Arts news

• Solving Problems Through Art - Peter Schjeldahl On Agnes Gund's Sale Of A Lichtenstein To Fund Social Justice

  05-07-2017 23:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Roy Lichtenstein died in 1997. What might he think of all this, if he were alive today? He was a Democrat; he created prints in support of Dukakis, in 1988, and of Clinton-Gore, in 1992. But his overriding drive was to bring qualities of high art into taut accord with motifs from commercial mass culture. There is a term for that kind of aspiration: American.
  
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• Someone's Always Announcing The Death Of The Short Story. Don't Believe Them

  05-07-2017 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "While bitter experience has shown poetry exactly where it stands in the marketplace, and the novel has shrugged off multiple reports of its death and maintained pre-eminence, the short story is continually characterised as the neglected form that will be great again. The funny thing is, when you explore its history you find the perception of a distant golden age, an undistinguished present and a return to glory has always been around: the short story has a problem with reality."
  
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• Merlin Carpenter at Galerie Neu, Berlin

  05-07-2017 22:49 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday. Read More
  
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• Hepworth Wakefield art gallery wins museum of the year award

  05-07-2017 22:45
  
  Gallery is praised for creating new prize for sculpture and staging string of ‘breathtaking’ exhibitionsThe Hepworth Wakefield art gallery in West Yorkshire has been named winner of the world’s biggest museum prize after a year of “breathtaking” exhibitions, booming visitor numbers and the creation of an important award for contemporary sculpture. The gallery, housed in a David Chipperfield-designed concrete building on the banks of the river Calder, opened in 2011
  
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• Hirshhorn Museum Adds Isaac ‘Yitz’ Applbaum to Board

  05-07-2017 22:44 via artnews.com
  The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. has named Isaac “Yitz” Applbaum to its board.Applbaum is a San Francisco-based entrepreneur and philanthropist and is also on the board of directors for the Asia Society, which promotes relationships between leaders … Read More
  
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• In The Age Of The Curator, Are Degrees In Curatorship Worth Anything?

  05-07-2017 22:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Though it was originally an occupation that kept one behind the scenes, the appointment of curatorial posts is now fodder for news headlines, particularly when it comes to events like documenta or the Venice Biennale. More and more frequently, critics evaluate exhibitions based on how they are developed or formulated—thereby placing the responsibility of a show’s success directly upon the curator’s shoulders, and proving that they are no longer considered merely an overse
  
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• Study: Children Are Getting Less Art In Their Lives

  05-07-2017 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "According to new research conducted in the Netherlands by the Dutch school inspectorate, the amount of time children spend drawing by hand both in and out of school has been reduced over the last 20 years; the study also found that their artwork has declined significantly in quality and complexity since a similar study was conducted two decades ago."
  
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• The Role Of Laughter In Our Culture

  05-07-2017 21:37 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Laughter is no different than political systems, commercial relations or artistic practices: it evolves over time, the result and cause of material and social transformations. For medieval man, laughter was the great leveller. Preceding Martin Luther’s priesthood of all believers was Rabelais’s priesthood of all belly-laughers. Inclusive and communal, laughter left no one untouched; no less universal than faith, it was a bit more subversive. In fact, as Bakhtin notes, late-medieval l
  
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• Music Academy Of The West Returns To Business - Music Of Our Time

  05-07-2017 21:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "We have started to make music of today part of our normal way of doing business. We’re not restricting music of living composers to a far corner of the summer and calling it 'new music week.' That sort of new-music ghetto is, to me, not the best way to present it. It suggests that new music is its own thing, and not connected with anything else. We think this music belongs on the same concert as Beethoven, Dvorak, and Stravinsky."
  
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• Canadian Comedy Comes Into Its Own With The Trump Era

  05-07-2017 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "In Canada, humor has become a way of pushing back against America’s cultural and political dominance, like a class clown subtly undermining the teacher. Its changing comedy offers a lens into how the nation is changing, too."
  
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• Painter Ed Mieczkowski, Pioneer Of Op Art Movement, Dead At 87

  05-07-2017 20:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "[He] was part of a circle of mid-century geometric abstractionists active in Ohio that included Julian Stanczak ... Like Stanczak, Mieczkowski participated in the pivotal 1965 exhibition 'The Responsive Eye' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which launched Op Art. Mieczkowski co-founded the Anonima group in 1960 in Cleveland with painters Ernst Benkert and Francis Hewitt."
  
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• Producing Artistic Director - Theatreworks, Colorado Springs

  05-07-2017 19:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  THEATREWORKS, on the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs campus, is a professional theater company located on this growing campus. THEATREWORKS will move into their new theatre in the $60,000,000 multi-theatre Ent Center when it opens in early 2018. Designed by NY theater designers Hardy Collaborative, the THEATREWORKS space is a fully flexible theatre seating 250 people. With a budget approaching $2M, THEATREWORKS is the leading producer of classic and contemporary plays in the region. The
  
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• Our Changing Notions Of Community Mirror The Rise Of Individuality And Decline Of Institutions

  05-07-2017 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “It used to be that people were born as part of a community, and had to find their place as individuals. Now people are born as individuals, and have to find their community.”  That change is on display in many facets of American culture, political and otherwise.
  
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• Royal Academy show to look back at 250 years of Summer Exhibitions

  05-07-2017 19:25
  
  The Great Spectacle, to be held in London in 2018, will illustrate controversies and disputes of art world since 1768The Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, as traditional a British summer fixture as Wimbledon, the Derby and underwhelming weather, will next year be bigger than ever before and accompanied by an exhibition charting its history.
  The RA said it is planning an exhibition called The Great Spectacle which will run alongside what is the largest open submission art exhibition in the
  
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• The Sites Where Online Culture Gets Created Just Can't Make Money

  05-07-2017 19:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Brian Feldman looks at Twitter, Reddit, and especially Tumblr - all of which have enormous user bases but still have trouble turning a profit - and why they're so friendly to creative expression and sharing but likely doomed never to earn Facebook-level revenues.
  
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• Frieze New York Lowers Booth Prices for Young Gallery Sector, Taps Andrew Bonacina as Advisor

  05-07-2017 18:56 via artnews.com
  Here’s some good news on a post-holiday Wednesday: Frieze New York has rejiggered its Frame sector, where young galleries showcase the work of one artist, lowering the fees to ease the burden for cash-strapped up-and-comers. Frame offers spots only to … Read More
  
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• The Worm Here Is Fluorescent Green: Katja Novitskova Creates an Alien Landing Site in New York’s City Hall Park

  05-07-2017 18:50 via artnews.com
  The list of movies in which the apocalypse hits New York isn’t short. There’s The Day After Tomorrow, with the Statue of Liberty memorably freezing over after a global-warming disaster. There’s Cloverfield, with the Statue of Liberty’s head getting flung like … Read More
  
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• One Of The Best Sopranos In The World Performs Only In A Small Area In Germany. Why?

  05-07-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Speaking in May over lunch at a restaurant here, Anja Harteros, 44, politely but firmly deflected certain questions about her personal life. “These are private reasons,” she said, “that I didn’t want such big travel, with big distance from home.”
  
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• Converge 45, Portland-Based Art Festival, Details Programming for Second Edition

  05-07-2017 18:14 via artnews.com
  Converge 45, an art festival in Portland, Oregon, has announced the group of artists, curators, and organizations set to participate in its upcoming second edition. Jennifer Steinkamp, Jim Hodges, and Catherine Opie are among the 24 artists who will have work … Read More
  
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• Ringling Bros. May Be Gone, But 21st-Century Circus Is Thriving (Animal-Free)

  05-07-2017 18:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "No joke: Circus scholar Janet Davis counts some 85 circus schools and training centers scattered across the country, where everyone from bona fide big-top and art-house pros to curious civilians and energetic youngsters learn the ropes, high wires and German wheels of circus yore. ... And roving troupes and single-ring spectacles abound." Journalist Holly Millea visits the very last performance of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Xtreme as well as several of the new-style circus sp
  
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• How The SuperRich Have Enables "Thought Leaders"

  05-07-2017 17:26 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The rich have, Daniel Drezner writes, empowered a new kind of thinker—the “thought leader”—at the expense of the much-fretted-over “public intellectual.” Whereas public intellectuals like Noam Chomsky or Martha Nussbaum are skeptical and analytical, thought leaders like Thomas Friedman and Sheryl Sandberg “develop their own singular lens to explain the world, and then proselytize that worldview to anyone within earshot.”
  
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• Even After 'Moonlight' Won Best Picture, It's Still Hard To Get Queer-Themed Movies Made

  05-07-2017 17:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Moonlight grossed $65 million worldwide on a $1.5 million production budget, but the consensus still seems to be that financiers don't see an audience for these films beyond the LGBTQ community. When they don't see an audience, they don't see a profit." Vanity Fair talks to half a dozen LGBTQ filmmakers about the struggles they continue to face.
  
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• Here's One Retiring ABT Principal Who's Not Leaving By Choice

  05-07-2017 16:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Veronika Part, the Russian-born ballerina who has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theater since 2009, will retire from the company at the end of this season because her contract was not renewed for another year."
  
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• Does The 'Scaffold' Controversy Demonstrate That Museums Are Colonialist By Their Very Nature?

  05-07-2017 16:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "We asked several American curators to consider the controversy's lessons for the larger museum world. Their e-mail responses, which have lightly edited for clarity, set a new tone for how cultural institutions can work with local indigenous communities."
  
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• Edward Albee Wanted His Unfinished Plays Burned, And His Executors Will Probably Do It

  05-07-2017 15:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "The executors have made clear they plan to honor Albee's desires, even when they might be controversial. ... Now at stake, at a minimum, are the latest drafts of Albee's final known project, Laying an Egg, about a middle-aged woman struggling to become pregnant."
  
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• City of Kassel Awards Olu Oguibe Documenta 14’s Arnold Bode Prize

  05-07-2017 15:33 via artnews.com
  Olu Oguibe’s work was among the most prominently displayed in the city of Kassel, Germany, during Documenta 14—whenever you got off the tram at Königsplatz, you saw his gigantic black obelisk, inscribed with words from the Book of Matthew written in … Read More
  
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• Here's Some Good News! California Gives Big, Long-Term Boost To Arts Funding

  05-07-2017 15:17 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Gov. Jerry Brown and the state legislature have increased the annual budget of the California Arts Council by $6.8 million to a total, for 2017-18, of $19.48 million. And the extra funding is not one-time; it's permanent.
  
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• When Arts Institutions Stagnate, Some Like To Blame The Board - And That's Unfair, Says Anne Midgette

  05-07-2017 15:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Boards are less a problem than a symptom of a larger, systemic issue: a pervasive loss of creativity in large performing arts institutions. I'm not the only one to notice that our largest performing arts institutions have become fundamentally inartistic bureaucracies ... Companies have to work so hard to maintain their status quo, to keep the funding coming in and the performances going on, that many of them have lost sight of a truly creative approach. They don't have the time or resources to
  
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• Morning Links: Flint Arrowheads Edition

  05-07-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
  
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• The Met Has Put Off Building A New Wing For Leonard Lauder's Cubism Collection - So Will He Still Donate The Paintings?

  05-07-2017 14:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Hanging over the Met's decision this year to postpone its new $600 million wing for Modern and contemporary art - as well as the museum's recent management turmoil - have been nagging questions: Is Mr. Lauder’s gift, valued at more than $1 billion four years ago, now at risk? If the Met takes too long to resurrect the project or ultimately scales it back, might Mr. Lauder take his collection elsewhere?" Lauder says definitely not, but the donation contract does have a completion date.
  
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• New Mexico Philharmonic Names Its First Music Director: Roberto Minczuk

  05-07-2017 14:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Minczuk was appointed music director of the Theatro Municipal Orchestra of São Paulo earlier this year. He is also the music director laureate of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra in Canada and conductor emeritus of the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro. He recently completed a 10-year term in Calgary, becoming the longest-running music director in its history."
  
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• Jan Fontein, 89, Former Director Of Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston

  05-07-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Dr. Fontein, a renowned Asian art curator and historian who restored the MFA to solid financial footing when he took over after a period of internal strife at the museum, ... ushered the institution into the modern era of museums as cultural marketplaces, overseeing the fund-raising and creation of the I.M. Pei-designed west wing that included expansive shops, restaurants, auditoriums, and galleries."
  
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• It's Time For 'A Move Away From Culture By And For An Elite To Culture By And For All'

  05-07-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Stella Duffy of the Fun Palaces movement: "Our commitment to 'excellence and quality' as defined by mainstream, metropolitan-based thinking many decades ago, might need to shift to a new version of 'excellence and quality', one defined by a new generation of makers and creators - and this time from every part of society. If we want cultural democracy, genuine culture for all, elitism must make way for creativity and community-led culture. We need to offer everyone not only access to the products
  
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• All That Arts Funding Going To London Benefits The Entire Country, Says London Mayor

  05-07-2017 13:44 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Sadiq Khan, responding to Arts Council England's decision to shift some funding from the capital to the regions: "I'm not saying we deserve a bigger slice of the cake for the sake of it. I'm saying that actually, if the arts in London does well, the whole country benefits." (Well ...)
  
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• Paris Opera Ballet Star Nicolas Le Riche To Head Royal Swedish Ballet

  05-07-2017 13:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "He has signed a five-year contract with the Royal Swedish Opera and will arrive in Stockholm mid-August. ... Like his predecessor, Le Riche sees no difference between classical ballet and contemporary dance: 'both are facets of the same Art,' he says."
  
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• South Korean coffee artist recreates Munch's The Scream in cream – in pictures

  05-07-2017 12:57
  
  Barista Lee Kang-bin is taking coffee art to the next level, recreating miniatures of famous paintings, including Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, on foamy cups of java at his central Seoul cafe Continue reading...
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.04.17

  05-07-2017 08:12 via feedproxy.google.com
  The purpose of panning
  My Wall Street Journal review of the Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! stirred up a good-sized dust storm of controversy, as pans are wont to do. ... read more
  AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2017-07-03Kusama Exhibit Is A Wow – And More
  Yayoi Kusama is one of those artists whose work is easy to love. Although she made it (or much of it) as therapy for herself ... read more
  AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-07-04Ret
  
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• What if women ruled the world?

  05-07-2017 08:00
  
  An end to abuse, a law against mansplaining, and reparations for two millennia of injustice … as a new sci-fi art show imagines a female-led future, we ask comedians, writers, politicians and CEOs for their visionHow would women change the world? Share your viewsBridget Christie, comedian Continue reading...
  
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• Cool Britannia symbolised hope – but all it delivered was a culture of inequality

  05-07-2017 08:00
  
  It’s 20 years since Tony Blair reshaped Britain’s economy around the arts, yet the project’s legacy is an exploitative sector dominated by people from an astonishingly small demographic pool
  It was the most high-profile moment of New Labour’s “Cool Britannia” campaign: a celebration of a modern, outward-facing Britain with a new kind of industry, and a new kind of workforce. “We saw it as a chance to redefine what the UK’s economic future would be
  
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