Arts news

• Miranda Strickland-Constable obituary

  16-07-2017 14:48
  
  My former colleague Miranda Strickland-Constable was a curator at Leeds City Art Gallery, where her purchases were among the most adventurous by municipal galleries in Britain in the 1970s and 80s. In themselves courageous, they gave courage to other curators to capture the same progressive spirit.Hers were highly cerebral artists, often introduced to Leeds in the face of opposition from a conservative local audience and sceptical politicians, and in whose work, often using non-traditional media
  
  Read more

• Art can be a powerful medicine against dementia | Nicci Gerrard

  16-07-2017 10:30
  
  The co-founder of John’s Campaign on a new parliamentary report that confirms the profoundly beneficial role of the arts in helping people with dementiaA few weeks ago, turning on the radio, I hear a voice saying that creative writing can help wounds heal faster. Startled, I turn the volume up. Volunteers were given small wounds; half were then asked to write about something distressing in their life, the other half about something mundane. The wounds of the confessional writers healed sub
  
  Read more

• Soul of a Nation review – the extraordinary art of the black power era

  16-07-2017 09:00
  
  Tate Modern, London
  Civil rights meet aesthetics in this riveting survey of 20 crucial years of black American art and struggleA man with shades and a perfectly picked afro stands against a flat silver background. He is dressed in a Superman T-shirt. His muscular arms are folded in a painting as sharply defined as a medieval icon, yet as modern as his aviator shades. The canvas, from 1969, is highly stylised and irreducibly cool.This is the self-portrait of Barkley L Hendricks, who died in April
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUKnews on Twitter!