Arts news

• ‘It makes me sick!’ How the French impressionists went from ‘lunatics’ to luminaries

  09-06-2025 17:00
  The National Gallery of Victoria’s new show, French Impressionism, celebrates the likes of Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot and Pissarro, who painted in the face of public outrageGet our weekend culture and lifestyle email“Five or six lunatics deranged by ambition – one of them a woman – have chosen to exhibit their works,” the French critic Albert Wolff wrote in a review of an art exhibition in Paris in 1876. The lunatics in question were a group of up-and-coming arti
  
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• Man who stole Banksy print to pay off drug debt given 13-month sentence

  14-11-2025 19:27
  Larry Fraser, 49, burgled Grove gallery in London, stealing limited edition print from Girl With Balloon seriesA man who stole a Banksy print from an art gallery to pay off a drug debt has been given a 13-month prison sentence.Larry Fraser, 49, stole the limited edition print from the street artist’s Girl With Balloon series after breaking into the Grove gallery in Fitzrovia, central London, last September. Continue reading...
  
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• Almshouse in Dorset discovers its 15th-century Flemish triptych is worth £3.5m

  14-11-2025 16:06
  Artwork that hung for centuries at St John’s Almshouse in Sherborne will be sold to raise funds for social housing“The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and He adds no sorrow with it,” so says the Bible, Proverbs 10:22.On Friday, a church almshouse was counting its blessings after discovering that a triptych painting that has hung in the chapel for centuries is a 15th-century Flemish masterpiece worth £3.5m. Continue reading...
  
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• Maggi meets Sarah, Anish Kapoor takes on Ice and Suffolk seduces Spencer – the week in art

  14-11-2025 13:00
  Hambling and Lucas join forces, Roger Fry gets a rare show and an aerial daredevil captures stormy Scotland – all in your weekly dispatchMaggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas
  These two very different artists became friends after meeting at the Colony Room (where else?) and now show together in an encounter of British art generations. • Sadie Coles HQ, London, 20 November to 24 January Continue reading...
  
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• Dorothy Waugh’s epic 1930s US national park posters – in pictures

  14-11-2025 11:03
  Between 1934 and 1936, artist Dorothy Waugh was commissioned to create 17 posters for the National Park Service, a groundbreaking opportunity for a female designer at the time. Her designs, which were both accessible and avant-garde, are being celebrated in an exhibition for the first time at New York’s Poster House. Blazing A Trail: Dorothy Waugh’s National Parks Posters is on display until 22 February 2026 Continue reading...
  
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• Why I can’t judge art gallery visitors for getting snap-happy | Letters

  13-11-2025 18:33
  Martin Cooper and Lillian Adams on photographs being taken of artworksI too have been irritated by fellow gallery visitors photographing the works (Letters, 7 November). That is until I did it myself. On a visit to Tate Britain recently, I found myself in The Exhibition Age gallery. Unusually, there were no obvious labels with the pictures, which were hung all the way to the ceiling as they might have been in a Royal Academy exhibition in the 18th century.I thought the pictures rather disappoint
  
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• ‘It’s unexpected joy’: the guerrilla mosaic artists adding colour to potholes, benches and bomb craters

  13-11-2025 09:00
  From Southampton to Sarajevo, urban mosaicists are transforming city spaces and bringing communities together – one tile at a timeOur cities are full of grey tower blocks built for efficiency rather than aesthetics. Public benches are made of cheap concrete, pavements are falling apart, old structures are left derelict. Amid this backdrop of unloved, muted ugliness, a new wave of guerrilla mosaicists are enlivening their cities with beautiful, colourful designs.These artists rare
  
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• San Diego City Council Promises Not To Cut Arts Funding In Next Budget

  12-11-2025 20:04 via msn.com
  
  “Council members have declared city arts funding off limits for budget cuts next spring, even as they face a projected $111 million deficit. … While the move falls far short of a long-unfulfilled council pledge known as ‘penny for the arts,’ council members said it’s a strong message.” – The San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)
  
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• Bill Ivey

  12-11-2025 19:52 via artsjournal.com
  
  Bill Ivey died this past weekend; he was eighty-one years old. It came as a shock to us – just last week he was here in Bloomington meeting with our arts policy students, something he loved doing. He was a great friend to our program, generous with his time and advice to students and to younger faculty. He had studied Folklore and Ethnomusicology here at IU, and enjoyed visiting.
  He is best known for having been Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the last years of the Clint
  
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• The Resurgence Of Music On Physical Objects

  12-11-2025 19:44 via thetonearm.com
  
  Continuing one of the more surprising comebacks of the digital age, vinyl album sales in the United States increased for the 18th consecutive year in 2024.” While CD sales are on the decline, “Cassette tape sales jumped by 204.7% in the first quarter of 2025, hitting 63,288 units. – ToneArm
  
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• The Muppets Come To Netflix And Go Global

  12-11-2025 19:31 via theguardian.com
  
  More than almost any other children’s show, Sesame Street seemed to crack the code on how to simultaneously educate and entertain children. – The Guardian
  
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• LA’s TV Commercial Business Is Tanking Too

  12-11-2025 19:15 via nytimes.com
  
  Production in the third quarter of this year was 18 percent lower than last year, and 40 percent lower than the five-year average, according to a new report from FilmLA, the local government organization that tracks production in the area. – The New York Times
  
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• Explainer: The Crisis At The BBC That Cost The Director-General His Job And Drew A Billion-Dollar Lawsuit Threat From Trump

  12-11-2025 19:01 via hollywoodreporter.com
  
  “(A journalist) takes a deep-dive into all the facts of this fast-developing story, and why it’s brought the BBC to an inflection point.” – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• The Antique Movie Camera Reviving A Technology

  12-11-2025 18:44 via wsj.com
  
  A handful of rare and cranky antiques are powering the ungainly Hollywood resurgence of VistaVision. The format, developed in 1954 by Paramount, was once used to glorious effect by filmmakers such as Cecil B. DeMille. – The Wall Street Journal
  
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• Masterworks Sold Shares In $1 Billion Of Art. Good Investment?

  12-11-2025 18:31 via nytimes.com
  
  In just eight years, it has become one of the art market’s biggest buyers. Its collection of 500 artworks is now valued at more than $1 billion and its platform has drawn 70,000 investors. – The New York Times
  
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• London’s Royal Opera Institutes Dynamic Pricing, And Top Ticket Prices Soar

  12-11-2025 18:06 via thetimes.com
  
  “(The house) is selling tickets for Siegfried, the third instalment of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, for up to £415 ($546). This is the priciest known ticket offered for sale in Britain by any publicly subsidised performing arts organisation. RBO receives a state subsidy of over £22 million each year.” – The Times (UK)
  
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• Netflix’s First Venture Into Theme Parks

  12-11-2025 17:44 via npr.org
  
  “This is the first permanent physical manifestation of Netflix for our fans,” says the company’s chief marking officer, Marian Lee. “They’ve been inviting us into their homes for years and years.” – NPR
  
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• Striking British Library Workers Expose Dire Low Pay Consequences

  12-11-2025 17:31 via theguardian.com
  
  According to their union, they are offered pay deals so dire that many of them work multiple jobs and live in substandard housing. Seventy-one per cent of respondents to a union survey find their salary insufficient to meet basic needs. – The Guardian
  
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• Hollywood Has Slipped Dramatically In Diversifying

  12-11-2025 17:15 via theankler.com
  
  To my shock, when I looked at the numbers, I found that not only are things not significantly better, 2025 has been worse than any moment in recent times; worse, in fact, than pre-#MeToo. – The Ankler
  
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• Choreography In Space: Exploring The Possibilities

  12-11-2025 17:03 via dancemagazine.com
  
  “How? The answer in (one) case was Velcro-covered suits, … just one form of technology that dancers are using to simulate the effects of weightlessness here on Earth. But for some, the end goal is to experience a true lack of gravity by bringing dance to space.” – Dance Magazine
  
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• Staffers Call Strike At Britain’s Tate Galleries

  12-11-2025 16:32 via theguardian.com
  
  Workers at all four galleries — Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London, Tate St. Ives in Cornwall, and Tate Liverpool — represented by the Public and Commercial Services Union voted 98% to 2% to walk out from November 26 to December 2 over a pay offer they insist is too low. – The Guardian
  
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• Some US Bookstores Have Set Up Food Banks To Help Cut-Off SNAP Recipients

  12-11-2025 16:04 via nytimes.com
  
  “With the (federal government) shutdown creating anxiety and uncertainty for those who depend on government aid, many independent bookstores took on a new role as hubs for food donations.” – The New York Times
  
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• Tate staff vote to strike over pay after union members reject ‘inadequate’ offer

  12-11-2025 15:33
  Exclusive: More than 150 workers to strike from 26 November to 2 December, raising possibility of disruption to major showsStaff at Tate have voted overwhelmingly to strike over pay, which could seriously disrupt major shows at the cultural institution.More than 150 workers will go on strike from 26 November to 2 December after a ballot by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), in which 98% of members voted for action on a turnout of more than 87%. Continue reading...
  
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• US Museums Have Had A Pretty Rough 2025, Finds Survey

  12-11-2025 15:31 via theguardian.com
  
  An American Alliance of Museums survey of over 500 museum directors found that one-third of responding museums have lost government grants or contracts under the Trump administration, one-fourth of them have had to cut targeted programs (e.g., for students or senior citizens), and over one-fourth have canceled programs for the general public. – The Guardian
  
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• Disney’s Standoff With YouTube Could Cost It Quite A Lot

  12-11-2025 15:05 via finance.yahoo.com
  
  “Disney may lose $30 million in revenue per week as its carriage dispute with YouTube TV has left ABC, ESPN and more of the media giant’s channels and programming dark on the Google-owned platform for 12 days.” – TheWrap (Yahoo!)
  
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• Antiquities Stolen From National Museum Of Damascus

  12-11-2025 14:30 via artnews.com
  
  Thieves smashed open a door on Sunday night and reportedly took ancient Roman marble statues and gold items. The museum had reopened for good, with its collection intact, only this past January after extended closures due to the Syrian civil war and subsequent uprising against the Assad regime. – ARTnews
  
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• Actress Sally Kirkland, 86

  12-11-2025 14:06 via hollywoodreporter.com
  
  A Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award winner and Oscar nominee for the 1987 film Anna, in which she plays a great Czechoslovak actress trapped in New York’s avant-garde scene, she had over 260 roles in a decades-long career, from Andy Warhol to The Sting to 2006’s Factory Girl. – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• Sex, lies and pistachio shells: the disturbing dream worlds of artist Joseph Yaeger

  12-11-2025 07:00
  The American takes strange film stills and turns them into monumental watercolours, full of Catholic guilt and paranoia – and it’s made him the most talked-about painter of the moment‘All paintings are in their own way accusations and confessions,” says Joseph Yaeger. “It’s what Polygrapher is about.” This is the title of the artist’s new exhibition, his first since joining the prestigious London gallery Modern Art in 2024, for whom it marks the op
  
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• Musicians Of Venice’s Opera House Lead March Through City To Protest Music Director

  11-11-2025 21:01 via apnews.com
  
  “On Monday, musicians, singers and stagehands (from Teatro La Fenice) marched through Venice with workers from other Italian opera houses. … They were joined by season-ticket holders, music students and Venetians worried about the future of artistic independence at La Fenice — and across Italy.” – AP
  
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• Bart Sher: Theatre As Catalyst For Change

  11-11-2025 20:31 via observer.com
  
  “I think theatre is a catalyst for change,” Sher said. “I don’t think you make theatre pieces to tell people how to change. We tell stories that express people’s ability to handle ambiguity, deal with problems, see conflicts and make decisions.” – New York Observer
  
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