martin has lightbulb moment at The Peninsula

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  The British artist and Royal Academician Michael Craig-Martin unveiled his largest sculpture to date at The Peninsula hotel this week. Bright Idea (2016) is a vivid yellow 4m-tall steel sculpture of the outline of a lightbulb that rises from behind the fountain in the hotels forecourt. The hotel is an unbelievably grand setting with a row of Rolls Royces usually parked outside, Craig-Martin says. The sculpture had to hold its own in this context.The artist, who taught Damien Hirst and the Young
  
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• ‘We want to bring the world to Hong Kong’

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  M+, the flagship project of the $3bn West Kowloon Cultural District, has a new director. Suhanya Raffel joined the museum of 20th- and 21st-century visual culture, now under construction, in November. The move caps a 25-year career in Australia, the country she emigrated to aged 13 from her native Sri Lanka. At the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (Qagoma) in Brisbane, she led the Asia Pacific Triennial while also building the museums collection of contemporary art from Australia an
  
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• Theaster Gates raises the roof in Hong Kong

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  The Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates returns to Hong Kong for his second show at White Cubes outpost in the city. Tarry Skies and Psalms for Now (until 20 May) features new works created using roofing materials and techniques, a skill Gates learned from his father, as well as a series of bronze sculptures on the same theme. The artist spoke to us as he was preparing to open his solo show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (until 4 September), which includes works made from repu
  
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• Theaster Gates raises the roof

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  The Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates returns to Hong Kong for his second show at White Cubes outpost in the city. Tarry Skies and Psalms for Now (until 20 May) features new works created using roofing materials and techniques, a skill Gates learned from his father, as well as a series of bronze sculptures on the same theme. The artist spoke to us as he was preparing to open his solo show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (until 4 September), which includes works made from repu
  
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• My Hong Kong: a city guide

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  Lynn Fung: Director of the Liang Yi Museum
  My favourite place to switch off in Hong Kong ison the hiking trails.
  The art world in Hong Kong is different becauseit is still developing. Its exciting to be somewhere where art fairs like Art Central are sprouting up, and you can watch them evolve and develop before your eyes, year after year.
  The best place for an after-party in Hong Kong isTen Feet Tall, the cosy massage parlour in the heart of Central, open till 1am.
  Living here makes me fee
  
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• M+ pays tribute to Hong Kong’s gender-bending golden age

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  The TV dramas, pop songs, comics and movies of 1980s and 1990s Hong Kong fostered a sense of belonging among Hong Kongers and strengthened their cultural presence in the wider region. Now an exhibition at the M+ Pavilion hopes to revitalise local popular culture by presenting new perspectives on this golden age.It is striking how androgyny and gender fluidity were not just accepted at the time, but celebrated. Because of the commercial success of Hong Kong popular culture, performing artists, s
  
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• J.W. Anderson’s disobedient bodies at Hepworth Wakefield

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  Weve had Christopher Baileys exhibition in Burberrys pop-up at Makers House recently immersing usand his latest collectionin the art of Henry Moore. Then last summer there was Duro Olowous memorable show revolving around art, textiles and much more at the Camden Arts Centre. The latest fashion designer to turn curator is J.W. Anderson, whose Disobedient Bodies opened at the Hepworth Wakefield on Saturday 18 March. The show consists of a wonderfully idiosyncratic selection from the museums
  
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• ‘It’s magic’: curator Cecilia Alemani offers a glimpse into the Italian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  Do not expect a snapshot, thesis or panorama of todays Italian art scene in the national pavilion at this years Venice Biennalebut be prepared for a view of the fantastical. I think a platform like the Biennale should be less about trying to systematise the Italian art scene and more about offering a different kind of experimental platform [for] artists, explains Cecilia Alemani, the curator of the 2017 Italian pavilion. It should be a space of taking risks and trying a different approach.The c
  
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• In pictures: Zaha Hadid's show in Hong Kong

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  Zaha Hadids (1950-2016) designs for a luxury leisure club perched high above Hong Kong helped to launch the late architects international career. The Baghdad-born, London-based architect designed the Peak club in the early 1980s, more than three decades before she got to complete a building in Hong Kong. Unusually for an architect, Hadid painted large-scale canvases and made equally ambitious drawings of the proposed building in a style that combined Russian Constructivism with traditional Chin
  
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• Globetrotting artist Do Ho Suh brings sights of London to Hong Kong

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  The South Korean artist Do Ho Suh is making his presence felt in Hong Kong this week with an exhibition of new works at Lehmann Maupin in the Pedder Building (until 13 May). His Exit series of white polyester sculpturesincluding ghostly replicas of light switches and a fuse boxis also on show with the gallery at Art Basel in Hong Kong. Suh has lived and worked in Seoul, Berlin and New York, focusing in his work on themes such as dislocation and transience. I see life as a movement through m
  
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• Experts restore rare Dutch Golden Age map found stuffed up a chimney

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  A rare Dutch Golden Age map of the world that was discovered, scrunched up in a ball, in a house in Aberdeenshire is due to go on show at the National Library of Scotland this month. Claire Thomson, a conservator at the library, describes its preservation as the most difficult project I have ever tackled.
  Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula (new map of all the world) was designed by the Amsterdam-based cartographer Gerald Valck and was probably published in London by George Wildey in around 1690.
  
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• Collector's Eye: Qiao Zhibing

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  Beijing-born Qiao Zhibing made his fortune in the entertainment industry. He started his career in the 1980s, working as a sound engineer and going on to open his own nightclub in Hainan, followed by two more in Beijing and Shanghai. He began collecting Chinese contemporary art in 2006 and, since 2009, has been looking beyond the countrys borders, adding works to his collection by Western artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Theaster Gates, Danh Vo and Martin Creed. He is attracted to works that re
  
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• Centre Pompidou to pop up in Shanghai

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  Plans are well advanced for Pariss Centre Pompidou to set up a branch in Shanghais West Bund cultural district, The Art Newspaper understands.According to a number of sources, the project is being driven by the district government of Xuhui and the Shanghai-based West Bund Development Group, which builds and manages real estate in the area. Xuhui has already invested Rmb 20bn (around $3bn) in turning a former industrial area into a 11km-long cultural corridor on the Huangpu river. It is pla
  
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• Asian institutions unite behind homegrown talent

  20-03-2017 22:00
  
  Interaction between Asias artists and art institutions is blossoming, reflecting a new era of confidence and communication across the continent, and the proliferation of Asian institutions and events has helped support the growing curiosity across the region. For the first time, the Singapore Biennale, which took place in February, exclusively featured Asian art, aided by guest curators from China, India, Malaysia and Singapore. In China, the 2016 Shanghai and Yinchuan biennials were organ
  
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• Calling All Collectors: Handwritten Tupac Lyrics for Sale, Rap Sheets for the Ages

  20-03-2017 21:16 via artnews.com
  The online memorabilia site MomentsInTime.com is selling three pages of original notebook paper used by the late rapper Tupac to scribe lyrics for his eternal classic “Dear Mama,” TMZ reports. The pages are selling for $25,000 a pop.The song’s three verses are … Read More
  
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• David Rockefeller, banker, philanthropist and lifetime MoMA patron, dies at age 101

  20-03-2017 21:04
  
  David Rockefeller, the New York banker, philanthropist and art collector, died at his home in the Pocantico Hills in upstate New York on Monday, aged 101. As well as the long-time chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan bank, Rockefeller served on the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art since 1948, taking the role of chairman for multiple terms. But his familys ties to the museum go even further back however. His mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, helped found the museum in 192
  
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• Art in Arid Climes: A Report from the Dusty Western Wilds of ‘Desert X’

  20-03-2017 20:27 via artnews.com
  It took five of us five attempts, one phone call to a PR director, and about ten minutes to open the trap door leading down to artist Will Boone’s contribution to “Desert X,” the inaugural southern California desert exhibition that … Read More
  
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• Barnes Foundation Appoints Barbara Wong Director of Community Engagement

  20-03-2017 20:07 via artnews.com
  The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia has appointed Barbara Wong as director of community engagement. In the new position, Wong will coordinate existing and future outreach initiatives with a view toward improving awareness and wider accessibility for the museum.For the past 16 years, Wong helped … Read More
  
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• We don’t need celebs to understand art | Letters

  20-03-2017 19:48
  
  One of the stars of the National Gallery’s collection, Thomas Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs William Hallet (aka The Morning Walk), was hacked by a man with a screwdriver over the weekend (Report, 20 March). The Guardian chooses to report this sorry tale by reminding us that the painting was used as a setting for a covert meeting between Daniel Craig’s James Bond and Ben Whishaw’s Q in the film Skyfall. Pictures of both actors were included, below Gainsborough&r
  
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• Trisha Brown, Pioneering Postmodern Dancer, Dies at 80

  20-03-2017 19:21 via artnews.com
  Trisha Brown, the experimental choreographer who helped bring dance into the art world and whose postmodern pieces altered the history of performance, died on March 18 in San Antonio, Texas, of a “lengthy illness,” the Trisha Brown Dance Company announced … Read More
  
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• David Rockefeller, Avid Collector and Honorary MoMA Chairman, Dies at 101

  20-03-2017 18:06 via artnews.com
  David Rockefeller, a philanthropist who donated significant works to the Museum of Modern Art and who, in his years as chairman and then honorary chairman of its board, dramatically enlarged the museum’s endowment, died this morning at his home in Poncatino … Read More
  
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• Lawsuit For Millions Of Dollars In Truck Drivers' Suit In Maine Rides On Use Of A Coma

  20-03-2017 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  If there were a comma after “shipment,” it might have been clear that the law exempted the distribution of perishable foods. But the appeals court on Monday sided with the drivers, saying the absence of a comma produced enough uncertainty to rule in their favor. It reversed a lower court decision. In other words: Oxford comma defenders won this round.
  
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• Global fund to protect cultural heritage launches with $75m and board led by US billionaire Thomas Kaplan

  20-03-2017 17:19
  
  A new global fund to protect cultural heritage in war zones, spearheaded by France and the United Arab Emirates, has so far raised $75m of a planned $100m. The fund was officially launched today, 20 March, at the Louvre in Paris by the French President Franois Hollande and the vice premier minister of the Emirates, Sheikh Saif Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
  Originally proposed at an international conference held under the auspices of the G7 in Abu Dhabi last December, the International Alliance for the P
  
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• Conductor Berates Audience In Dance Club For Not Listening Attentively To Classical Music

  20-03-2017 17:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  Having gone to all the trouble of putting an orchestra (largely made up of New York-based music students and freelancers) in a club, and assembling a trendy-looking audience (largely, it seemed, people with some connection or other to the various presenting organizations), he didn’t actually want a rave atmosphere. The conductor kept berating the audience for talking, took them to task for their cellphones (“we’re here to dance, not to take pictures”) and, at one poi
  
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• Manuela Paz Named Director of Development and Strategic Planning at Independent Curators International

  20-03-2017 17:02 via artnews.com
  Following a four-year stint with the New Art Dealers Alliance, Manuela Paz is moving into a new role at Independent Curators International as director of development and strategic planning. She begins at ICI tomorrow.Prior to working at NADA as the group’s membership … Read More
  
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• Choreographer Trisha Brown, 80

  20-03-2017 16:40 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Few dance inventors have so combined the cerebral and sensuous sides of dance as Ms. Brown did, and few have been as influential. Her choreography, showcased primarily in New York, helped shape generations of modern dance creators into the 21st century."
  
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• A Political Whitney Biennial? Sure, But Not In A Partisan Way...

  20-03-2017 16:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Reviewers have criticized past biennials for being too politicized and ideological. Director Adam Weinberg says that the biennial isn’t meant to lean left or right. The goal is to find “voices that really get very close to the bone of American culture…from an aesthetic point of view,” he says, “and also from a larger, cultural point of view.” He adds, “The exhibition is not a finger wagging, and it’s in no way trying to be hectoring or lecturing.&
  
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• A Man Walked Into The British National Gallery And Used A Screwdriver To Attack And Damage A Gainsborough

  20-03-2017 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The east wing of the National Gallery was evacuated Saturday after the man, whom the police later said had "no fixed abode," twice slashed the surface of Thomas Gainsborough's "The Morning Walk," a 1785 commissioned portrait of a young couple and their dog.
  
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• Musical Theatre Camp For Adults? It's Real (And It Sounds Glorious)

  20-03-2017 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Four Broadway people got together and decided it was time: "A group leaving a rehearsal room together is a team and the connection they share has nothing to do with being employed or compensated. It stems from trust, from a shared experience, and from watching each other work. That 'cast' feeling is what we want to create at Broadway Weekends."
  
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• This Book, Smuggled Out Under Terrifying Circumstances, Has Found Its Way To A Worldwide Audience

  20-03-2017 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  The story of the book is intense and exciting and horrifying and electric - and the work itself "is the debut of North Korea’s Solzhenitsyn," said one human rights activist. The author's identity can never be known, and his handwriting can't be photographed to keep North Korean officials from identifying him.
  
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• Green and unpleasant land: UK countryside takes sinister twist in new exhibition

  20-03-2017 15:00
  
  Warwickshire gallery explores how artistic, social and political forces have shaped Britain’s relationship with rural landscapeImages of a green and pleasant land with a sinister undertone – where lambs gambol but a corpse might lie under a nearby hedge – feature in an exhibition examining Britain’s relationship with the countryside.The show at Compton Verney gallery in Warwickshire sets the scene with a small 1645 sketch by Claude Lorrain of a beautiful vista, charming r
  
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• All Of The Historical Dramas In Britain Make It Hard For Black And Asian Actors To Find Jobs

  20-03-2017 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Though, to be utterly clear, there were Black and Asian British people (and visitors to Britain) in any historical times a drama could cover, the costume dramas have no roles for them. Thandie Newton: "I love being here, but I can't work, because I can't do Downton Abbey, can't be in Victoria, can't be in Call The Midwife - well, I could, but I don't want to play someone who's being racially abused."
  
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• How To Look At, And Think About, A Woman Who Was Once A Teen Star

  20-03-2017 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  The problem with most writing about Kristin Stewart post-Twlight is that (especially male) critics want to call her "mysterious" or "withholding." But "her voice does not modulate wildly because most real voices do not. Her eyebrows do not flail because most eyebrows do not. Stewart does not take something away from her performances in order to tantalize her viewers. Instead, she intentionally fails to reach the pitch of thespian overcookedness audiences are accustomed to."
  
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• This Russian Prima Donna Is Fed Up With Younger Dancers' Obsession With The Internet

  20-03-2017 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Diana Vishneva: "Maybe now children are happier. There is not so much shouting and demands. ... When I was at school, I was taught not to spare myself, to give everything I had."
  
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• Can A Writer Save The French Working Class From Marie Le Pen?

  20-03-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  Édouard Louis, author of the smashing bestseller "The End of Eddy," says he's furious at the left-wing, and he demands that they do better: "When I see my father voting for Le Pen, I am revolted by the current government and its failings. Of course, I’m revolted by the right, but I never expected the right to do anything for the lower classes, but the left ...the left has stopped speaking about poverty, misery and exclusion."
  
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• What Should A Museum Do In A Time Of Political Crisis?

  20-03-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  From the "Art for Tomorrow" conference: "My dream is a Syrian refugee a few years living in Germany explaining a Christian sculpture to a Berliner. Our society becomes more and more complex and multiethnic, multicultural, multireligious, it’s important really to explain to each other what we are and where we come from. This political issue is, I think, the most important task for a museum."
  
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• Morning Links: Met Museum Clashes Edition

  20-03-2017 14:00 via artnews.com
  Met LifeThe next issue of Vanity Fair has a long take on Thomas Campbell’s very abrupt announcement that he will be departing from the Met, and it’s quite juicy. A chorus of unnamed board members and sources chime in to … Read More
  
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• This Man Had A Dream, A Dream Of Japanese Superheroes In Brightly Colored Spandex Suits

  20-03-2017 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  And despite setbacks and many, many, many denials from the studios, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers earned that dreamer (and Fox, which finally took on the project) billions.
  
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• Polaroid Swing Is The Rebranding Of The Original Instant Selfie Company For The Digital Era

  20-03-2017 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Hmmmm. "The company, which launched its Polaroid Swing app last summer, has taken the name and spirit of Polaroid and repackaged it into a new enterprise with a mission, it says, to create a 'living photograph,' a step toward something you might see in the Harry Potter movies."
  
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• Pulling Back The Veil On Streaming Music's Payment Systems For 'Exclusives'

  20-03-2017 13:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  What's it worth to Apple to have a two-week exclusive with a young, famous musician? Well, about half a million dollars. Chance the Rapper, who revealed that info about his "Coloring Book," wrote, "I think artist can gain a lot from the streaming wars as long as they remain in control of their own product."
  
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• When Net Neutrality Falls, Expect What Net Freedom We Have Left To Fall As Well

  20-03-2017 13:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  This will probably not end well for consumers. "Companies like AT&T and Verizon already give special treatment to their own video services, and T-Mobile lets select providers slip past its data limits, a practice called zero rating. At stake today is the ability of smaller companies to compete with internet service providers themselves."
  
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• The All-African-American Classical Orchestra That's Now Appearing In Rap Videos

  20-03-2017 12:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The idea for Orchestra Noir came about at date night for founder Jason Ikeem Rodgers. "The group’s website emphasizes they aren’t striving to be a traditional orchestra. Instead Orchestra Noir strives to raise 'the invisible curtain and [bring] classical music to diverse, younger audiences that is relevant and respectful of their community.'"
  
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• The 'Born Burglar' Who Stole Van Goghs Tells All

  20-03-2017 12:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  But the Van Gogh Museum is not OK with his sudden fame. "'The last 14 years have been a roller coaster of hope, disappointment and agony,' the museum’s director, Axel Rüger, said in an interview. 'All the time this man is sitting on this information. He knew exactly what he had done and he never breathed a word. To us it feels as if he is seeking the limelight.'"
  
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• Who's The Next (Er, First) Woman Director To Go From An Indie To A Film With A $100 Million Budget?

  20-03-2017 12:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Not all of the directors in this piece agree, but at least one thinks it might happen soon: "I think right now is a very encouraging time because doors are being opened and people are realizing that women are powerful and we have a right to be here and we can tell really good stories. That’s always been the case, but I think now people are really, fully believing in women."
  
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• Man charged with vandalising painting by Gainsborough at National Gallery

  20-03-2017 11:45
  
  The man charged with vandalising Thomas Gainsboroughs The Morning Walk (1785) is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court today. On Saturday (18 March), just after 2pm, Keith Gregory, aged 63 who is homeless, is believed to have attacked the painting with a drill bit. This caused two deep scratches, each about 75cm long, in a cross-shaped form in the lower-right corner of the canvas. This damaged the male sitters legs, but was far away from the most important part of the composition,
  
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• Caroline de Bendern: 'leave campaign was lies and xenophobia'

  20-03-2017 08:00
  
  Activist, who became symbol of 1968 protests when she was photographed in Paris, prepares to march against BrexitHer image has been symbolic of the national mood once before. Recreating a 19th-century masterpiece of Lady Liberty leading the French to revolution, a statuesque portrait of Caroline de Bendern emerged as a defining image of the protests that swept Europe in the summer of 1968. Now almost five decades on, the British former model and disinherited aristocrat is taking to the streets a
  
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• Shock art: can grossing people out be considered an art form?

  20-03-2017 06:04
  
  In her new web series, art historian Christina Chau asks whether disgusting viewers runs the risk of closing minds instead of opening themEmerging from a bath filled with stew – potatoes, carrots, onions and all – the art historian Dr Christina Chau is a little disgusted and not entirely impressed. “If you really want to confront people’s stereotypes, I think you’ve got to ease them into it,” she says. “I think if you make them feel uncomfortable, they&r
  
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