Arts news

• The Pandemic Is Changing City Centers, And Britain’s Fabled Department Store Buildings Are At Risk

  18-04-2021 22:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Of course, online shopping has done the most damage to physical stores. But do they need to be demolished? “Gems facing the wrecking ball include Birmingham’s mid-century Rackhams, which is currently home to House of Fraser, Debenhams in Taunton, which was built in 1938 and extended in the 1960s, and Marks & Spencer’s store near Marble Arch in London, which was completed in 1930. There are also concerns about the future of Aberdeen’s brutalist John Lewis, and Br
  
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• Budweiser Paints Lionel Messi Ads Over Iconic Murals In India

  18-04-2021 22:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  The outrage was so strong, including in statements by St+art India, that the beer company is backing down. Of course they can’t fix what happened, and “it remains unclear why Budweiser chose to paint over these specific wall, but amends are in place. Budweiser is now approaching the original artists from Bollywood Art Project and St+art India to ‘restore the works in good faith,’ said a statement by the company.” – Hyperallergic
  
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• Please, Someone, Everyone, Save The ArcLight Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome

  18-04-2021 21:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The flagship theatre was special for multiple reasons, but one is that Hollywood often doesn’t seem very, well, Hollywood. “The ArcLight Hollywood, by contrast, represented the living, breathing movie industry. It accomplished the rare feat of melding Hollywood the real with Hollywood the ideal. With its costume and prop exhibits in the lobby and its Q&As with actors and directors, it showcased one of our city’s top industries in ways that made it shine so brightly that pe
  
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• What Do The Vaccines Mean For Ballet?

  18-04-2021 21:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Let an infectious-disease doctor explain why dancers need to get vaccinated. It’s not just for themselves: “A significant part of the patronage of many ballet companies are those over the age of 60 and, therefore, at highest risk of death and complications if infected with COVID. Though a dancer may not get ill from COVID, if they are carrying the virus and expose their patrons to the illness, it is a losing situation for all involved. In addition, the dancers work side by side with
  
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• Joye Hummel, The First Woman To Write ‘Wonder Woman,’ 97

  18-04-2021 20:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Hummel was 19 when she began working as an assistant for William Moulton Marston, the psychologist who had created the character and the comic a few years earlier. Jill Lepore writes in The Secret History of Wonder Woman: “At first, Hummel typed Marston’s scripts. … Soon, she was writing scripts of her own.” – The New York Times
  
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• Game Of Thrones Is Ten Years Old, And It Feels Utterly Irrelevant

  18-04-2021 20:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Not just irrelevant, but worse. HBO is celebrating, of course, but “whatever about HBO, how do the rest of us feel about Game of Thrones turning 10? Is our nostalgia tempered, for instance, by the fact the final seasons are now agreed to have been pretty dreadful? What, moreover, of the casual use of sexual violence as a plot device? Here we arrive at the awkward truth that much of what made Thrones Thrones is now regarded as problematic.” – Irish Times
  
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• Vartan Gregorian, Savior Of The New York Public Library, Has Died At 87

  18-04-2021 19:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Gregorian, an immigrant from Armenia who became a scholar and leader of Brown University and the Carnegie Corporation, “was best known for resurrecting the New York Public Library from a fiscal and morale crisis. It was a radical, midcareer change from the pastoral academic realm, and a risky plunge into the high-profile social and political wars of New York City, where the budget-cutting knives were out.” – The New York Times
  
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• ‘I feel honoured I can help him tell his story’: the death-row drawings of Charlie Flannigan

  18-04-2021 19:30
  
  The champion Aboriginal jockey was the first person to executed by hanging in the NT. Discovered by accident, the drawings he made in jail are now on show“I may be a stoker in hell, or I might come back with wings on and look over the people at the prison.”Charlie Flannigan’s words – recorded in the final week of his life – were light, contemplative, even playful: in direct contradiction with the grim finality of his circumstances, shackled on death row in Darwin&rs
  
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• What Artists Are Missing Most About Live Arts Experiences

  18-04-2021 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  One artist: “I miss the openings ! The free wine! And friends who you don’t get to see often, making rare appearances. Seeing art in the flesh was something I didn’t realise I needed so much for my own inspiration. It’s just not the same on the screen, even with photography. I want to see the print and the framing and all the details.” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• Five-year-old curator leads summer art exhibition in Bath

  18-04-2021 18:42
  
  Astrid Cooper and her father are putting together ‘My Kid Could’ve Done That’, with about 15 artistsShe is the curator of a complicated contemporary art show and it’s fair to say she is proving pretty hopeless with the paperwork.Unusually, she is also insisting that her own artwork is included in the exhibition but, given Astrid Cooper is five, that could very quickly change. Continue reading...
  
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• A French Novelist Wins The LA Times’ Book Prize For Fiction

  18-04-2021 18:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  But the prizes are numerous, and many American writers won prizes in many other categories and genres, including poetry, history, current interest (where Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste took top place), mystery, horror, and more. A full list is at the link. – Los Angeles Times
  
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• When John Adams’ Most Playful Piece Was Booed

  18-04-2021 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Adams came up with the vision for Grand Pianola Music when he was tripping – literally – and audiences weren’t sure what to do with it. “They didn’t know what to make of its puckish rebelliousness. The beginning, a Minimalist shimmer, was familiar territory — albeit scored idiosyncratically for winds, brasses, percussion, two pianos and a trio of siren-like singers. But the finale was audaciously melodic and openhearted, in defiance of contemporary music&rsqu
  
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• In New Jersey, A Closed Theatre Results In An Arts Incubator And Virtual Shows

  18-04-2021 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  There’s no audience; there’s no one in the building, but Newark Symphony Hall is busy. There’s a new “career accelerator and business incubator” in the making. “Musicians, singers, dancers, actors, spoken word artists, directors and theater technical staff are eligible for the program,” and some of the proposals will result in virtual shows. In pandemic times, it could be far worse. – Newark Star-Ledger
  
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• Oscars Producers Say It’s A Good Thing The Pandemic Has Upended The Evening

  18-04-2021 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Well: “Changing the Academy Awards, a 93-year-old American institution, has typically proven an exercise in futility. Tweaks have been tried along the way, yet the basic format has been stubbornly immutable.” Maybe this year will be different? Hope dies hard in Hollywood. – Boston Globe (AP)
  
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• Helen McCrory, Star Of Peaky Blinders And Harry Potter, Has Died At 52

  18-04-2021 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  McCrory’s husband, actor Damian Lewis, announced the news of her death on Twitter. “I’m heartbroken to announce that after an heroic battle with cancer, the beautiful and mighty woman that is Helen McCrory has died. … We love her and know how lucky we are to have had her in our lives. She blazed so brightly. Go now Little One, into the air, and thank you.” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• The Brooklyn Art Library Wants Your Filled Sketchbook

  18-04-2021 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  But first, it needs to sell you a blank book. “The Sketchbook Project works like this: people interested in submitting a sketchbook order a blank one from the website. When it arrives, they fill it with art, writing, decoupage, pop-ups, or anything else that fits their chosen style or theme. Some of the more unique sketchbooks have included embroidered pages and back covers altered to unfold into long maps and drawings. One sketchbook opens into a puzzle; another is cut in the shape
  
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• There’s So Much Black Pain Onscreen, Including, Some Say, Way Too Much Painful Fiction

  18-04-2021 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Right now, though not only right now, there’s an issue with Black horror. “Black horror faces a distinct paradox: The genre has long been a valuable tool for creators of different backgrounds to process their traumas, and for audiences to reckon with their own. Some Black writers and producers in America use horror and science fiction as a lens through which to examine the grotesquerie of the country’s racist systems and history (Jordan Peele, for example, made 
  
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• The Teams That Save Spain And Portugal’s Shop Signs, From Neon To Giant Calligraphy Pens

  18-04-2021 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Across the Iberian peninsula, more than 50 groups are working to save what they can of the cityscapes that are under what they feel is a kind of attack. “As small businesses close, they’re often replaced by a familiar roster of global behemoths with little connection to the city, said Laura Asensio, a graphic designer based in the north-western Spanish city of Valladolid.” So the teams are mapping each area’s unique design features – and saving signs. – The G
  
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• The Accent That Most Actors Won’t Even Half-Try

  18-04-2021 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Yes, it’s Philly. Despite how much those of us outside the area might think we know it, “the characters in Rocky don’t talk like they’re from Philadelphia. Neither do the ones in Silver Linings Playbook or The Irishman. For all the stories that have been set in and around the city, there’s a pronounced lack of authenticity when it comes to speaking the way the locals do—not a matter of failed attempts, but a failure to attempt it at all.&r
  
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• What Does Dudamel’s Paris Opera Appointment Mean For Los Angeles?

  18-04-2021 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  For star conductors, of course, it’s not unusual to have appointments both with an orchestra and an opera company. And Dudamel’s contract with the LA Phil runs through the 2025-26 season. Classical France is interested: “Radio France, clearly anticipating the appointment, ran five 90-minute programs on Dudamel in the last week of January, ostensibly in celebration of the conductor’s 40th birthday. Dudamel’s appointment by Paris Opera’s new general director, A
  
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• A Scammer Is Targeting British Literary Prizes Via Paypal

  18-04-2021 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The emails appear to come from the winning authors, and to connect to Paypal accounts that could conceivably be associated with them. “Over the past year, at least five British book prizes have been targeted by the same swindle — and one has even paid out. In March 2020, the Rathbones Folio Prize paid £30,000, about $41,000, to a scammer posing as the author Valeria Luiselli, who had just won the award for her novel Lost Children Archive.” The organization
  
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• After Reports Of Abuse, Scott Rudin Claims He’ll ‘Step Back’ From Broadway

  18-04-2021 13:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Rudin emailed the Washington Post on Saturday to issue an apology for years of causing pain to colleagues (and employees). He also wrote that he would be “taking steps that I should have taken years ago to address this behavior.” But specifics remain unclear; “Rudin declined to elaborate on the statement, or on what exactly retreating from ‘active participation’ entails.”– Washington Post
  
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• Art escapes: a short break at artist Sidney Nolan’s former home

  18-04-2021 08:00
  
  Captivated by its solitude and beauty, the Australian artist made the Rodd Estate in the Welsh Marches his home – it’s easy to see whyI’d normally expect to find a pint of milk and slice or two of cake on arrival at a holiday home. But the welcome pack awaiting me at Orchard Cottage, on the Rodd Estate in Herefordshire, contains a more unusual item – a DVD about the man who once lived here, the artist Sidney Nolan.I abandon the unpacking, set a fire in the woodburner in t
  
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