Arts news

• New York’s Vessel to reopen with steel-mesh safety measures after suicides

  14-04-2024 23:27
  
  Climbable sculpture in Hudson Yards in Manhattan closed in 2021 after four people died by suicideThe Vessel, the huge climbable centerpiece of New York’s upmarket Hudson Yards development that saw a number of suicides, is set to reopen later this year with new safety features, according to developers.The 150ft sculpture, designed by Thomas Heatherwick and built at a cost of $260m, was closed three years ago after four people jumped to their deaths. Besides overall criticism of its design &
  
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• ‘No one comes back’: Margaret Atwood’s anti-war poem debuts at Venice Biennale

  14-04-2024 15:00
  
  Canadian author’s work, shared exclusively with the Observer, is to be shown alongside art by GoyaMargaret Atwood has written a new protest poem about the impact of war that will be unveiled at the Venice Biennale on Monday.The poem, shared this weekend exclusively with the Observer, was written to be shown alongside more than 200 works, including the art of painters Francisco de Goya and Otto Dix, in an exhibition designed to emphasise the futility of human conflict.Many have travelled fa
  
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• Fake ads, real politics: the art of Foka Wolf, the ‘Birmingham Banksy’ – in pictures

  14-04-2024 14:00
  
  Anonymous street artist Foka Wolf uses the language of advertising to highlight political and social issues, from the PPE crisis to food banks. “I grew up in a low income, single-parent household,” he says, “so I take it very fucking personally when people in power try and demonise those who are broke and voiceless.” Known as the Birmingham Banksy (“I prefer Poundland Banksy”), Wolf has fooled countless people with his fake billboards. “There’s a l
  
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• I value Brummie art, but who else does? | Stewart Lee

  14-04-2024 11:00
  
  Only in Birmingham could a statue of King Kong be lost twice. The city’s relationship with its cultural history is complicatedWhy should the people of Birmingham have 100% arts cuts imposed on them? Brummies are quite capable of devaluing their own art without official encouragement. In 2020, the director Michael Cumming and I completed King Rocker (“One of my all time favourite rock docs” – Mark Kermode; “the new gold standard for rockumentaries” – the
  
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• Yinka Shonibare CBE: Suspended States review – gorgeously recognisable, but is that enough?

  14-04-2024 10:00
  
  Serpentine South Gallery, London
  The British-Nigerian artist’s first solo London show in more than two decades is full of his signature beautiful African fabrics subverting familiar colonial figures – just like the last oneThere is a terrific skit on Henry VIII in Yinka Shonibare’s new show at the Serpentine Gallery. It plays on the familiar outline of the incredible hulk in his feathered hat. His enormous garments are collaged out of printed woodgrain and African batik in bril
  
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• ‘Miraculous’: exquisite paintings saved from Notre Dame fire back on view

  14-04-2024 06:00
  
  Five years after the inferno at the Paris cathedral, a new exhibition shows the rescued art treasuresThere was a moment on 15 April 2019 as the flames consuming Notre Dame cathedral roared into the evening sky when it seemed all would be lost.Firefighters prevented the blaze from reaching the bell towers – whose collapse would have almost certainly brought down the facade – and from destroying the bells, the Grand Organ and the Parisian monument’s stained-glass rosette windows.
  
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