Arts news

• Creating Choreography In Public, And Dancing For - Or With - An Audience

  30-06-2017 23:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  A public art project - Prismatic Park - makes Madison Square Park an interactive dance experience. One of the choreographers: "I tell the dancers, 'You’re going to be confronted by people, a squirrel is going to run by, you’re going to stop to say hello to your boyfriend — all of that is what we’re doing.'"
  
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• Thomas Campbell on why he stepped down from the Met

  30-06-2017 23:00
  
  Thomas Campbell stepped down as director and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in June, leaving the institution that he first joined as a curator more than two decades ago.
  Campbell announced his resignation at the end of February amid growing concern over the institutions financial management, criticism of a $600m planned David Chipperfield-designed wing for Modern and contemporary art and speculation about his future after eight years at the helm. But the timin
  
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• The Problems With (Writing About) Florida

  30-06-2017 23:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Kristen Arnett: "Florida is no place for those who want to view it from a safe distance. This state is invasive, creeping, needy. Hardy and scrabbling, our peninsula's sour with poison and rot and choking vines. You fight for the right to live in its greenery, and once you've finally carved out a space, you stay tangled in the wreck. Once you've left, there’s no coming back. The best you can do is hack out a different life somewhere else. This place isn't yours to write about. It's barely
  
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• Summer art pilgrimages

  30-06-2017 23:00
  Paolo Soleris Arcosanti, Arizona Doug Aitken, artist: One of the most magical places is Paolo Soleris Arcosanti. He was an architect who came from Italy, studied under Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West, and by the 1960s he became restless. He looked for land, because if you had land you could experiment. It was a kind of extreme utopian city, where everyone who lived in it and visited was part of it. His idea was that it was always unfinished and would evolve. By the 1970s he obtained land ab
  
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• PST2: LA/LA

  30-06-2017 23:00
  Los Angeles looks south to Latin America for the second edition of Pacific Standard Time
  
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• David Lamelas: time zones

  30-06-2017 23:00
  The conceptual art pioneer David Lamelas has used sculpture, photography, film and live performance to explore space and time since the 1960s. He attracted widespread attention in 1968 when, aged just 21, he represented Argentina at the Venice Biennale, making the work Office of Information About the Vietnam War at Three Levels, which used a desk, a chair and a telex that received constant updates on the Vietnam war, relayed live by a news reader. He then studied at St Martins School of Art in
  
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• Millennials Are The Greatest Generation, At Least In Library-Going Terms

  30-06-2017 22:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Yep. They're more likely than Gen-X and Boomers - and way more likely than the Silent Generation - to visit the library. Maybe this is why? "Due in large part to libraries’ egalitarian nature, their events, teach-ins, and classes are free and open, making them natural hubs for underemployed millennials seeking skills to break out of their parents’ homes." Also, of course, the books are free.
  
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• Here's An Artistic Medium We've Never Encountered Before: Grass (Actual, Growing Grass)

  30-06-2017 22:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey ... are elevating grass into something quite beautiful. They have been creating large-scale canvases of living grass, by tinkering with the natural growth process of this little plant in order to create impressive, photographic-like images." (includes video)
  
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• Michael K. Williams Is Sloughing Off The Shadows Of Omar

  30-06-2017 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  After Williams' star turn as Omar made him a celebrity in East Flatbush, "what followed was something of an existential crisis. Months removed from filming, Mr. Williams struggled to shake the grave psyche of his character. He was racked by doubts both personal and political: Had he lost hold of his identity? Was he glorifying the ills of his community, or exposing their roots? He couldn’t divine the answers."
  
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• Roger D. Abrahams, 84, Pioneering Folklorist Of African-American Street Culture

  30-06-2017 21:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Earlier folklorists had focused on black religious expression, the language of the church and pulpit. Mr. Abrahams described a new and vibrant verbal world, exuberant, profane and endlessly inventive. He explained the fine points of the dozens - a street-corner battle of wits in which participants traded insults ... [as well as] jump-rope rhymes and counting rhymes."
  
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• Mainstream Movie Culture Has Bowed Down To Fervent Fans - And Is All The Worse For It

  30-06-2017 20:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Used to be, you could go to a movie without having to rifle back through books, check out Wikipedia entries, and maybe do a rewatch of the whole canon so far. Not so now. "Sequels and remakes have been around for more than a century, but the past decade has seen their takeover of the multiplex (in most of America, the only kind of theater around) — and a corresponding rise in the exclusionary nature of mainstream film culture."
  
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• The Metal Whose Discovery Made Artists' 'Blue Periods' Possible

  30-06-2017 20:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Kat Eschner tells the story of cobalt and the many shades of blue pigment that the element made achievable and affordable (no more finding and grinding lapis lazuli!).
  
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• Baltic Artists' award 2017 review – big balloons and fetish steel get too close for comfort

  30-06-2017 19:43
  
  There are some great moments, but this disjointed show makes our critic pine for more wildness, more excess – and more naked encounters with oiled steelAfter last year’s successful Hepworth sculpture prize in Wakefield, Gateshead’s Baltic asked four artists to choose candidates for an innovative new prize of its own. The selectors – Monica Bonvicini, Lorna Simpson, Pedro Cabrita Reis and Mike Nelson – have each nominated a single artist, who receives £25,000 f
  
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• Is Pop Music Responsible For Liberal Britain?

  30-06-2017 19:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The theory (backed up with statistics): "British people are more liberal on such issues as same-sex relationships and abortion than they have ever been. At the last count, one in 10 people in couples in England and Wales were in what the official statistics call an 'inter-ethnic relationship.' Cannabis smoke regularly wafts around our town and city centres; Glastonbury is as much a part of the national calendar as Wimbledon or the Grand National. And throughout our waking hours, there is one con
  
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• Day Sale Watch: Highlights from Contemporary Sales at Sotheby’s and Phillips in London

  30-06-2017 19:06 via artnews.com
  The fireworks of the evening sales in London this week wrapped last night with the 20th-century and contemporary art evening sale at Phillips. The equivalent sale went down at Sotheby’s the night prior. (Christie’s opted to not hold a postwar and contemporary … Read More
  
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• The Lost Medieval Arabic Poetry That Survives In Hebrew

  30-06-2017 19:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The literary culture of al-Andalus, Arab-ruled Spain in the Middle Ages, was as splendid as its architecture - and much of the era's poetry was destroyed when the Inquisition burned the library at Granada in 1499. But there were Jewish Andalusian writers in the 10th and 11th centuries who adopted the poetic forms and subjects used by their Arab colleagues, and much of that work survives. Benjamin Ramm tells us about the most admired of these writers and offers samples of their verse.
  
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• Guggenheim Bilbao celebrates 20th birthday with Bill Viola

  30-06-2017 18:37
  
  A major Bill Viola retrospective opening today (30 June) at the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao marks the US video artists special connection to the museum, says its director Juan Ignacio Vidarte. He describes the show, which runs until 9 November, as a highlight of the year-long programme of exhibitions and events honouring the 20th anniversary of the Frank Gehry-designed museum in the northern Spanish city. Violas installation The Messenger (1996), originally commissioned for Durham Cathedral in
  
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• Colonial Williamsburg Is Beset By Money Woes And Plans To Outsource Its Commercial Operations

  30-06-2017 18:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  So the world's largest living history museum is not doing well: "The foundation's operating losses last year totaled $54 million, or $148,000 per day. It also borrowed heavily to improve its hospitality facilities and visitors center and ended 2016 with more than $300 million in debt, Reiss said."
  
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• Car, shed … elevator? The Los Angeles art spaces proving smaller is better

  30-06-2017 18:23
  
  A range of alternative galleries have sprung up in the city, creating micro-museums that offer unique experiences not found in ‘white-walled galleries’I receive the text telling me my car was downstairs. Outside waiting for me there’s a metallic gray Ford Crown Victoria, the workhorse American automobile often used as cops cars or taxis. But this is no ride-sharing vehicle like a Lyft or an Uber – it’s a mobile art space, Gallery1993. Scattered throughout the car ar
  
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• Watching Calder's Mobiles Actually Be Mobile

  30-06-2017 18:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Alexander Calder is famous for having made sculptures that move, but conservators and collectors are cautious about showing them that way." The current show at the Whitney is changing that, and the Times here offers a set of video animations that show the works in motion.
  
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• Natalie Frank at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago

  30-06-2017 17:55 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday. Read More
  
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• Three to see: Manchester International Festival

  30-06-2017 17:52
  
  The bands New Order and Joy Division are inextricably bound with Manchester, with their music an integral part of the northern citys cultural heritage and identity since the 1970s. The exhibition True Faith at Manchester Art Gallery (until 3 September) looks at the impact of the two groups on contemporary artists such as Mark Leckey, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Brown, Jeremy Deller and Julian Schnabel. True Faith is rooted in the social and cultural histories, and the psychological geography of Manch
  
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• Art as Misbehavior: In a Freewheeling Talk, Peter Saul Addresses UFOlogy and Political Correctness

  30-06-2017 17:49 via artnews.com
  “Did you know 121,000 people have seen a flying saucer?” Peter Saul asked curator Lolita Cros on Tuesday night at New York’s Hotel Americano. “How can you be sure that none of these people have seen one?” This comment drew laughs … Read More
  
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• How Much Money Do Museum Workers Really Make?

  30-06-2017 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The data is public for the first time, and not surprisingly, directors and COOs make a lot, while security guards and entry-level curators make barely enough to live on, much less pay off student loans.
  
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• These 16th-Century Table Knives Have Music For Saying Grace Engraved On Their Blades

  30-06-2017 17:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The matched set of four pieces has ivory handles with inlay; wide, sharp blades; and the music and text - in four-part harmony, one voice per knife - for blessings before and after the meal, one on each side. (includes sound clip of one of the blessings)
  
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• Even Boys Who Study Dance When Young Tend To Drop Out In Their Teens - These Instructors Went To Find Out Why

  30-06-2017 16:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Two staffers at London dance hub The Place write about what they learned when they asked young (and older) men why they stopped dancing - and how to keep the guys coming to class.
  
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• Protesters target Dutch firm involved in removal of 550-year-old tomb from ancient town of Hasankeyf

  30-06-2017 16:34
  
  Protests against the flooding of an ancient town on the Tigris River have moved to the headquarters of the Dutch firm involved in removing monuments from the site. The town of Hasankeyf, with its origins in a 12,000-year-old settlement on the banks of the river in south eastern Turkey, has become a cause celebre for conservationists since the start of construction on the giant Ilisu Dam.A small group of activists have been protesting at the Dutch company Bresser in 's-Gravendeel, near Rotterdam
  
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• How Japanese Film Auteurs Riffed On The Tropes Of The Country's '70s Softcore

  30-06-2017 16:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Mike Hale writes about the Roman Porno Reboot Project, in which the Nikkatsu studio asked five directors to put a contemporary spin on roman porno (short for "romantic pornography"), the rigidly formulaic genre that saved the studio when it hit hard times 46 years ago. (Among the results: Aroused by Gymnopédies - yes, the Satie piano pieces.)
  
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• Why Kent Nagano Would Want To Leave Montreal - And Why It Makes Sense

  30-06-2017 15:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Arthur Kaptainis: "The [Orchestra symphonique de Montréal] wanted to extend his contract, and naturally enough. He still sells tickets. Why mess with success? Nagano noted in a statement that 'following a decade and a half as music director, it seems like a natural transition point.' Fair enough. ... No conductor can lead an orchestra for more than a decade without incurring some sense of déjà vu. And no conductor in the world is less interested in repeating himself than Ken
  
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• From the Archives: Jean-Paul Sartre on Alexander Calder, in 1947

  30-06-2017 15:30 via artnews.com
  Although many of Alexander Calder’s sculptures are meant to move, they’re sometimes presented as still objects, which does them something of a disservice. At the Whitney Museum in New York, an exhibition of the artist’s mobiles aims to fix that. Over … Read More
  
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• Charging Theatres To Get Reviewed Is A Bad Idea That Was Probably Bound To Happen

  30-06-2017 15:17 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "If readers are no longer paying for criticism by buying newspapers or paywall subscriptions, the Bitter Lemons and Edinburgh initiatives were an attempt to find someone else to pay for the review, namely the recipient of the opinion." So the alternative, writes Mark Shenton, is (for now) to mostly have critics who can afford to work for free, with all that implies.
  
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• Should Theater Reviews Be Held Accountable From A Social Justice Viewpoint?

  30-06-2017 15:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Howard Sherman on the (latest) Hedy Weiss controversy: "Many theatres are trying to address systemic racism in their practices, just as progressive activists are working vigorously to address that deep racial and ethnic inequality in society at large. So for artists committed to those goals who find their creative work viewed through a frequently dismissive perspective when it comes to social justice, who see a lack of empathy when it comes to racial topics, which I believe Weiss has displayed,
  
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• Morning Links: Spider-Man Edition

  30-06-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
  
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• Why American Performing Artists Have Been Becoming Activists (It Isn't Just The Election)

  30-06-2017 14:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Arena Stage artistic director Molly Smith, choreographer Kyle Abraham, Washington National Opera artistic director Francesca Zambello, playwright James Ijames, and others from classical music, dance, and theater talk to Nelson Pressley about how they do and don't work politics into their art.
  
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• How A Video Artist's 20-Year-Old Work Got Dragged Into Pizzagate

  30-06-2017 14:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Maria Marshall, whose work incorporated her children and treated many of parents' deepest fears, was somehow discovered by the guy who runs the #Pizzagate YouTube channel - so now she has a pack of conspiracy theorists convinced she's involved with pedophilia. Philip Kennicott talks to Marshall about the real intentions behind her videos and looks at how they get misinterpreted: "Marshall's art may have succeeded all too well, agitating an anonymous art-phobic audience in almost the same way the
  
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• Realism makes a splash, Joseph Beuys lashes out and 160 Mancunians sashay – the week in art

  30-06-2017 14:23
  
  Realism returns, women surrender to surrealism, and Joseph Beuys pulls on the boxing gloves – all in your weekly dispatchTrue to Life: British Realist Painters of the 1920s and 1930s
  British artists who shunned the avant garde between the wars are resurrected in this interesting survey of such individualists as Meredith Frampton and Laura Knight. Read our review of the show.
  • Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1 July – 29 October. Continue reading...
  
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• Is The Decline Of Old-Style Rep Theatres Really Such A Terrible Thing?

  30-06-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Lyn Gardner: "It's not surprising that there is a great deal of nostalgia from actors such as Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Simon Callow who were the beneficiaries of the old rep system. But the purpose of contemporary theatre is not just to train the stars and Dames and Knights of the future. It is there to serve a much wider community ... and most of all it is there to serve the particular and unique needs of the locale where a theatre is situated." (What's more, "from where I sit in aisle seat
  
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• Kent Nagano To Depart Montreal Symphony In 2020

  30-06-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "[He] came to the Montreal orchestra when it was emerging from shambles. The OSM had gone through four years of labour strife, money troubles and uncertainty after the sudden departure of legendary director Charles Dutoit in 2002 after nearly 25 years in the post [of music director]. Mr. Nagano leaves the orchestra in much better position with a new concert hall, a solid balance sheet and years of critical acclaim."
  
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• How A Nobody From A Northern English Industrial Town Became A Star At The Mariinsky Ballet

  30-06-2017 13:44 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "When Xander Parish was offered a job at the Mariinsky Ballet he thought it was a joke. And wouldn't you? Audiences had barely registered the existence of this young English dancer, languishing in the Royal Ballet's lower ranks, when Yuri Fateyev, the Mariinsky's artistic director, suggested that he join the elite St Petersburg company, once home to Nijinsky, Nureyev and Baryshnikov. That was seven years ago, and even now Parish can't quite believe his luck."
  
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• Going From Stardom In A Regional Ballet Company To The Corps In A Major One

  30-06-2017 13:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Marina Harss talks to Betsy McBride, who left her longtime berth at Texas Ballet Theater for a contract with ABT, about why she made the change and what it's been like.
  
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• Howard Hodgkin’s 50 years of travels to India revealed in Hepworth Wakefield show

  30-06-2017 13:23
  
  When Howard Hodgkin died in March this year, he had already helped plan his exhibition Painting India (1 July-8 October) at the Hepworth Wakefield in great detail. The country that inspired the paintings in the show was of enormous significance to him; and the exhibition seems to have gained a corresponding importance. It is the first to gather a broad range of his paintings capturing his Indian memories and experiences.Hodgkin had given detailed instructions to Eleanor Clayton, the shows curat
  
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• Otto Dix’s Reclining Woman on a Leopard Skin: a depraved carnival

  30-06-2017 13:00
  
  The German painter, working in the decadent Weimar era, translated the horror he saw in the trenches into a shocking vision of modern lifeWith leopardskin, ripped arms and slanting cat’s eyes, Otto Dix’s Weimar-era devil woman is ready to pounce. If she doesn’t get you, the dog will. Continue reading...
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.29.17

  30-06-2017 10:43 via feedproxy.google.com
  Interview with Ceri Dingle, director of Every Cook Can Govern: The Life, Impact and Works of C.L.R. James
  My column for June 28, 2017 at Inside Higher Ed     The word went around a few years ago that someone in England was working on a documentary about the West Indian historian, revolutionary political theorist and pan-African eminence C. L. R. James (1901-1989). ... read more
  AJBlog: Quick Study Published 2017-06-29French Band Air at the Greek Theatre
  For reasons I can&rsqu
  
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• True to Life, Howard Hodgkin and Joseph Beuys: this week’s best UK exhibitions

  30-06-2017 10:30
  
  National Galleries of Scotland explore British realism, The Hepworth focuses on the painter’s works on India, and boxing as art comes to Waddington CustotBritish art has a penchant for painting reality. From John Constable to Lucian Freud, you could even claim that it’s the national genius. This exhibition explores a much less well-known generation of meticulous picture makers who portrayed British life between the world wars. It includes the spookily precise portraits of Meredith Fr
  
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• Flash the flesh: Manchester's gay club heroes – in pictures

  30-06-2017 08:00
  
  From sweaty encounters at the Haçienda to cross-dressing pageants in seedy pubs, Manchester’s music scene has always loved LGBT culture. The curator of new show Queer Noise talks us through its finest moments – and golden codpieces Continue reading...
  
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• Artistic Director- Pittsburgh Public Theater

  30-06-2017 04:41 via feedproxy.google.com
  PPT, the leading resident theater company in Western Pennsylvania, seeks its new Artistic Director. Centrally located in Pittsburgh’s vibrant cultural district, PPT is highly regarded for its art and financial health. The AD will provide the artistic vision for PPT, select seasons and artists and in conjunction with a Managing Director represent the theater to all its communities. The full position description can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/PittsPublic-ArtDir
  Pittsburgh Public Thea
  
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• Lucio Fontana reconstructed: ten of the Italian sculptor’s celebrated Environments will be rebuilt for a show in Milan

  30-06-2017 04:01
  
  The appetite for shows dedicated to the late Italian artist Lucio Fontana appears unabated with another major exhibition planned this autumn at the vast Pirelli HangarBicocca space in Milan (Ambienti/Environments, 21 September-25 February 2018). Curators at the Italian venue will bring together ten of Fontanas immersive Ambienti (Environments) in collaboration with the Milan-based Fondazione Lucio Fontana.
  The show is due to include reconstructions of some of the most important walk-through env
  
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• Lucio Fontana reconstructed: ten of the Italian sculptor’s celebrated Environments to be rebuilt for show in Milan

  30-06-2017 04:01
  
  The appetite for shows dedicated to the late Italian artist Lucio Fontana appears unabated with another major exhibition planned this autumn at the vast Pirelli HangarBicocca space in Milan (Ambienti/Environments, 21 September-25 February 2018). Curators at the Italian venue will bring together ten of Fontanas immersive Ambienti (Environments) in collaboration with the Milan-based Fondazione Lucio Fontana.
  The show is due to include reconstructions of some of the most important walk-through env
  
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• Shubbak, London’s Arab arts and culture festival, opens this weekend

  30-06-2017 03:00
  
  The fourth edition of Shubbak, the biennial London festival that celebrates Arab art and culture, starts this weekend. The two-week-long festival (1 to 16 July) includes more than 150 artists from 14 Arab countries at over 80 events showing visual art, performance, film and literature. This years offerings will focus on looking imaginatively to the future, whilst reflecting on the fragility, resilience and challenges of artists in times of crisis, a press statement says.
  The visual arts program
  
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