Arts news

• The Uffizzi Had A Huge Collection Of Pre-19th-Century Work By Women Hidden Away - But Now It's Coming Out

  24-12-2017 23:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It's almost mind-blowing that what the Guerilla Girls have been saying for years is finally filtering to the places it needs to be: "Eike Schmidt, who became the Uffizi’s director in 2015 after a stint at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, says he drew inspiration from the Guerilla Girls, a group of feminist art activists, who told him that many museums have the works of women artists, but they're kept in storage."
  
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• The Guardian Claims That It's Time For 'Woke Cinema'

  24-12-2017 23:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  This year (2017) was just of taste of what's to come, the paper says. There's political entertainment on its way, including A Wrinkle in Time and Black Panther, but that's not all (not by a long shot). "If Trump is agreed to have killed off political satire, political history could well be taking its place."
  
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• Skull and bones: Ron Mueck's outsized installation gets under the skin

  24-12-2017 22:00
  Sculptor embraces the unambiguous and unsettling skull motif in his world premiere installation for the NGV Triennial If there’s one immediate theme of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Triennial exhibition, it’s an arresting exploration into the symbolic power of spatial relationships. It’s an appropriate concern to exhibit within the NGV International building. The visage of the NGV’s vast, flat-walled fortress rises from a dark corner of prosperous St Kilda Road
  
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• Playwriting Her Way Out Of Despair

  24-12-2017 22:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Lucy Kirkwood, playwright of The Children (now playing on Broadway), says she was trying for a long time to figure out how to write plays about climate change. "Then the events of Fukushima happened, the terrible disaster there. There was a retired work force that volunteered to go back to clear up the plant there. And apparently the entire country sort of voluntarily monitored their own energy usage. They managed to bring down their national energy usage just because everyone was diligent and c
  
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• NGV Triennial: an arresting exploration of identity and exile

  24-12-2017 22:00
  National Gallery of Victoria’s latest exhibition offers an insight into the movement of people across bordersIf there’s one immediate theme of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Triennial exhibition, it’s an arresting exploration into the symbolic power of spatial relationships. It’s an appropriate concern to exhibit within the NGV International building. The visage of the NGV’s vast, flat-walled fortress rises from a dark corner of prosperous St Kilda Road, h
  
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• How Does Google Maps Work? Ask A Cartographer Who Helped Design Apple Maps

  24-12-2017 21:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Google Maps now has buildings all over the place - in small, rural towns; in capital cities; in large cities - even down to the level of their HVAC roof details. Meanwhile, Apple Maps is a tad behind: It "doesn’t have them in the majority of U.S. state capitals." But why?
  
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• Top AJBlogs Posts From The Weekend Of 12.24.17

  24-12-2017 21:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  Merry Christmas: The Annual Gift
  My Christmas painting for RCA readers this year is Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Nativity from the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University. It’s dated c. 1492 and was bequeathed to the museum by Charles Brinsley ... read more
  AJBlog: Real Clear ArtsPublished 2017-12-24
  Brownlow’s Christmas Music, By Request
  When we posted this visit with Jack Brownlow a couple of years ago, response was enthusiastic and dozens o
  
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• Yu Guangzhong, An Exiled Poet Who Longed For His Homeland Of China, Dies In Taiwan At 89

  24-12-2017 21:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  He was "a prominent poet, essayist and translator whose best-known work, 'Nostalgia,' came to symbolize the aching separation, displacement and longing for cultural unity felt by many in mainland China and in the Chinese diaspora." Generations have memorized 'Nostalgia,' and it's even been used in high levels to argue for the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland.
  
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• The Search For Cultural Reparation In France

  24-12-2017 20:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Artist Kader Attia, who won 2016's Prize Marcel Duchamp, has quite a lot to say (and create) about the topic - and it's a timely discussion, timely art. "What ultimately makes the question of reparation so compelling is not its recalcitrance, but its urgency. In Europe, and France in particular, long-strained differences of culture are now bound up in a complex web of alarming social crises — systemic poverty, racism, extremism, and terrible violence — which offer no hope of simplist
  
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• The Christmas Food Of Fiction

  24-12-2017 20:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Does anything top the Christmas feast in James Joyce's short story "The Dead"? Well, maybe if you like Turkish Delight - or perhaps, as in Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes, a Pavlova.
  
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• New York's Solstice Music Festival Had A Banner Year

  24-12-2017 19:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The NYT's music reporters almost never get to be as unbuttoned and joyful as they are in this piece, wherein four of them went out into the city and paraded, participated, or otherwise enjoyed four of the many, many music-making opportunities on the Solstice.
  
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• The Newest Star Wars Movie Might Earn $1 Billion, But Even That Can't Make Up For Hollywood's Bad Year

  24-12-2017 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Summer flops are to blame this year - think Alien: Covenant and King Arthur (or rather, don't think about them; no one else did) - but that's not the only problem. "The long-term decline in attendance reflects systemic challenges facing the industry. Audiences are spending less time going to the movies and are consuming more entertainment on small screens and through streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon that are spending billions on original video content."
  
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• In Sitka, Alaska, 'The Nutcracker' Gets A Special Twist Or Two

  24-12-2017 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  If you're going to do Nutcracker in Alaska, you better do it right: "Every few years, they set the plot against an Alaskan backdrop with characters the audience intimately recognizes. Instead of a Mouse King and his army of rodents, the Nutcracker goes to a battle with Mosquito Queen and her swarm. He's assisted by housemaids with fly swatters."
  
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• Will Memphis Become The Home Of A National Black Theatre Museum?

  24-12-2017 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It's just an idea right now ... an idea with a building, and a lot of support, attached. "Four black theater organizations have pledged support, and have expressed interest in moving their institutions to the new Memphis museum. These include the Baltimore-based Black Theatre Commons, Washington, D.C.–based August Wilson Society, St. Paul, Minnesota–based Black Theatre Association, as well as the Lorton, Virginia–based Black Theatre Network."
  
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• The Artist Who Discovered A Massive E. Coli Outbreak In Michigan Waters

  24-12-2017 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Artist Bridget Quinn and a friend were getting ready to do some improvisational singing in abandoned tunnels when they noticed something seriously wrong. "The smell was really bad. And I’m familiar with non-point-source pollution, which is, like, oil coming off of the street after the rain, but this seemed like a constant flow." Then a fire department tested the water ...
  
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• The Philly Comic Book Store That Has A Lot More Than You Might Expect

  24-12-2017 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The owner, who was just awarded a $50,000 Knight grant to expand the store: "I’m committed to helping comic book creators perfect their craft, partnering with artists, editors and writers in helping them figure out what can make their art stand out. Many of these creators haven’t had the same opportunities as other artists. There will be a new multipurpose room, which will serve as a space for a creator college. You have to be knowledgeable if you’re pitching comics to people."
  
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• Does The New 'Star Wars' Film Save The Franchise From Itself?

  24-12-2017 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It's weird to say this about a Disney-owned film in a franchise that has arguably made war more popular and famous than any other film could, but The Last Jedi is different. It's a film that "struggles to distance itself from the most toxic elements of Star Wars in order to chart a more progressive terrain."
  
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• Charles Dickens Made Boatloads Of Money In The United States, But He Couldn't Stand The Country's Manners

  24-12-2017 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Basically, fame did him in. "His love affair with an idealized America was short-lived and hard-felt. Apart from the country’s great writers, he found Americans malodorous, ill-mannered and invading his privacy."
  
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• How Can Universities Convince Students That, In Reading Hard Texts, The Difficulty Is The Point?

  24-12-2017 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Requiring attendance and the passage of an exam, for instance, can help. But still: "There is only one way to go on, as I tell students – and that is to go on. This is the first and greatest difficulty they face. There’s no reason for them to continue reading. There is so much else to read that is shorter, and not just aimed at them, but, in the case of their Facebook feed, tuned to their experience. Marketed to them. Why would they bother reading something that was neither for them
  
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• Genius Grantwinning Artist Gets To Wrap L.A. MOCA In A Block-Long Artwork

  24-12-2017 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The artist is L.A.-based painter Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Crosby "is known for depicting intimate familial settings with layers of paint, photographs and found images — the latter of which are often drawn from news clippings and Nigerian lifestyle magazines. These she frequently bathes in tinted washes, giving the images a nostalgic feel."
  
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• Two Pranksters Who Sneaked Into London's National Theatre And Spent The Night Have Theatre Security On Edge

  24-12-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Of course, they were two men, and of course, they made a YouTube video. "In the video, the two males are seen gaining entry into the building through an unlocked door that gives them access to the set of the National's production of Follies. They are then seen leaving the London complex the following morning after spending the night sleeping backstage."
  
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• Marcelo Gomes, One Of The World's Best-Known Ballet Dancers, Has Resigned Over Sexual Misconduct Allegations

  24-12-2017 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Gomes resigned as a law firm investigation the allegation of behavior from eight years ago. Neither American Ballet Theatre "nor the law firm that was handling the investigation would give further details about the accusation against Mr. Gomes. 'A.B.T. does not tolerate the alleged behavior,' [the chairman of the board of trustees] said in his statement. 'I am profoundly disheartened by this matter,' he added."
  
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• Thomas Bock review – an extraordinary glimpse of 19th-century Tasmania

  24-12-2017 09:00
  Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
  Shipped as a convict to Tasmania in 1823, Thomas Bock made his name there with portraits of exceptional empathy, both of colonists and those they displacedThere is a painting in this riveting exhibition of a child in a red muslin frock with puffed sleeves and a black velvet sash. The year is 1842. She might be any Victorian sitter, posing for her portrait with hands sedately clasped in her lap. But there are signs of strain in her sweet face, the feet are bare and her da
  
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• We must protect our art that survived the age of Puritan destruction | Tiffany Jenkins

  24-12-2017 01:05
  The few paintings missed by our home-grown iconoclasts surely deserve to outlast our neglectWhen we think of iconoclasm today it is the fighters of Islamic State who come most readily to mind. We think of their assaults on the ancient city of Nimrud, tearing down temples and smashing the heads of magnificent Assyrian statues, taking a pneumatic drill to a winged bull at the gates of the ancient city of Nineveh. But Britain, too, once was home to iconoclasts, which is why our churches are less co
  
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• We must protect our art that survived the age of Puritan destruction

  24-12-2017 01:05
  The few paintings missed by our home-grown iconoclasts surely deserve to outlast our neglectWhen we think of iconoclasm today it is the fighters of Islamic State who come most readily to mind. We think of their assaults on the ancient city of Nimrud, tearing down temples and smashing the heads of magnificent Assyrian statues, taking a pneumatic drill to a winged bull at the gates of the ancient city of Nineveh. But Britain, too, once was home to iconoclasts, which is why our churches are less co
  
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• How an idyllic Greek hideaway inspired a British war hero and travel writer

  24-12-2017 01:05
  Art and friendships made at home of intrepid writer Patrick Leigh Fermor will be explored at British MuseumOh, to have been a fly on the bougainvillea-clad wall as the drinks flowed and the sun sank behind the beautiful house tucked away in a remote part of Greece.One night a visitor might find Stephen Spender or Louis MacNeice. Another, Lawrence Durrell and John Betjeman. Related: Amaravati Buddhist art to finally be seen in full glory at British MuseumContinue reading...
  
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