Arts news

• Ian Fleming Estate Authorizes New 007 Series

  05-11-2021 23:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Kim Sherwood has struck a deal with HarperCollins to write three contemporary thrillers set in the world of James Bond but where the original 007 is missing, presumed captured or even killed. – The Guardian
  
  Read more

• This Nigerian Nobel Laureate’s Got A New Book, 50 Years After The Previous One

  05-11-2021 22:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Wole Soyinka has received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He has written more than two dozen plays, a vast amount of poetry, several memoirs, essays, and short stories, and just two novels. His third novel is out now, nearly five decades after the last one. – The New Yorker
  
  Read more

• Trial In Spain Of Former Director Of Valencià d’Art Modern Accused Of Buying Forgeries

  05-11-2021 22:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Consuelo Císcar is accused of using €3.4m in public funds to buy 98 works of art by the late artist Gerardo Rueda that she knew were forged. Císcar was in charge of the museum between 2004 and 2014. – The New York Times
  
  Read more

• Two High Profile Projects Aimed At Reviving Memphis

  05-11-2021 21:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Two ambitious new projects by leading architecture firms are at the forefront of the renaissance, using design to lift Memphis’s image in the eyes of its citizens and the outside world. – The New York Times
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• What Happens When You Try To Hack Opera With Gamers, Techies And Artists?

  05-11-2021 21:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Western opera was invented because people from different disciplines came together to reimagine theatre. They leveraged the best of all the art forms and the best of modern technology.” – Ludwig Van
  
  Read more

• A Social History Of Laughter

  05-11-2021 20:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  In the early years of the 18th century a select group of philosophers began to conceive of laughter as something that might police the boundaries of sociable conduct. – History Today
  
  Read more

• ‘Mum wasn’t looking for fame’: John Olsen’s children unveil Valerie Strong’s first solo art show

  05-11-2021 20:00
  
  Ten years after their mother’s death, Tim and Louise reveal the striking landscapes and portraits painted by the limelight-shy second wife of John OlsenIn her dying days – on her good days – artist Valerie Strong could look out of the window of her room in Darlinghurst’s Sacred Heart hospice. From there, she could see the sandstone walls of the National Art School.“She was so happy to be able to do that,” says her daughter, Louise Olsen, herself a painter, scu
  
  Read more

• The Trauma That Upended Kenneth Branagh’s Life At The Age Of Eight

  05-11-2021 19:58 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  He’s been reeling from it, one way or another, ever since, and it’s the reason he made his latest film, Belfast. – The New York Times Magazine
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Globalization Has Been Widely Misunderstood. It’s Important To Be Clear About It

  05-11-2021 19:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  We are at a critical juncture: a relatively long period of stability in mainstream thinking about economic globalisation has given way to a situation of dramatic flux. – Aeon
  
  Read more

• Has The Pandemic Shown Us How America Could Fund The Arts And Artists Properly?

  05-11-2021 19:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The shutdown introduced many ordinary people to the precarity that gigging artists have always faced, and the expanded unemployment benefits — with fewer restrictions than usual — may offer an example of how to make sporadic gig work more tenable. – The Brooklyn Rail
  
  Read more

• How A Small Labor Dispute At Strathmore Hall Led To Baltimore Symphony Withdrawal

  05-11-2021 18:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  The escalation of events — from a contract with about a dozen employees to an ugly public battle between two of Maryland’s flagship arts institutions — has alarmed civic, arts and union leaders. – Washington Post
  
  Read more

• “The Internet At Its Utopian Best”: In Praise Of The Public Domain Review

  05-11-2021 18:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “‘A frictionless world’ in which evidence of the imagination floats around in the empyrean ‘without cost, without registration, and without restrictive conditions on their use, … a Borgesian Library of Babel, the Review is a labyrinth to get lost in.” – The Times Literary Supplement (UK)
  
  Read more

• Pamela Kember obituary

  05-11-2021 17:43
  
  My friend Pamela Kember, who has died suddenly of a heart attack aged 66, was an art historian, critic and curator who championed the work of Asian artists, especially women.She organised shows and fundraised at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art, lectured at Chelsea College of Art, and was head of arts and learning at Asia House, the Asian cultural centre in London, where her exhibitions, discussions and events were major features of its programme. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Broadway Attendance Down. But What Does It Mean?

  05-11-2021 17:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  The anecdotal evidence, gleaned from social media and private conversations with industry leaders, suggests a variety of challenges — lingering fears of the coronavirus, the disinclination by some patrons to wear masks and resistance to high ticket prices. – Washington Post
  
  Read more

• Divers Are Discovering Golden Treasure From An Ancient Indonesian Empire

  05-11-2021 17:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Local divers exploring Indonesia’s Musi River (on the island of Sumatra) have found gold rings, beads and other artifacts that may be linked to the Srivijaya Empire, which controlled sea trade across large swaths of Asia between the 7th and 11th centuries C.E.” – Smithsonian Magazine
  
  Read more

• Broadway Box Office Slips Again. Did It Open Too Soon?

  05-11-2021 16:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Big picture: the 27 shows currently running grossed $19.66 million together last week, with 168,169 butts in seats. That’s a 11% box office drop from the week before, and a 5% drop in overall attendance. – Forbes
  
  Read more

• Some Dancers Are Starting To Rebel Against The Zero-Body-Hair Standard

  05-11-2021 16:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Says one choreographer, “It’s not the first fight I would pick about the homogeneity of bodies on stage. But there’s something archaic in dance – where your body is policed in certain ways. You’re taught not to have agency over your body.” – The Guardian
  
  Read more

• Jeremy Deller gets radical, Inca treasures are unveiled and poppies spring up in Manchester – the week in art

  05-11-2021 15:53
  
  The British Museum hosts a revelatory Peruvian experience, a renegade parades his poster art and the Tower of London war memorial travels north – all in your weekly dispatchPeru: A Journey in TimeThousands of years of art and history should make for a revelatory experience, from the Nazca earth drawings that some connect with alien landings, to the splendour of the Incas and beyond.
  • British Museum, London, 11 November to 20 February. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• The Bionic Gloves That Let João Carlos Martins Play Piano Again

  05-11-2021 15:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  His international career was hobbled over and over again by a breathtaking series of mishaps, comebacks, and more mishaps that ultimately left him unable to play at all. Then an industrial designer saw Martins on TV and had an idea … – GQ
  
  Read more

• CNN’s Online Video Is Much More Divisive Than What It Airs On TV, And Here’s Why

  05-11-2021 15:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Yes, of course, it’s ultimately to make more money, but here’s a glimpse of just how different the content is and a look at the structural reason for that difference. – Columbia Journalism Review
  
  Read more

• Archaeologists Have Mapped Genghis Khan’s Lost Capital — And It’s Not What You’d Expect

  05-11-2021 14:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Using equipment designed for geophysics, researchers scanned the site of Karakorum, chosen by Genghis and built by his two successors, and found that the city was larger than previously thought, extending well beyond the walls, 40% of it was empty, and Mongols didn’t live there. – Haaretz (Israel)
  
  Read more

• Alice Childress Should Have Been The First Black Female Playwright On Broadway, After 66 Years, Her Play Is Finally There.

  05-11-2021 14:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Her Trouble in Mind treats a touchy subject, even now: it’s about an interracial cast rehearsing an anti-lynching play written and directed by whites. In 1955, the Off-Broadway producers made her tack on a happy ending; in 2021, it’s playing as she intended. – The New York Times
  
  Read more

• New Marvel Film “Eternals” Banned In Saudi Arabia And Kuwait

  05-11-2021 13:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Sources report that the decision is because Disney’s Marvel Studios refused the request to cut a male-male kiss. Eternals is the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to feature an LGBTQ+ superhero. – Variety
  
  Read more

• Afghan Dance Teachers In Exile, Cut Off From Students And Homeland

  05-11-2021 13:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Makhloot had an entire crew of professional hip-hop dancers in Kabul (including one woman) and hoped to compete in breaking at the 2024 Olympics. Fahima performed and taught sema, the meditative whirling dance of the Sufis. Both had to flee quickly when the Taliban took over. – Dance Teacher
  
  Read more

• Return engagement

  05-11-2021 12:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  Forgive my absence from the blog this week—I was, as Patrick O’Brian would say, overpressed with sail, and I needed some time to myself to get caught up. I’m now ready at last to resume regular postings.
  Longtime readers of “About Last Night” will remember my friend Laura Demanski, who used to co-blog with me under the pseudonym “Our Girl in Chicago” once upon a time. Laura and I are still the closest of friends, and I’ve been mourning the recent
  
  Read more

• Watering a dry soul

  05-11-2021 12:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  I review the new musical version of The Visitor in today’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s an excerpt.
  *  *  *Turning a perfect movie into a stage musical is almost always a fool’s game. The only way the results are guaranteed to work is if you add a perfect score, as Stephen Sondheim did with “A Little Night Music” and David Yazbek did with “The Band’s Visit.” Otherwise, the resulting show rarely makes an impression sufficiently st
  
  Read more

• ‘We must tell our stories’: Lenny Henry introduces a Black British culture takeover

  05-11-2021 12:00
  
  Across the arts, Black British artists are making their voices heard. To mark the moment, Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder have guest-edited the Saturday magazine’s culture sectionBlack lives matter. Before it is an organisation or capitalised political movement, it is just a simple statement of fact. Black people’s lives are important and have meaning. However, too often when we discuss the meaning of the phrase, we frame our discussions around how our lives are not valued. Continue rea
  
  Read more

• ‘A way to deal with emotion’: how teaching art can help prisoners

  05-11-2021 07:24
  
  The Prison Arts Collective brings art, and renowned artists, to incarcerated people as a form of therapy and escapeThe American prison has a long cultural history, depicted in movies from The Shawshank Redemption to The Green Mile. They are generally portrayed as harsh, dehumanising places populated by hardened criminals and vicious guards.Who better, then, to demystify prisons and those who live in them than artists themselves? “We’ve had this glorified TV version of what a prison i
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUK1 on Twitter!