Arts news

• Augustus Casely-Hayford Named Director of Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art

  27-09-2017 23:59 via artnews.com
  He takes the place of Johnnetta Cole, who announced her resignation last year. Read More
  
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• Film Society Cancels Screening After Filmmaker Announces "Justice Pricing" Plan To Charge White Males More

  27-09-2017 23:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Shiraz Higgins used the false name Sid Mohammed when he announced a so-called justice-pricing model to charge white men as much as $20, while others would pay $10 based on the purchasing power of individual groups and "price discrimination."
  
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• ‘Eat It, Yankee Doodle!’: Royal Academy America Gala Brings the Brits Out in New York a Week Before Frieze London

  27-09-2017 23:26 via artnews.com
  Thomas Heatherwick regaled the crowd with a talk about his recent projects, whether in progress, completed, or canceled. Read More
  
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• Have We Lost Control Of Our Computers?

  27-09-2017 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The problem is that we are attempting to build systems that are beyond our ability to intellectually manage... The problem is that programmers are having a hard time keeping up with their own creations. Since the 1980s, the way programmers work and the tools they use have changed remarkably little. There is a small but growing chorus that worries the status quo is unsustainable."
  
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• Yale School of Music seeks Director of Communications

  27-09-2017 22:55 via feedproxy.google.com
  Experienced communications professionals encouraged to apply for this unique and exciting opportunity! Support the creation, management and execution of communication strategies (including social media) from the School of Music.
  Yale University offers exciting opportunities for achievement and growth in New Haven, Connecticut. Conveniently located between Boston and New York, New Haven is the creative capital of Connecticut with cultural resources that include three major museums, a critically-a
  
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• A Lot of Hours of Sound: 20 Pianists Played Erik Satie’s ‘Vexations’ at the Guggenheim

  27-09-2017 22:51 via artnews.com
  The storied 19th-century composition features a passage to be repeated 840 times. Read More
  
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• Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art Hires A New Director

  27-09-2017 22:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Augustus Casely-Hayford is a force in London’s cultural scene, working as a curator, broadcaster and adviser with many organizations, including the Tate Britain, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the British Library. He created “The Lost Kingdoms of Africa” for the BBC; a six-part series for Sky Arts, “Tate Britain: Great British Walks”; and is working on films on landscape art. His book on Timbuktu and the rise of the Mali Empire will be published next year.
  
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• Much Of Public Radio's Audience Listens In Cars. What That Audience Still Listen In Driverless Cars?

  27-09-2017 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It’s still not clear what the entertainment systems in driverless cars will look like. The women have seen mockup designs that are very preliminary. “We don’t know if we’re essentially going to be presented with a platform from car companies where they’ll say, like, ‘Here’s your screen. Put what you want to put on it’ and now we’re competing with Netflix and Hulu,” said Muller. “Or is there a way to be part of the conversation, he
  
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• Founders of Moving Museum Join Art Basel Cities as Consultants, Putting Their Roving Exhibition Project on Hold

  27-09-2017 21:27 via artnews.com
  The art fair's official programming will launch in Buenos Aires next September. Read More
  
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• How Capoeira Evolved From Occult Martial Art To International Dance

  27-09-2017 21:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Capoeira developed in Brazil, derived from traditions brought across the Atlantic Ocean by enslaved Africans ... During this time, the art was considered a social infirmity and officially prohibited by the Brazilian Penal Code. The identification of 'the outlaw' with capoeira was so widespread that the word became a synonym for 'bum,' 'bandit,' and 'thief.' However, that did not stop the capoeiristas from practicing. They moved to marginal places and camouflaged the martial art as a form of dan
  
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• Bad Art, Bad Ethics, Bad Explanation: On the Guggenheim’s Removal of Artworks From ‘Art and China after 1989’

  27-09-2017 20:59 via artnews.com
  Shouldn’t museum members, visitors, and observers be given a more complete explanation for the initial inclusion and eventual withdrawal of these three dubious pieces? Read More
  
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• Poets: Lost In Academia

  27-09-2017 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Academic institutions are now the biggest steward of poets, who teach everything from freshmen composition courses to graduate workshops. While the financial viability of this arrangement for writers seems to be waning, as universities and colleges find it easier and cheaper to exploit the labor of academics, it is still the uncomfortable status quo.
  
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• Sharjah Art Foundation Director Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi Named Head of International Biennial Association

  27-09-2017 20:16 via artnews.com
  She will relocate the organization's headquarters to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Read More
  
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• After Three Major Documentaries About War, What Has Ken Burns Learned? 'Human Nature Doesn't Change'

  27-09-2017 20:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Whatever arrogance you have - is the past lesser or greater? It's all the same. And loss is loss is loss. And so wars are united, because they are big loss machines. They drive families apart and then some people don't come home. ... And that's why they're so instructive, because they remind us again and again of the worst of us. And we hope in some ways that by studying it you might mitigate it, but it won't. There will always be wars and everybody feels it the same." (podcast plus transcript)
  
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• ‘Referencing Alexander Calder: A Dialogue in Contemporary Chinese Art’ at Klein Sun Gallery, New York

  27-09-2017 19:10 via artnews.com
  See images from one notable show every weekday. Read More
  
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• Why Religious Belief Doesn't Count As Delusion, Despite What Richard Dawkins Thinks

  27-09-2017 19:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  As the eponymous physician in the TV series House said, "You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic." Neuroscientist Dean Burnett explains that it's all about the way the brain sets up its model of how the world works.
  
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• A New Theatre Magazine To Launch

  27-09-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Part of the calculus behind The X is TodayTix’s customer base—3.5 million people across 11 cities, with an average age of 29—which gives the magazine a considerable audience and opportunity for monetization right out of the gate."
  
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• Hermitic Wanderings: Into the Phantasmagorical Photographic World of Lucas Samaras

  27-09-2017 18:13 via artnews.com
  The 81-year-old artist holds forth about a gallery show in New York. Read More
  
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• Marc Balakjian obituary

  27-09-2017 18:06
  Award-winning artist and printmaker who resurrected the obscure medium of mezzotint, once popular for reproducing Constables and TurnersTwo months before his death at the age of 79, the artist Marc Balakjian visited Armenia for the first time to discover his cultural inheritance. His parents had fled to Lebanon from the genocide of Armenia, started by the Turks in 1915 and continued under the Soviets. The Armenian diaspora has lived with a sense of unfinished business and injustice ever since, a
  
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• Snopes.Com - In The Post-Truth Era, The Internet's Oldest Myth-Debunking Site's Problems Aren't Only Political

  27-09-2017 18:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Yes, for years the right-wing media complex has been accusing Snopes of liberal bias whenever it fact-checks a lie or myth the right likes, and in today's climate that situation has only gotten worse. Add to that the very bitter divorce of the site's founders, David and Barbara Mikkelson, and a financial dispute between David and the site's new co-owners that includes accusations of embezzlement, and Snopes is having a rough time of it.
  
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• How To Be Successful In Theatre? Maybe Take Risks?

  27-09-2017 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Chad Bauman argues: "Change is hard. I’ll admit it sometimes scares me. There are no guarantees. But how is that different from anything else in the theatre? It does surprise me when theatres elect to stick with a failing business model that is most certainly destined to lead to disastrous results over the long term rather than risking throwing it out the window for a shot at success."
  
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• Waqas Khan review – a message of love gently invades Manchester from outer space

  27-09-2017 17:29
  Manchester Art Gallery
  Intricately crafted using millions of pen marks, the Lahore artist’s epic, shimmering drawings capture stars, galaxies, mountains and moons. He is worthy of comparisons with Rothko and Mondrian‘Khushamdeed” means “welcome”. This Urdu word, also recognised in Persian and Arabic, has gently invaded Manchester, glowing in neon at the entrances to three of its museums. Waqas Khan, who created this public artwork, hopes it will reassure people ther
  
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• With A 'Superstar' At Its Helm, Harlem's Studio Museum Prepares To Build New Home By America's Leading Black Architect

  27-09-2017 16:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "As the Studio Museum prepares to break ground [on 125th Street] next year, coinciding with its 50th anniversary, [Thelma] Golden, 52, is overseeing the institution at a turning point in its history. ... Ms. Golden's name, meanwhile, keeps coming up for top posts, like those at the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the same time, Ms. Golden must defend the Studio Museum's importance in an age when the work of African-American artists is increasingly making its way into mains
  
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• With Largest Gift In Its History, San Francisco's Asian Art Museum Begins $38M Expansion

  27-09-2017 16:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Museum leaders gathered Tuesday morning to release details of the $38 million expansion that will - when finished in summer 2019 - nearly double its total exhibition space. The biggest addition is a new 8,500 square-foot, column-less exhibition pavilion" designed by Kulapat Yantrasast of the firm wHY. The pavilion will be named for museum board chair Akiko Yamazaki and her husband, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, who have contributed $25 million for the project.
  
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• The Real Challenge Of Being A Classical Music Critic: Anthony Tommasini Explains

  27-09-2017 15:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Describing performances, whether the New York debut of an exciting young Finnish pianist or a boldly radical production of The Magic Flute, is the core of the reviewing art. ... [Yet] music, especially purely instrumental music, resists being described in language. It's very hard to convey sounds through words. Perhaps that's what we most love about music: that it's beyond description, deeper than words. Yet the poor music critic has to try."
  
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• Twitter Will Try Doubling Its Character Limit - Just How Big A Deal Is This?

  27-09-2017 15:17 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "To start, the feature will only be available to a random set of users on the service. But if adopted by the platform as a whole, the change will constitute one of the most fundamental changes to Twitter's core product in years." Robinson Meyer answers seven questions about the change, such as, "Why would Twitter do such a thing?" (money), "What do 280 characters have to do with money?", and What does it mean for Twitter’s most (in-)famous user?"
  
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• ‘Vertigo’ Painting to Haunt Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in New Lynn Hershman Leeson Project

  27-09-2017 15:15 via artnews.com
  Titled 'VertiGhost,' the work addresses a fictional work at the Legion of Honor. Read More
  
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• What Disney Hall Sounds Like To An L.A. Philharmonic Musician On Its Stage

  27-09-2017 15:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "The seating arrangement for the musicians in an orchestra is designed, naturally, to make the music sound best to the audience sitting out in the hall. ... But [it] is definitely not optimized for the listening pleasure of the musicians, who hear a different cacophony depending on where they sit. 'The stage has 101 acoustical micro-climates. Every seat on that stage is different,' says section percussionist Perry Dreiman." (audio)
  
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• Morning Links: William the Hippo Edition

  27-09-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
  
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• Most Expensive Manuscript Ever Sold Goes For $35 Million

  27-09-2017 14:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The document is the original printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon, sold to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the church most people know as "Mormon") by the Community of Christ, the Independence, Missouri-based denomination formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
  
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• Guggenheim Museum Gets Pushback After Withdrawing Three Works Protested By Animal-Rights Activists

  27-09-2017 14:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Claiming that it had received threats of violence well beyond what it had encountered in the past, the Guggenheim pulled three pieces from its exhibition "Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World" - only to come under a new round of criticism from artists, curators, and PEN America for capitulating to "heightened political sensitivities that have been amplified by social media."
  
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• Gisèle Casadesus, Dean Of France's Classical Actors And Matriarch Of Its Great Performing Arts Dynasty, Dead At 103

  27-09-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Daughter of conductor Henri Casadesus and harpist Marie-Louise Beetz, mother of conductor Jean-Claude, composer Dominique, painter Béatrice, and actress Martine Casadesus, Gisèle joined the Comédie-Française in 1934 at age 20, where she played 120 roles over almost three decades. Afterwards, she had an extensive career in both theater and film; her final screen performance, at age 96, was with Gérard Depardieu in the 2010 film La Tête en friche. (in Frenc
  
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• Joffrey Ballet To Move Into Chicago's Lyric Opera House

  27-09-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Just as the two companies have opened their first major collaboration, "the Joffrey Ballet and Lyric Opera of Chicago announced Friday that the dance company will move its season residencies from the Auditorium Theatre to the Lyric Opera House, beginning in fall 2020."
  
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• Opera Australia Threatened With Fines For Hiring Too Many Foreign Singers

  27-09-2017 13:44 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  In the perpetual tug-of-war between hiring the best artists available from anywhere and helping Australian singers make a living in their home country, the balance has swung to the former, with the number of non-Australians in leading roles in the company having tripled over the past seven years. So a government report has recommended docking funding for Opera Australia by up to $200,000 if it doesn't maintain an "appropriate balance" of Australian and foreign singers.
  
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• Afghanistan's Cinema History, Some 7,000 Films, Saved From The Taliban

  27-09-2017 13:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "When the Taliban charged in to Afghanistan's state-run film company in the mid-1990s intent on destroying all the movies, Habibullah Ali risked everything to save them. He hid thousands of reels of footage showcasing Afghanistan's rich cultural history ... Two decades later those reels, which include long-lost movies and documentary images of Afghanistan before it was ravaged by violence, are being made available to watch again through digitisation."
  
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• Joseph Highmore infanticide painting to be shown in UK for first time

  27-09-2017 13:10
  The Angel of Mercy is part of exhibition of artist’s work at Foundling Museum, built to save abandoned children of 1700s LondonA nearly 300-year-old painting of a woman strangling her newborn is to hang on the walls of the institution for which it was intended, the Foundling hospital, built to save the abandoned children of Georgian London.The Angel of Mercy, painted by Joseph Highmore around 1746, will be shown for the first time in the UK as part of the Basic Instincts exhibition at the
  
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• Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.26.17

  27-09-2017 10:24 via feedproxy.google.com
  Zero Sum Funding?
  The pursuit of grants, sponsorships, and donations is a central focus of all nonprofits – the arts no less than any other type of tax exempt entity. It keeps us up at night, permeates our dreams ... read more
  AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-09-26Tom Petty at the Hollywood Bowl
  Last night, Tom Petty concluded a lengthy tour with the third of three shows at the Hollywood Bowl. The tour was designed to look back at 40 years with his band, The Heartbreakers,
  
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• Guggenheim Removes Controversial Art From Exhibition

  27-09-2017 00:36 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The works, all by conceptual Chinese artists, came under fire last week when activists characterized them as “instances of unmistakable cruelty against animals in the name of art.” The criticism erupted after a measured preview of the show ran in The New York Times, titled “Where the Wild Things Are: China’s Art Dreamers at the Guggenheim.” The comments on the article, however, reflected the distress many experienced even before the sho
  
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• Research: How We See Color, What We Name It...

  27-09-2017 00:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Why should humans all choose roughly the same places to identify transitions, when color is just photons, irreducible quanta of light on a continuous spectrum of wavelengths? Linguists might say it’s because language creates cultural norms. Anthropologists might say it’s because some colors have more cultural relevance than others. Neuroscientists and physiologists might say it’s because of the specific light-sensitive cells in the primate eye tuned to pick up red, green, and
  
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