Arts news

• Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.27.16

  28-07-2016 10:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  Recent Listening In Brief: Zeitlin On Shorter
  Denny Zeitlin, Solo Piano: Early Wayne (Sunnyside) Over the years, Zeitlin has made clear his affinity for Wayne Shorter’s compositions. In previous Sunnyside albums he explored … read more
  AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-07-27Community within
  As a community artist, I operate with the philosophy that creativity is a pledge to embrace and value one’s own existence and self-reflection is a process for changing awareness and behavior
  
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• French Police Search Institut du Monde Arabe As Part of Epstein Probe

  18-02-2026 17:57 via artnews.com
  French police raided the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris on Monday as part of an investigation into its former president, ex–culture minister Jack Lang, who resigned earlier this month amid scrutiny over his past ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The cultural institution was one of several premises searched, France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement. Earlier this month, prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation into Lang and his daug
  
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• Nan Goldin’s Photobook The Ballad of Sexual Dependency Celebrates Its 40th Anniversary at Gagosian

  18-02-2026 15:00 via artnews.com
  “I don’t ever want to be susceptible to anyone else’s version of my history,” wrote photographer Nan Goldin at the end of her essay for her major photo book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, first published in 1986. In the 20-plus printings of her debut—and still most celebrated—work, Goldin has never changed the foreword (although she does recontextualize the afterword every decade or so).Goldin also explained in the introduction why the Ballad is dedicated to
  
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• Sotheby’s Hikes Buyers’ Fees, Restitution Battle Over Franz Marc Painting Heats Up, and More: Morning Links for February 18, 2026

  18-02-2026 14:45 via artnews.com
  Good Morning!A restitution battle over a Franz Marc painting in the collection of the Folkwang Museum in Germany heats up.As of last Friday, Sotheby’s has raised its buyers’ fees worldwide.British artist and Turner Prize winner Tai Shani has withdrawn a Phaidon monograph following sexual assault allegations against owner Leon Black revealed in the latest Epstein files.The Headlines FEE HIKE. Sotheby’s has raised its buyer’s premiums worldwide, with the move comi
  
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• Marilyn Minter Wins Anderson Ranch’s International Artist Award

  18-02-2026 14:30 via artnews.com
  Marilyn Minter, known for her feminist practice that blends painting and photography, has won this year’s International Artist Award from the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. Minter will be honored at the annual Ranch Gala, part of the Ranch’s annual Ranch Week series in July.Ranch President and CEO Peter Waanders told ARTnews in an interview that the choice of Minter came down to her meticulous technique, her studio practice, and her longtime dedication to teaching (Minter is a faculty m
  
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• I Swam To See an Underwater Art Project Off Miami Beach That Imagines a Better Aquatic World

  18-02-2026 14:00 via artnews.com
  The news about the environment, as you may know, is not good. President Donald Trump recently announced that he was erasing the finding that climate change endangers humans and the environment, meaning the Environmental Protection Agency can no longer control pollution. The glaciers on Greenland are melting faster and faster. Partly owing to climate risks, the professional worrywarts who maintain the Doomsday Clock just set it at 85 seconds to midnight, “the closest it has ever been to cat
  
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• From Gorillaz to the Port of Los Angeles: Stephen Thomas Gallagher to Debut a Trippy New Film During Frieze LA

  18-02-2026 14:00 via artnews.com
  There are many people who say they have the coolest job in the world. Stephen Thomas Gallagher might actually have a case.He designs live shows for Gorillaz and Lana Del Rey. He helped build a blazing London tower block with a tube train smashed through it at Glastonbury, and once brought a little bit (or rather, a whole chunk) of 1970s New York City to London. For his latest project, he flew in a bright yellow helicopter over the Port of Los Angeles with the doors off,
  
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• Devyani Saltzman Abruptly Leaves Her Role as Director of the Barbican in London

  18-02-2026 13:46 via artnews.com
  Devyani Saltzman is leaving the Barbican in London, marking another major leadership shake-up just weeks after the center welcomed its new CEO. Saltzman, who became director of arts and participation in February 2024, had only recently unveiled a five-year creative vision for the venue, making her sudden departure all the more surprising.Recognized as one of the 40 most influential women in the UK arts scene, Saltzman was described as the “driving force” behind the Barbican. Her work
  
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• For 83-Year-Old Artist Mia Westerlund Roosen, Endurance Rather Than Attention Has Fueled Her Creativity for Decades

  18-02-2026 13:00 via artnews.com
  When artist Mia Westerlund Roosen debuted her conical sculptures, which unmistakably recall phalluses, at the “25th Anniversary Exhibition of Leo Castelli” in 1982, she did so as a form of feminist protest. The exhibition, celebrating one of the postwar era’s most important galleries, had assembled together a pantheon of postwar American artists, the majority of them men. Westerlund Roosen was one of four women featured in the 29-artist exhibition.Inclusion, however, didn&rsquo
  
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• More than 100 Cuban Cultural Leaders Call for International Aid in Face of Oil Blockade

  17-02-2026 22:49 via artnews.com
  As Cuba endures rolling blackouts and a plunging standard of living, more than 100 artists, curators, and cultural workers have issued a public appeal for international intervention, arguing that the longstanding US oil blockade has made efforts to stabilize the island’s spiraling humanitarian crisis all but impossible.The letter, titled “Cuba is Not a Threat” and published February 16 on the website Peoples Dispatch, was signed by scores of nationally recognized Cuban intellec
  
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• Artist Trevor Paglen Thinks Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day Looks Awfully Familiar

  17-02-2026 21:41 via artnews.com
  On Super Bowl Sunday, Universal Pictures debuted the first full-length trailer for Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s latest extraterrestrial epic. Scattered throughout the trailer are repeated references to cardinals, presented as a kind of harbinger of alien life. If that sounds a little familiar, eagle-eyed art viewer, you’re not alone.Artist Trevor Paglen took to Instagram last week to note the visual link between his 2024 and 2025 shows at Altman Siegel and Pace—both title
  
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• Architect Oscar Niemeyer’s Final Building Was A Diner In Leipzig

  17-02-2026 21:06 via theguardian.com
  The great Brazilian modernist, best-known for the futuristic government buildings in Brasilia, had recently turned 103 when he drew the first sketch for what’s now called the Niemeyer Sphere. When he died almost a year later, he hadn’t finalized the design, but there were enough sketches and specifications to complete it. – The Guardian
  
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• Australian Police Catch Thief Behind Heist of Egyptian Artifacts

  17-02-2026 20:23 via artnews.com
  Police in Queensland, Australia, have arrested a man suspected of stealing precious Egyptian artifacts from a museum outside of Brisbane.According to local reports, the 52-year-old man was arrested Saturday on Russell Island in Moreton Bay after police discovered part of the stolen haul in a camper van parked at a ferry terminal. Among the recovered items was a 2,600-year-old wooden cat figure from Egypt’s 26th Dynasty, the last dynasty ruled by a native Egyptian pharaoh before t
  
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• A Rare Edition Of Shakespeare’s First Folio Was Stolen And Damaged. Now That It’s Been Recovered, Should It Be Repaired?

  17-02-2026 20:04 via yahoo.com
  When in 2010, Durham University got back the Folio which had been stolen in 1998, the book’s leather cover, boards and end papers were gone, as were an engraving, a eulogy by Ben Jonson, and the final page of Cymbeline. The volume has never been repaired, and there are good reasons why. – BBC (Yahoo!)
  
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• Michael Silverblatt, A Radio Interviewer Who Really Knew His Subjects’ Work, Dies At 73

  17-02-2026 19:44 via yahoo.com
  Michael Silverblatt, the longtime host of the KCRW radio show “Bookworm” — known for interviews of authors so in depth that they sometimes left his subjects astounded at his breadth of knowledge of their work — has died. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
  
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• Citing George Orwell, Federal Judge Orders Reinstatement of Slavery Display at George Washington’s Presidential House

  17-02-2026 19:43 via artnews.com
  Comparing the Trump administration’s efforts to control historical documentation to George Orwell’s 1984, a federal judge ordered the return of displays that acknowledged George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people to a monument in Philadelphia.Last month, the National Park Service removed the signs from the President’s House Site, the presidential residence for Washington and John Adams before the completion of the White House. The President’s House Site is pa
  
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• In Australia, Arts Education Enrollment Is Plummeting

  17-02-2026 19:31 via limelight-arts.com.au
  A comprehensive review of national data shows a steady decline in arts subject enrolments at senior secondary level and a parallel contraction of creative arts degree courses in higher education since 2018. – Limelight
  
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• The Anatomy Of (Enduring) Class Struggle

  17-02-2026 19:15 via theamericanscholar.org
  Despite years of Eat-the-Rich–type discourse, we seem to struggle with how money and power operate without falling into either conspiratorial exaggeration (the fantasy of Satan-worshipping elites ritualistically drinking baby blood is centuries old) or fawning admiration for the taste and sophistication of the rich and famous. – The American Scholar
  
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• Macron Adviser Anne-Claire Legendre Tapped to Head Institut du Monde Arabe

  17-02-2026 19:11 via artnews.com
  Anne-Claire Legendre, a senior diplomat and one of French President Emmanuel Macron’s closest advisers on North Africa and the Middle East, has been chosen to lead the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, according to Le Monde, marking a turning point for the institution after weeks of turmoil.Legendre, 46, was selected by the institute’s board on Tuesday morning. Her appointment is expected to be ratified by the high council made up of representatives from the 22 member state
  
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• Eugenio Viola Says Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá Ended His Contract Over Labor Issues

  17-02-2026 19:08 via artnews.com
  Earlier this month, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá announced on Instagram that it had terminated its contract with longtime artistic director Eugenio Viola. Now, Viola is claiming that the board of directors did so after he raised concerns with working conditions at the museum.In a statement to the Art Newspaper, Viola, who began serving as artistic director in 2019, said, “The board of directors ended my contract early, not due to any artistic or leadership deficiencies. My de
  
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• A Verbatim Play Reimagines One Of The Most Notorious TV Debates Of The AIDS Era

  17-02-2026 19:02 via nytimes.com
  In Kramer/Fauci, director Daniel Fish stages a transcript of the 1993 C-SPAN debate between Larry Kramer, the legendarily combative writer and AIDS activist, and the more mild-mannered Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. – The New York Times
  
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• Arguments For Why People Are Wothwhile

  17-02-2026 18:44 via 3quarksdaily.com
  When we speak of dignity, worth, or the respect owed to persons, we are not engaging in idle abstraction. These concepts do real work. They justify constraints on what the powerful may do to the vulnerable. – 3 Quarks Daily
  
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• Why Do We Have An Instinctive Attraction To Music?

  17-02-2026 18:33 via newyorker.com
  People have relished music for so long that we have evidence, from forty thousand years ago, of humans making a flute-like instrument out of a vulture bone. We feel that even wordless music reflects our moods. – The New Yorker
  
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• How Universities Became Centers Of Liberal Thought

  17-02-2026 18:15 via newyorker.com
  In the past thirty or so years, the academy has replaced the church as the center of the liberal moral imagination, providing the sense of a community bound by ethics, a firmament of texts and knowledge that should inform action, and a meeting space for like-minded people. – The New Yorker
  
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• University of North Texas Faculty Calls on School to Disclose Reason for Cancelation of Victor Quiñonez Exhibition

  17-02-2026 18:08 via artnews.com
  Members of the faculty of College of Visual Arts and Design (CVAD) at the University of North Texas (UNT) released an open letter on Friday objecting to the cancelation of a solo exhibition of artist Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez.In the letter, which was addressed to the “Office of the President and University Leadership, University of North Texas,” the faculty said that they “strongly object to the abrupt and unexplained cancellation” of Quiñonez&rs
  
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• “Train Dreams” And “Adolescence” Lead 2026 Independent Spirit Awards

  17-02-2026 18:05 via hollywoodreporter.com
  Train Dreams, Clint Bentley’s feature about an isolated logger in the early-20th-century Pacific Northwest, led the film categories with three wins. In the television categories, Adolescence, a British crime drama about a 13-year-old boy accused of stabbing a classmate to death, took four of the six prizes. – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• The Cultural Debate About Wall Texts

  17-02-2026 17:44 via hyperallergic.com
  “When curators withhold information about the works and the artists, they are reinforcing their own curatorial approach, which is a contradiction. Decontextualizing and dehistoricizing is practically a colonialist act.”  – Hyperallergic
  
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• What Musical Variations Can Teach Us About Divergent Creativity

  17-02-2026 17:31 via nytimes.com
  It’s hard to imagine creativity without divergent thinking. How are you being exploratory? How are you being adventurous? A theme and variations is a very overt demonstration of that process, because the whole idea is to generate novel versions of the same source. – The New York Times
  
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• America’s Post-Modernist Architecture Legacy

  17-02-2026 17:15 via archdaily.com
  Postmodernism began as a critique of modernism’s exhausted promises. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, many designers no longer treated modernism as radical or socially redemptive. Urban renewal projects accelerated the demolition of historic neighborhoods, and landmark preservation battles raised urgent questions about what the United States valued and, ultimately, protected. – Arch Daily
  
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• At 85, Choreographer Lucinda Childs Is Still Busy

  17-02-2026 17:03 via nytimes.com
  “I’m not, um, young,” she says. “And I do have help. I don’t go in without somebody there who can help to translate and who understands my movement. But my favorite thing is to make things.” – The New York Times
  
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