Arts news

• The Case Against Little Free Libraries

  18-05-2017 23:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “There was something that kind of irked me about the title,” says Jane Schmidt, librarian at Ryerson University in Toronto. “As a librarian, my gut reaction to that was, ‘You know what else is a free library? A regular library.’”
  
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• Filipa César and Louis Henderson at Gasworks, London

  18-05-2017 23:21 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday. Read More
  
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• New Director Reimagines How Berlin's Volksbühne Theater Works

  18-05-2017 23:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Chris Dercon’s plans for the theater — which mark a distinct shift toward interdisciplinary work and international artists — have garnered criticism since his appointment. A Belgian-born curator, he most recently ran the Tate Modern, where he helped oversee a major expansion into a new building. Mr. Dercon’s close ties to the market-driven British art world have raised eyebrows among those who see his background as a strange fit for a theater that relies largely on publi
  
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• Royal Collection highlights the man who made Canaletto famous

  18-05-2017 23:00
  The name Canaletto is a magic crowd-pleaser. But the real magician of the exhibition Canaletto and the Art of Venice at the Queens Gallery in London (19 May-12 November), which includes more than 200 works from the Royal Collection, is the collector Joseph Smith (around 1673/74-1770). From the turn of the century he was in Venice, where he quickly became a wealthy banker and the British consul to the Most Serene Republic. From the 1720s he collected paintings, drawings and prints, and acted as
  
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• Massachusetts museum’s expansion enables artists to dream big

  18-05-2017 23:00
  
  What would you do if you had the opportunity to have not just a one-night stand, but a deep commitment that would go on for ten, 15, 25 years? asks Joseph Thompson, the director of Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) in North Adams. This is the guiding philosophy behind the museums ambitious $65m expansion, due to open on 28 May.
  Since it launched in 1999, the institutiona converted textile factoryhas slowly been working to refurbish the 28 buildings on its sprawling campus. Th
  
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• Low total for Sotheby’s first African art sale (but what is “African” art?)

  18-05-2017 23:00
  
  The first ever sale of African art by Sothebys London on 16 May reflected both the current interest in the art and the immaturity of this market, and posed the question, what is African art anyway.The ultra-chic Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is showing (until 28 August) a selection of the biggest collection of African art in the world, put together by the Frenchman, Jean Pigozzi. This is proof of interest in the subject, even though the shows titleArt/Africa: le nouvel atelier (the
  
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• Basquiat skull painting sells for record $110.5m at Sotheby's

  18-05-2017 23:00
  
  By now you've already heard it: last night Sotheby's made history when it sold an untitled Basquiat skull head painting from 1982 for $110.5m with fees to the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, marking the highest price at auction for a post-1980 artwork, the second-highest price for any contemporary work at auction and the sixth-highest price for any work sold at auction, in a sale that totalled $319.2m, with fees."This is a day we'll not soon forget," Grgoire Billault, the head of
  
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• How A Small Collective Has Powered A Literary Revolution Across Africa

  18-05-2017 22:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "As the library has grown from a roomful of young Nairobians to an ongoing conversation that spans the continent—with email, Skype, and social media allowing members in a half-dozen countries to stay in touch—it's become clear that Jalada is where the future of African literature is being written."
  
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• Herb Alpert Awards Name 2017 Winners, Including Amy Franceschini

  18-05-2017 22:17 via artnews.com
  The Herb Alpert Foundation announced the 2017 winners of its annual Award in the Arts, which are given out annually by the foundation and the California Institute of the Arts. Each award honors a mid-career artists and comes with an … Read More
  
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• UK Culture Minister: Increasing Arts Funding Is The Worst Thing We Could Do For The Arts

  18-05-2017 22:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "The worst thing that we can do is to incentivise local authorities to reduce further their arts funding by saying that we will replace it with central government money. To solve one problem, that at the moment is only in some local authority areas, we would incentivise other local authorities to do the wrong thing."
  
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• Knight Foundation give $1.87m in grants to support digital projects at 12 museums

  18-05-2017 21:37
  
  The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation awarded $1.87m to 12 art museums today as part of an initiative to help institutions experiment with new ways of using digital tools to improve the visitor experience.
   
  Among the proposals selected from more than 100 submissions is Lumin, a mobile app tour of the Detroit Institute of Arts that uses augmented reality and 3D animations to guide visitors through the museum. Andrea Montiel de Shuman, the DIAs digital experience designer, said the $15
  
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• Here's A Novel Argument: Blame Trump On Contemporary Art!

  18-05-2017 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Whatever the intelligentsia nurtures and celebrates in our galleries and academic journals is bound to flow eventually into the nation’s cinemas, through its ballot boxes and toward the swamp of Washington, D.C. The last few months have proven that Trump is not out to drain that swamp. He is its progeny, and we on the left — the artists, the people of culture — have done our part in creating the conditions for him to thrive."
  
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• Blame Trump On Art? That's A Lazy Stretch!

  18-05-2017 21:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "The political situation is dire. Nothing really feels important right now unless it somehow connects to it, which leads to all kind of flailing around in cultural commentary. In this case, turning the problem inside out, Melamid ends up echoing the most thoughtless cliché about modern art—'my kid could do that!'—just to construct a credible way to plug art into the Conversation about Trump."
  
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• Michel Houellebecq's French Bashing show marks US debut

  18-05-2017 21:20
  
  Michel Houellebecqthe controversial, award-winning French author of novels including Atomised and Platformis showing his photographs, photomontages and installations at Venus gallery in New York next month (2 June-4 August), marking his exhibition debut in the US. The title of the showFrench Bashingmay raise eyebrows. The novelist's works highlight the bleaker aspects of French culture and architecture, depicting for instance the stark, suburban "peri-urban" zones outside cities.
  
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• Expo Chicago Announces Discussion Series for 2017 Fair

  18-05-2017 21:03 via artnews.com
  Today Expo Chicago announced details of the talks program that will accompany its 2017 fair, which runs from September 13 to 17, the same time as the opening of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.Among the talks in the 30-panel program, boldly … Read More
  
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• How The Getty Singlehandedly Built A New Generation Of Art Conservators

  18-05-2017 21:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "In the late 2000s, there were roughly 10 such experts worldwide—a small number that was poised to get even smaller. Many of these individuals were approaching retirement age, and across the whole of the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe, there were at most two young conservators considering a career in this niche field. This was the worrisome picture that emerged from a survey begun in 2008 by Copenhagen’s Statens Museum for Kunst and funded by the Getty Foundation."
  
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• The $1,300 Boomerang: Chanel Is Pilloried For Cultural Deafness

  18-05-2017 20:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The item -- part of the Chanel spring-summer 2017 collection and priced at $1,325 for US buyers -- sparked a heated debate on social media. "Cultural appropriation hits a new low - I sincerely hope that @Chanel is donating all the profits to underprivileged aboriginal communities," wrote one Twitter user.
  
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• ‘A Cast of Characters’: Exhibitions Around Berlin Highlight the City’s Artistic Communality

  18-05-2017 20:07 via artnews.com
  On Akim Monet, Ian Wilson, Cécile B. Evans and Yuri Pattison, Julie Mehretu and Jessica Rankin, 'My Abstract World,' Dean Sameshima, Cindy Sherman, and Hanne Darboven and Charlotte Posenenske Read More
  
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• The Delusion Of Competence (How Dunning And Kruger Discovered Their Effect)

  18-05-2017 20:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Recognize the name but can't quite place it? The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the cognitive phenomenon wherein many people (especially on the lower end) overestimate their abilities, such as 80% of drivers rating themselves above average. (We've been seeing the effect in action quite a lot lately.) The incident that inspired psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger to investigate the phenomenon was a doozy.
  
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• Why Elvis's Status Is Plummeting (He Was A "Novelty" Act?)

  18-05-2017 19:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Elvis has fallen to the status of “novelty act”, according to David Hesmondhalgh, an author and professor of music at the University of Leeds, who says that any musician whose image transcends their music will ultimately fade away: “If you ask a small child about Elvis, the fact he died on a toilet through overeating or wore a silly suit is all that registers. The music has become far less important than the caricature. His image has been cheapened.”
  
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• The Persistent Power Of Guilt

  18-05-2017 19:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Nietzsche argued that with the death of God (i.e., the power of religion in society), notions of sin and guilt and expiation would fade away. In the industrialized West, that just hasn't happened: the ideas of guilt ("liberal guilt," if one likes) and expiation have driven the movements for human rights, environmentalism, animal welfare, international war crimes tribunals, and (more obviously and controversially) for reparations for colonialism and slavery. Wilfred McClay looks at these movement
  
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• St. Paul MN's Ordway Center Chief Steps Down

  18-05-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  A onetime child star, James Rocco initiated the Ordway’s Broadway Songbook series, which celebrates musical theater composers. He also built up the Ordway’s in-house Broadway-style producing arm, putting on shows such as "A Chorus Line," “Paint Your Wagon” and the recent smash, “West Side Story.”
  
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• A Sundance For Choreography?

  18-05-2017 18:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It's even in Utah. "A breath of fresh choreographic air is coming to Salt Lake City. Ballet West artistic director Adam Sklute has invited companies from across the country to join Ballet West for the first annual National Choreographic Festival, May 19–20 and 26–27. Over the course of two weekends and two different programs, premieres and recently acquired repertory will be performed in the new, state-of-the-art Eccles Theater."
  
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• The Art Of Protest Art - There Are Many Ways To Affect Us

  18-05-2017 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It says a lot that the sales of such painfully prescient dystopias as 1984 have increased since November 9, 2016. It says even more that “Moonlight,” an indie with no stars about a gay, black drug dealer, found an enormous audience and enormous accolades at the beginning of this year. More than junkfood entertainment, we need “beautiful resistance,” as I’ve come to call the art that engages us in social justice concerns, human compassion, and values of love, courage
  
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• The Great Brawl Of American Classical Music

  18-05-2017 17:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "It was composer pitted against composer: uptown vs. downtown, tonal vs. atonal, left brain vs right brain, and these musicians were NOT pulling any punches. Composers were antagonizing each other, questioning each other's validity, and bad-mouthing one another; it was like the second half of the 20th century was when Western Music went through middle school, and it was brutal! ... On this episode of Meet the Composer, we unravel one of the most contentious periods in classical music's history."
  
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• With Anicka Yi Presentation in Basel, Metro Pictures and 47 Canal Inaugurate Collaboration

  18-05-2017 17:04 via artnews.com
  Just seven years after having her first proper show, at 179 Canal, a scrappy space in a nondescript building in Manhattan’s Chinatown, Anicka Yi is on a wonderful roll. At the Guggenheim Museum, in conjunction with her 2016 Hugo Boss … Read More
  
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• Australia's 'King Kong' Musical Is Finally Coming To Broadway

  18-05-2017 16:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "The show is the brainchild of an Australian animatronics company, and its only previous production was in Melbourne. Its arrival on Broadway has been long delayed: In 2010, the producers said they were aiming for a 2013 Broadway bow; in 2013, they talked of a possible 2014 Broadway opening, as well as international productions of the show; and by 2014, they had stopped attaching a timeline to their project. But now, for the first time, they are announcing a theater as well as a time frame."
  
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• This Year's Big TV Series For Ramadan Is About Life Under ISIS

  18-05-2017 16:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Ramadan is the big season for television in the Muslim world, as families gather at the set each night after breaking the daytime fast. Black Crows, a 30-part drama airing on the Arab world's most popular satellite channel, "paints a picture of the Islamic State ... as a brutal criminal organization run by corrupt and hypocritical leaders. But recruits are depicted as victims, and women who challenge the militants' control are heroes." (includes scenes from three episodes)
  
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• Ilya and Emilia Kabakov to Show Rarely Seen ‘Whimsical Models’ at the Hirshhorn Museum

  18-05-2017 16:02 via artnews.com
  Maquettes for enigmatic installations and architectural imaginings by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov will appear in a rare communal display this fall in “Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Utopian Projects” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Focusing on 22 “whimsical … Read More
  
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• Hauser & Wirth Will Screen Films on Its Roof in Chelsea This Summer

  18-05-2017 16:00 via artnews.com
  Hauser & Wirth will use the newly renovated rooftop at its West 22nd Street location this summer to stage film programming chosen by artists from its roster. The goal is to “present a vibrant collection of cinematic works that illustrate the many ways … Read More
  
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• Engels statue taken on trucking odyssey across Europe

  18-05-2017 15:49
  
  UK artist Phil Collins is bringing a two-tonne, 3.5 metre-high Soviet era sculpture to Manchester. Collins discovered the statue of Friedrich Engels, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, in a remote east Ukrainian village, and decided to transport the monumental work on a flat-bed truck to Manchester. Now on his journey to Manchester, Engels will pass through and make stops at some favourite old haunts, including Berlin and his birthplace Wuppertal, a press statement says. The mammoth piece is
  
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• Shawn Brixey Appointed Dean of Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts

  18-05-2017 15:36 via artnews.com
  Shawn Brixey, the artist whose multimedia work brings together physics and digital technology, will be the new dean of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts. He begins his position at VCU on July 1.Brixey is currently the dean of … Read More
  
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• Booing, The Cannes Film Festival's Favorite Sport

  18-05-2017 15:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Cannes selections of all stripes have met with boos for decades, from Michelangelo Antonioni's groundbreaking L'Avventura in 1960 to Sean Penn's not-groundbreaking The Last Face last year." (Even Taxi Driver got booed.) There's even been a "Booed at Cannes" film series and a streaming service category. Nicolas Rapold offers "a mini-anthropology" of the phenomenon.
  
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• Laura Kipnis Sued By Student Over Portrayal In Book 'Unwanted Advances'

  18-05-2017 15:17 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "A Northwestern University graduate student is suing a professor at the campus for defamation, the latest twist in a long-running controversy that already has involved discrimination and sexual harassment investigations, multiple lawsuits and the exit of a prominent philosophy professor."
  
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• Cincinnati Art Museum Gets Largest Gift In Its History

  18-05-2017 15:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Longtime supporters Carl and Alice Bimel left a bequest of $11.75 million to the museum to establish the Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art. The endowment will enhance collections in the arts of South Asia, Greater Iran and Afghanistan."
  
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• Morning Links: Snuggly Abutted Blobs Edition

  18-05-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
  
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• Britain's NHS Prescribes Music And Dance For The Elderly

  18-05-2017 14:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  A National Health Service regional planning group has issued a manifesto that "says it aims to reinvent health services by encouraging people to engage with cultural activities instead of focusing solely on medicine. ... 'Too many of life's problems are seen as only amenable to medical treatment. We all too readily turn people into patients. ... There are no pills for loneliness and poverty but a rich cultural context can help ensure residents are better connected to each other and feel more abl
  
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• Photo London satellite shows: Peckham 24 leads the way as the UK capital gets snappy

  18-05-2017 14:42
  
  As the third edition of Photo London gets into full swing in central London this week, a number of satellite events and shows will be competing for photography fans in the UK capital. Principle among these is Peckham 24 (19-20 May), a photography festival taking place over a period of 24 hours in Peckham, south London. The concept behind the 24 hours of the festival is to pack as much as possible into a short space of timemaking the journey for visitors from central London and Somerset House to
  
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• Curtis Institute's Brilliant Student Orchestra Is About To Discover The Rigors Of International Touring

  18-05-2017 14:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Just now they're in Helsinki, the start of a nine-city European tour under the baton of Osmo Vänskä. As Curtis president and former Philadelphia Orchestra principal violist Roberto Díaz tells David Patrick Stearns, "It looks great on paper, but actually doing it is really, really hard work. Preparing for events like this is a huge part of their educations."
  
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• Jean Fritz, Author Of Popular History Books For Children, Dead At 101

  18-05-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Hallmarks of her work, critics agreed, included her fleet, engaging prose and prodigious archival research. ... What was more, where children's biographies of an earlier age inclined toward unalloyed veneration, Mrs. Fritz's were warts-and-all portraits of the often flawed men and women who left their impress on the world - and the resulting books were deemed far more humanizing as a result."
  
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• A History Of Alphabet Blocks

  18-05-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Perhaps alphabet blocks seem like an obvious idea now, but it took a lot of foundation to build up that pretty good idea into something incredibly common." And by the way, "the guy who invented the word 'Kindergarten' also ensured [alphabet] blocks would always have a place in the toy aisle."
  
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• France's New Culture Minister Is One Of The Country's Top Publishers

  18-05-2017 13:44 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "[Françoise] Nyssen is the CEO of Éditions Actes Sud, based in the southern city of Arles, which has published the work of Nobel laureates Imre Kertész and Svetlana Alexievitch, as well as Prix Goncourt winners Laurent Gaudé, Jérôme Ferrari, and Mathias Ernard."
  
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• Bangladesh To Get Its First Major Contemporary Art Museum

  18-05-2017 13:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  And it won't be in Dhaka, the country's capital. The Srihatta-Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park is due to open in late 2018 in Sylhet, a relatively affluent city in Bangladesh's tea-growing northeast. Though the museum will be privately funded by the couple who are the country's most prominent art collectors, admission will be free.
  
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• Magnum photographer David Hurn donates collection to National Museum of Wales

  18-05-2017 13:25
  
  David Hurn is donating around 1,500 of his own photographs and 700 images from his private collection to the National Museum of Wales. The celebrated Magnum photographer rose to fame in the 1960s, shooting The Beatles, Sean Connery and Sophia Loren, among many others. Eschewing the art market for a more civilised method of trading, Hurn has built up his private collection over 60 years by swapping works with fellow photographers. A selection of the exchanges went on show for the first time
  
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• Artists give warm welcome to new French culture minister

  18-05-2017 12:09
  
  French artists have high hopes for France's new culture minister Franoise Nyssen in the government of the centre-right prime minister Edouard Philippe appointed by the president Emmanuel Macron. Nyssen, 65, enters politics after a 30-year career with the prestigious Actes Sud publishing house, founded by her father, in Arles in the south of France. In 2008 she was made a Commander in the order of Arts and Letters, Frances highest cultural honour.Actes Sud is known for a Nobel Prize-winning nove
  
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• Burning Man's plane art: mile-high ambition or corporate takeoff?

  18-05-2017 12:00
  
  A reconstructed Boeing 747 is a prominent piece at the festival, but some argue its six-figure budget makes it an egregious extravagance that doesn’t fit the vibeIn 2015, a group of artists and engineers worked together to transform a Boeing 747 airplane into an interactive art project. Salvaging parts from an aircraft boneyard, they re-imagined the fuselage as a fur-lined, LED-lit lounge and transported it to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert for the Burning Man festival. This August, the
  
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• What we see when we watch football: how replays and close-ups reflect society

  18-05-2017 11:50
  
  The camera angles and photos used in football coverage – pictures that zoom in on individuals – mirror our view of the worldBy Shirsho Dasgupta for In Bed With Maradona, of the Guardian Sport Network
  In 1972, four half-hour episodes on the BBC attempted to change how we approached visual culture and how we saw the world around us. John Berger’s Ways of Seeing was a landmark in the history of arts broadcasting and education. Berger, an art critic, playwright and Booker Prize-win
  
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• Capital ring: London's zone three suburbs – in pictures

  18-05-2017 08:00
  
  Mischa Haller photographs the dog walkers and children’s parties of the capital’s edgelands, where the madness of the city begins to calm Continue reading...
  
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• Christie’s Soars With Airtight, High-Grossing $448.1 M. Postwar and Contemporary Sale, Selling $52.9 M. Twombly, $51.8 M. Bacon

  18-05-2017 05:22 via artnews.com
  In its biggest postwar and contemporary sale in years, Christie’s sold all but three of its 71 lots on offer en route to a $448.1 million finish in New York Wednesday night, eschewing flashy fireworks in favor of cutting the fat and … Read More
  
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