Arts news

• The Smithsonian Plans To Shut Its IMAX Theatre. It's A Puzzling Decision

  28-08-2017 23:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The Washington-based Smithsonian has decided to trim its fat by replacing its impressive facility with a restaurant. To little surprise, the decision to give priority to hot dogs over hot docs has not been popular in the educational-film world.
  
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• How Books Are Read Is As Important As What's In Them

  28-08-2017 23:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "It has long been thought, for instance, that the print revolution of the 18th century resulted in a shift from oral to silent reading, from shared reading to indulging in a book of one’s own, as books became more available to a wider range of people while leisure time also increased. But, says Abigail Williams, such a clear-cut transition is difficult to trace."
  
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• Where does the Berkshire Museum go from here?

  28-08-2017 23:00
  The charming, quiet Berkshire Museum is suddenly tempest tossed. Following its announcement of a new mission, a jamboree of pious finger-wagging ensued. National arts organisations clamour in protest, but their buildings are in good shape. They dont have to worry from month to month whether staff salaries get paid. Yes, the Berkshire Museum endured long periods of bad management, but Pittsfields economy tanked when its core industries left. With them exited much of the museums donor base. Its f
  
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• On the side of the angels

  28-08-2017 23:00
  Vittorio Scarpati lay dying in Manhattans Cabrini Medical Center for five months before finally succumbing to Aids in 1989, one of the thousands of New Yorkers to fall victim to the epidemic that ravaged the cityand the wider worldin the 1980s and 1990s.
  In those months, Scarpati, a 34-year-old cartoonist and artist from Italy, filled notebooks with hundreds of felt-tip pen drawings that illustrated his plightthe collapse of both lungs, the pneumonia, the gurgling suction machinery inserted into
  
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• Objections to Ai Weiwei installation: much ado about nothing?

  28-08-2017 23:00
  A site-specific installation by Ai Weiwei for the passageway of the 1892 Washington Square Arch in New York, part of the artists upcoming city-wide exhibition Good Fences Make Good Neighbors (24 October-11 February 2018), seems to have ruffled some neighbors feathers. On 25 August, the president of the Washington Square Association community group, Trevor Sumner, addressed an open letter to the Public Art Fund, which is organising the show, to raise its objections to the planned installation. T
  
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• Must-see shows this autumn

  28-08-2017 23:00
  Basquiat: Boom for Real
  Barbican, London
  21 September-28 January 2018 The last Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition in London was, remarkably, a 1996 show at the Serpentine Gallery of around 20 works. Now, the one-time graffiti artist who became a star in the 1980s (and died of a drug overdose in 1988) is the subject of a much grander survey. Around 100 of his major works, accompanied by an extensive film and live programme, come to the Barbican Centre in September. Among the items in the show
  
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• New Brooklyn Gallery Aims to ‘De-Gentrify’ Space Formerly Occupied by American Medium

  28-08-2017 22:08 via artnews.com
  Named Housing, the storefront opens in September with a two-person show by Winslow Laroche and Brandon Holmes. Read More
  
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• Study: People Pay More Attention To High-Volume Of Reviews Rather Than To Quality Reviews

  28-08-2017 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Across various combinations of average rating and number of reviews, participants routinely chose the option with more reviews. This bias was so strong that they often favored the more-reviewed phone case even when both of the options had low ratings, effectively choosing the product that was, in statistical terms, more likely to be low quality."
  
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• Brain-Damaged Former Violin Star Makes Music Again Through Brain Waves Linked To Computer

  28-08-2017 21:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "In a groundbreaking project led by Plymouth University and the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in London, her brain was linked to a computer using Brain Computer Music Interfacing software, allowing her to compose and play music again. This month, for the first time she was able to perform with her best friend Alison Balfour, with whom she last played when they were both violinists in the Welsh National Opera Orchestra in the 1980s."
  
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• After A Century Of Puzzling, Researchers Have Cracked The Brilliant Code Of A 1000-Year-Old Tablet

  28-08-2017 21:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "The team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney believe that the four columns and 15 rows of cuneiform – wedge shaped indentations made in the wet clay – represent the world’s oldest and most accurate working trigonometric table, a working tool which could have been used in surveying, and in calculating how to construct temples, palaces and pyramids."
  
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• Texas museums brace for full impact of Hurricane Harvey

  28-08-2017 20:38
  Tropical Storm Harvey continues to batter south-eastern Texas with torrential rain, potentially displacing thousands of residents in Houston and the surrounding area. Most museums across the region remain closed and many took precautions before the storm to protect their collections and staff. This page will be updated with replies from institutions as they come in.
  The Museum of Fine Art, Houston (MFAH) closed its main campus, Bayou Bend, Rienzi and Glassell School locations and Friday, and ha
  
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• Editorial & Media Relations Coordinator

  28-08-2017 20:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  Do you have a passion for music and writing? Love your red pen? If you answered "Yes!" you may be just the extraordinary person The Cleveland Orchestra is looking for as our new Editorial & Media Relations Coordinator.
  As a compelling storyteller with a passion for music, the Editorial and Media Relations Coordinator will help to create compelling narratives about the power of music and inspiring artistry of The Cleveland Orchestra, with a central focus on the Orchestra’s mission to pr
  
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• $50 Million Class Action Suit Filed Filed Against Royal Winnipeg Ballet Over Nude Photos

  28-08-2017 20:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  A former student of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet is filing a class-action lawsuit against the school and former instructor Bruce Monk, alleging Monk took nude photos and sold them online.
  
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• John Riepenhoff and Ryan Wallace at Elaine de Kooning House, East Hampton, New York

  28-08-2017 20:19 via artnews.com
  See images from one notable show every weekday. Read More
  
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• Broadway's Social Media Problem

  28-08-2017 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Actors' Equity has contracts with the Broadway League and various producers that constrict what can be recorded; these also make it clear who owns the footage, and it's not the actors. They can retweet or share something posted by the show or a news outlet, but they typically can't just go on their own for self-promotion purposes. In recent years, because of the growing importance of social media, actors have been grumbling that they need footage rights."
  
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• Alex Israel’s Feature-Length Film ‘SPF-18’—a Teen Surfing Drama Set During a Summer in Malibu—Will Be Released on iTunes in September

  28-08-2017 19:42 via artnews.com
  The artist also plans to hit the road, visiting high schools and screening the work. Read More
  
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• What A Writer Sees That The Reader Doesn't

  28-08-2017 19:27 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "You come up with an image, phrase or sentence. Your head snaps back, and you say to yourself, Where did that come from?! I’m not talking about automatic writing, though that may be part of it. I mean the entire range of invisible forces that produce and affect the work. There are things the writer sees that the reader does not; things the reader sees that the writer does not; and things neither of us ever sees. These, the most entrancing of the lot, have a power of their own. Li
  
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• MCA Chicago makes the most of Murakami merch mania

  28-08-2017 19:08
  The demand for Murakami merchandise at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago shows no signs of letting up. With just a few weeks left before the travelling retrospective Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg closes on 24 September, the museums shop continues to roll out new items, including limited edition prints that sell out as soon as they are made available. Its still very much jamming in the store, says Mark Millmore, the MCAs director of retail. He adds that museum staff has had
  
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• Davie Douglas obituary

  28-08-2017 19:05
  
  My friend David Douglas, who has died aged 56 following a stroke, was a multitalented artist, teacher, musician and gardener. In his life, as with his art, he drew inspiration from the landscape in his native Ayrshire, in Cyprus and in the Highlands of Scotland.Davie was born in Kilwinning, North Ayrshire, and grew up in Fairlie, the son of Judy (nee MacCreadie) and John Douglas, a mechanical engineer. At Largs Academy (1974-1978) his artistic talents were spotted by a kindly and committed teach
  
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• How Big A Factor Is Surprise In Enjoyment Of A Pop Song? A Neuroscience Answer

  28-08-2017 19:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Based on the music cognition literature, we propose two hypotheses for why some musical pieces are preferred over others. The first, the Absolute-Surprise Hypothesis, states that unexpected events in music directly lead to pleasure. The second, the Contrastive-Surprise Hypothesis, proposes that the juxtaposition of unexpected events and subsequent expected events leads to an overall rewarding response."
  
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• Trisha Brown Remembered: A Reckless Disregard For Boundaries

  28-08-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Trisha Brown’s dance made a singular impression, but it’s hard to remember specifically what she did. Most photos of her show her aiming in several directions at once, but they’re deceptive. They make her dancing look static when she never was still. I’ve never seen such a fluent body. Yet she didn’t look as if she was just flinging herself around."
  
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• Hammer Museum Makes Three New Board Appointments

  28-08-2017 18:30 via artnews.com
  Linda Janger is among the supporters of the museum in Los Angeles. Read More
  
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• Why America Needs Its New National Center For Choreography

  28-08-2017 18:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "I’m interested in how we can amplify space and proximity for artists who want to explore an idea bigger than just their next project. For example, there’s the Dancing Laboratory, which will initially center around BODYTRAFFIC, an LA-based company that commissions two or three pieces a year. The commissioning model generally suffers, because the artist must write the grant without knowing what the work will be yet, they raise the funds, and then put all the energy and resources into
  
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• Man Sold £30,000 In Fake Artworks. Not Very Good Fakes As It Turns Out...

  28-08-2017 17:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Richard Pearson, 56, from Sunderland, was jailed in January for selling 14 faked drawings and pictures to a gallery in Northumberland. He admitted fraud and forgery charges and was sentenced to three years and seven months. Suspicions were aroused when a restorer noticed that one of the canvases Pearson used was too new. A price on a receipt he claimed was from the 1960s was also spotted to be in decimal pounds and pence, rather than pounds and shillings, and a telephone number he used was too
  
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• Is Theatre An Ideal Space To Get An 'Empathy Workout'?

  28-08-2017 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Yes. Theatre is, to put it bluntly, special (and science backs that up). "There is something about theatre in particular that transforms the way we consider humanity. After surviving millennia, it remains one of the most popular and desirable modes of storytelling. Beyond entertainment, there is something we gain at the neural level by engaging with theatre."
  
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• South Africa’s first legal auction of rhinoceros horn fails to attract buyers

  28-08-2017 16:46
  South Africa's first legal, online auction of rhinoceros hornsprized by some collectors but banned for international trade due to the animals threatened statusdrew few bidders.
  The three-day auction, which closed Friday 25 August, was hosted by Pretoria-based Van's Auctioneers. On offer were 264 pieces of rhino horn, weighing a total of 500 kilogrammes (1,100 pounds), consigned by rhino breeder John Hume, who, according to Agence France-Presse, owns the world's largest rhino farm. The sale
  
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• Here's How Museums Use Their Architecture To Court Bigger Crowds

  28-08-2017 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  New ideas say it's time for museums to embrace their exteriors, even out into the sidewalks or streets near them, and certainly their plazas. In one case, in London, "the idea behind the project was to see the museum not just as a cultural project, but as an urban one. It needs to be of the street."
  
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• Hollywood Has Its Worst Weekend Since The One After September 11, 2001

  28-08-2017 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Actually, after adjusting for inflation, last weekend was even worse than that one. How is that possible? Blame a hurricane - and boxing.
  
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• A New Latinx Artist Sci Fi Show Posits That 'In Space, We Are All Aliens'

  28-08-2017 15:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  After University of California Riverside curators decided on the sci-fi theme, "they traveled to six countries and 11 American cities where they discovered a wide range of artworks, made mainly over the last 20 years, dealing with concerns including the politics of immigration and the dangers of military surveillance."
  
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• Poet Benjamin Zephaniah May Be Almost 60, But He Remains Angry And In It For The Revolution

  28-08-2017 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Zephaniah is furious about - for instance - police surveillance of Black communities and the neglect of Grenfell Tower that led to the conflagration there. But he keeps a sense of humor: "When I talk to kids, I tell them about me growing up in gangs in Birmingham and how one day I got up and I went to London and I got involved in another gang and these were a real hard lot. All these kids are listening to me, and they go ‘Oh, you poor thing.’ And I go, ‘It was a gang of poets a
  
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• So Seattle Has A Lenin Statue, And It's Become Quite Controversial

  28-08-2017 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Oh, Seattle. "The shaft of the flesh-colored dildo atop Vladimir Lenin's head pointed upward at a slight angle, giving the Russian revolutionary the appearance of a grumpy, hyper-sexualized unicorn."
  
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• The Oregon Bach Festival Suddenly Fires Its Popular Artistic Director After A Season Lackluster In Earnings

  28-08-2017 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Matthew Halls, halfway through a four-year contract that saw him take the Oregon Bach Festival in the direction of historically informed performance, says he doesn't know why he was fired, and the University of Oregon's press release is not useful ("We look forward to a wider range of programmatic choices, community events, and cross-departmental relationships with UO faculty, staff, and students," for instance). "Halls said he was not well versed in the specifics of his contract, which was to h
  
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• Morning Links: Hurricane Harvey Edition

  28-08-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
  
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• Ten Days In The Overwhelming Disneyland Of Classical Music

  28-08-2017 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The Salzburg Festival is so jammed with usually superb performances - six or eight every day of the six weeks it runs - that it's hard to tell if anything has changed since a new artistic director took the helm. It's still star-focused, and "The Vienna Philharmonic, a luxurious, willful house band, remains formidable."
  
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• The Secret, And Rather Bloodthirsty, History Of Libraries

  28-08-2017 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  That's right, it's not just a metaphor. "Library fauna such as bookworms, bedbugs and microbats have long been the subject of study. But a little-known subfield concentrates on the human biology of libraries."
  
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• At Long Last, It's Their Turn At The Emmys

  28-08-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  They met at Sundance Theater Lab 10 years ago, and though they've been in high-profile projects since, it wasn't until 2016 that both Sterling K. Brown and Brian Tyree Henry broke out (which is why you might know them as Randall from "This Is Us" or Paper Boi from "Atlanta"). It's been quite a ride.
  
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• No, Essays Right Now Are Too Self-Revelatory And Might Even Be Just Bad

  28-08-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  One way is "all rhyme and no reason," mannered and polished, filled with self-revelation; the other is "so circumspect in ...claims to self-knowledge that a reader grown used to the personal essay’s relentless flash of exposure might wonder what kind of shy, self-effacing creature produced [it]."
  
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• Hirshhorn Museum Acquires 11 Photographs by Japanese Artists

  28-08-2017 14:00 via artnews.com
  The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., has acquired 11 photographs by Japanese artists. The works make up one of the largest single acquisitions of Japanese photography by an American institution to date.Included among the purchases are works … Read More
  
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• The Essay, Says Rebecca Solnit, Has Re-entered A Golden Age

  28-08-2017 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Solnit, who has written many things, including the extremely viral "Men Explain Things to Me," says the time is ripe. "When I started [Solnit is 56], the essay was belles-lettres, decorative. Essays by women, particularly, tended to be treated as memoir even when they were not. Now they’re seen as powerful and compelling again. "
  
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• Latin Music Writer, Broadcaster, And Expert Sue Steward - 'La Reina' - Dies At 70

  28-08-2017 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Steward became a press officer for Richard Branson's first foray into a record label in the 1970s, toured with Captain Beefheart, and worked with the Sex Pistols before she became fascinated with promoting both Latin music and what's often called "world music."
  
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• Pianist Taka Kigawa Talks Messiaen, And Playing The Bird Marathon

  28-08-2017 13:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Messaien's "Catalogue of Birds" is "an absurd undertaking for a pianist. Its sprawling score demands that performers master three hours of complex music: the painstakingly transcribed sounds of European birds." But Kigawa is performing it today in Greenwich Village. How?
  
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• Yeah, That Big Trump White House Redesign? Basically Looks Like A Bad Hotel

  28-08-2017 13:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  For instance: "The plain old Obama brown carpet clearly wasn’t lustrous or glorious enough, but the new busier version looks like it has been lifted straight from a mid-range chain hotel. It’s clearly a look that the hotelier Trump is comfortable with: a surface of ornament, but ultimately bland, forgettable and good for hiding the stains."
  
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• Smoke, mirrors and smashed-bottle mountains: an artist obsessed with light - in pictures

  28-08-2017 08:00
  German artist Adolf Luther was obsessed with light, and used mirrors, lenses, lasers, cigarette smoke and cheap razorblades to manipulate it into mesmerising installations Continue reading...
  
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• A matter of still life and death in Guildhall Art Gallery exhibition

  28-08-2017 08:00
  Contemporary works and still lifes by the old masters come together in a charming but increasingly disconcerting exhibitionDeath is everywhere among the roses in an initially charmingly pretty but increasingly disconcerting exhibition, the first at Guildhall Art Gallery devoted to still life art: the lovely flowers are there, but so are bloody hunks of raw meat, a bullet fashioned from human bone and a cobwebby skull made from dust.“It’s death. It’s always been all about death,
  
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