Art

The Organization Working To Reimagine Public Monuments

The goal is to assess the country’s landscape of public memory in a time when our shared identity as Americans feels strained, if not broken. Then we can begin to understand where we go from here, says Monument Lab cofounder and director Paul Farber. – Philadelphia Inquirer
Tags: Art, Visual, 01.05.21

After 40 Years Leading San Francisco Ballet, Helgi Tomasson To Step Down

Since being named to the position in 1985, Tomasson, 78, has been hailed for his success at combining excellence in the classical ballet repertoire with a spirit of artistic innovation and the development of new work. Tomasson alone has created more than 50 dances for the company, as well as commissioning work from a wide range of contemporary masters and developing artists. – San Francisco Chronicle
Tags: Art, Dance, San Francisco Ballet, Helgi Tomasson, Tomasson, 01.06.21.20

The Fifteen-Minute City? Sweden Considers The “One-Minute City”

A plan piloted by Swedish national innovation body Vinnova and design think tank ArkDes focuses attention on what Dan Hill, Vinnova’s director of strategic design, calls the “one-minute city.” It’s a order of magnitude smaller than other recent think-local planning conceits. While Paris works with a 15-minute radius and Barcelona’s superblocks with nine-block chunks of the city, Sweden’s project operates at the single street level, paying attention to “the space outside your front door — and th...
Tags: Art, Sweden, Barcelona, Paris, Issues, Hill, Vinnova, 01.05.21, Dan Hill Vinnova

Ex-Employees Of The California Arts Council Speak Out

“When it comes to the arts program specialists, I and several of my former colleagues found it to be a space that causes fear of retaliation, targeting and silencing, and where leadership lacks accountability.” – Hyperallergic
Tags: Art, Issues, California Arts Council, 01.05.21

Analyzing The Fallout From The New York Times’s ‘Caliphate’ Podcast

The Peabody- and Pulitzer-winning audio series lost much of its luster (and gave up its awards) when its primary subject was revealed to be a big ol’ liar fabulist. Media columnist Nicholas Quah considers how the flawed material got past editors in the first place, what consequences have been suffered by the main people involved, and the complications the Times has faced in dealing with the matter. – Vulture
Tags: Art, Media, New York Times, Times, Nicholas Quah, 01.05.21

Arts Organizations Turn To Stars For Fundraising

The pandemic has forced arts institutions on both sides of the Atlantic to swiftly up their online game. The New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet usually hold a big benefit event and a backstage tour for donors after a Christmas Saturday matinee of The Nutcracker. This time Tiler Peck, principal dancer, gave an online tour instead, while those who had bought tickets watched from home after receiving a package of treats delivered to their doors. – The Guardian
Tags: Art, Atlantic, Issues, New York City Ballet, School of American Ballet, Tiler Peck, 01.05.21

Why Doesn’t The Entertainment Biz Give Proper Credit To Its Choreographers?

The Emmys and Tonys give their Best Choreography trophies without the TV cameras running; the Oscars don’t even have a category for dancemakers, and the credits for music videos these days often don’t bother to mention them. With popular TV shows like So You Think You Can Dance making some choreographers famous, it’s time for the rest of the industry to follow suit. – Dance Magazine
Tags: Art, Dance, 01.05.21

Australian Artists: Why Did The National Government Forget Us?

“For some, state governments stepped up and provided support. But the message to artists from the federal government was: you are not important to the national agenda, and therefore we can –and will – ignore you.” – ArtsHub
Tags: Art, Issues, 01.05.21

What The Reality Of Cows Has To Inform Humans

A cow sporting VR goggles is comedic as much as it is tragic. There’s horror, too, in that it may foretell our own alienated futures. After all, how different is our experience? We submit to emotion trackers. We log into biofeedback machines. We sign up for tracking and tracing. We let advertisers’ eyes watch us constantly and mappers store our coordinates. – The New York Times
Tags: Art, Ideas, 01.05.21

Who Exactly Invented The Alphabet, And When?

The Sumerians had cuneiform and the Egyptians hieroglyphics, both complex and difficult to master, but who developed the system where each character represents a particular sound and the characters (letters) can be combined to form words the way sounds are? The Phoenicians invented the alphabet from which all the European and Near Eastern scripts (and possibly those of India as well) are descended, but they didn’t come up with the idea. Who did? Very likely, a bunch of common laborers. – Smiths...
Tags: Art, India, Words, January-February 2021

Curious Cribs: Boldly Rent Where No Man Has Rented Before

Who would imagine a Florida mansion just might be the perfect place for a die-hard (and deep-pocketed) Trekkie to live long and prosper? Financial investor Marc Bell, a Tony-winning Broadway producer, former co-owner of Penthouse magazine, and lifelong “Star Trek” fan, is seeking a tenant who’ll transport themselves to his delightfully playful “Trek”-themed Boca Raton […]
Tags: Florida, Design, Broadway, Penthouse, Tony, Boca Raton, Marc Bell, More Dirt, Marc Bell Real Estate

Kia Reveals its New Logo

Kia revealed its new logo and brand slogan while you were asleep last night, signifying the Korean automaker’s ambitions to become a leader in the industry by revamping nearly all facets of its business. Kia developed the new logo to resemble a handwritten signature, a striking departure from the oval used since its inception in […] The post Kia Reveals its New Logo appeared first on The Truth About Cars.
Tags: Asia, Design, Media, Imessage, Advertising, Global, Sales, Events, Korea, Autos, Sales And Marketing, Kia, Korean, Branding, New Logo, News Blog

France's highest court orders retrial of art-dealing Wildenstein family

Guy Wildenstein and others face new trial after court annuls 2018 tax fraud acquittal France’s highest court has ordered a retrial of members of the art-dealing Wildenstein family who were acquitted of tax fraud in 2018.Guy Wildenstein, a close friend of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, and other family members, known in France as “les W”, were cleared of hiding an estimated €550m from the French tax authorities in offshore accounts in 2017 – a decision upheld on appeal. Continue reading...
Tags: Art, France, World news, Nicolas Sarkozy, Guy Wildenstein, Wildenstein

The Art World’s 12 Biggest 2020 Controversies

Museums and galleries faced financial challenges that threatened their very existence, as Black Lives Matter uprisings forced a reckoning with the art world’s structural racism and controversial monuments that celebrate shameful histories around the globe. – Artnet
Tags: Art, Visual, 01.04.21

A New Print Magazine (!) About Theatre Is Here

“The folks behind Encore Monthly, a brand new magazine about theatre that just published its first issue …, think the time is ripe to provide theatregoers, deprived as we are of theatre we can witness in person, to read about it, and they say they’re equipped to hang on until it comes raging back.” In a Q&A, founding editor-in-chief Robert Viagas talks about what Encore Monthly will focus on and why he thinks it can work. – American Theatre
Tags: Art, Theatre, Robert Viagas, 01.05.21, Encore Monthly

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam Has Digitized 709,000 Works of Art, Including Famous Works by Rembrandt and Vermeer

Art may seem inessential to those who make the big decisions in times of crisis. But it has never seemed more necessary to artists working in the time of COVID. So it was 360 years ago when Rembrandt painted a portrait of his son, Titus, in a monk’s robe in 1660. Eight years later, Titus was dead from plague, which had only a few years earlier killed Hendrickje Stoffels, Rembrandt’s former housekeeper and second wife, who helped raise Titus, Rembrandt’s only child to survive into adulthood. The...
Tags: Google, Art, College, Cnn, Netherlands, Amsterdam, Rembrandt, Minneapolis Institute Of Art, Star Tribune, Facebook Twitter, Delft, Vermeer, Josh Jones, Jonathan Jones, Titus, Rembrandt Vermeer

Novelist Eric Jerome Dickey Dead At 59

“[He] was an aspiring actor and stand-up comic who began writing fiction in his mid-30s and shaped a witty, conversational and sometimes graphic prose style. It brought him a wide readership through such novels as Sister, Sister and Naughty or Nice and through his Gideon crime fiction series, which included Sleeping With Strangers and Resurrecting Midnight.” – Yahoo! (AP)
Tags: Art, People, Nice, Gideon, Eric Jerome Dickey, 01.05.21

Squatters Invade Site Of Oldest City In Americas And Threaten To Kill Archaeologists

The place is Caral, estimated to be 5,000 years old and now a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Peruvian coastal desert about 125 miles north of Lima. Archaeologist Ruth Shady discovered the ruins in 1994. Over the past year, an extended family of squatters has made repeated invasions, claiming that the land — which has increased in value by a factor of ten in the past few years — was given to them by a military government in the 1970s. They’ve threatened the excavation crew and poisoned their ...
Tags: Art, Lima, Unesco World Heritage, Visual, Caral, Ruth Shady, 01.03.21

How ‘American Dirt’ Went From Hot Title To PR Fiasco And Still Became A Bestseller

Despite the disastrous rollout of a book that had been advance-hyped by some as a Grapes of Wrath-level work of literature, Jeanine Cummins’s thriller about an Acapulco bookseller and her young son on the run from a drug cartel was the top-selling novel for adults of 2020. Here’s a report on how the rise and fall and rise of American Dirt happened: as one employee of the publisher put it, the particular circumstances “allowed for certain things to get out of hand.” – Vulture
Tags: Art, Words, Acapulco, Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt, 01.05.21

Michael Bobbitt Is Tired Of Boards. What To Do?

Ugh. In our current structure, boards of directors for nonprofits don’t work. I’m sure there are outliers with highly functioning boards, but this is not the norm. How do we fix this? – American Theatre
Tags: Art, Issues, 01.05.21, Michael Bobbitt

Grammy Awards Postponed For Six Weeks Due To Pandemic

The ceremony, hosted by Trevor Noah, had been scheduled for January 31. It will now take place on March 14, due to, as a statement from the Recording Academy puts it, “the deteriorating COVID situation in Los Angeles, with hospital services being overwhelmed, ICUs having reached capacity, and new guidance from state and local governments.” – Variety
Tags: Art, Music, Los Angeles, Trevor Noah, Recording Academy, 01.05.21

Britain’s Gone Into Another Lockdown. How Are The Arts Affected?

It’s not as bad as it was last spring, and, in London, not too different from the last couple of weeks. “As per Gov.uk guidance, ‘training and rehearsal without an audience (in theatres and concert halls)’ will be exempt from the rules regarding business closures, while auditoria will be able to open ‘for the purposes of film and TV filming’.” – WhatsOnStage (UK)
Tags: Art, London, Britain, Issues, 01.05.21

The Current State Of Lockdowns Around Europe

Rules vary quite a bit between the eight countries covered here. The Netherlands, which has seen a huge surge in cases, is quite strict; Sweden, which was much laxer than most of the continent, has gotten more strict but still less so than France or Germany (which is letting some performances continue without audiences). Spain’s measures vary widely by region, as will Italy’s starting this week, while Hungary is largely open for business but its borders are virtually sealed. – The Guardian
Tags: Art, Europe, Sweden, France, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Issues, 01.05.21

To Save Itself, San Francisco Art Institute Might Sell Its Diego Rivera Mural To George Lucas

The long-financially-strapped school — which shut itself down last March, only to reverse that decision a month later after raising $3 million — has one valuable asset other than its campus that it could sell: a piece of meta-art by Rivera depicting workers painting and installing a Diego Rivera mural. And the creator of the Star Wars franchise wants it for his Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. – Artnet
Tags: Art, George Lucas, Visual, Diego Rivera, Rivera, Museum of Narrative Art, 01.05.21

Film Version Of ‘Hamilton’ Is Eligible For Golden Globes And SAG Awards But Not Oscars. Here’s Why

Disney bought the rights to the specially shot and edited footage of the Broadway production and planned to release it in movie theaters — until the pandemic changed everything and the show was put on Disney+ instead. That’s similar enough to other movies from 2020 that the Globes consider Hamilton eligible; SAG, oddly, puts it in the TV movie category. The Motion Picture Academy, on the other hand, made a deliberate decision to exclude the project from the Oscars. Reporter Scott Feinberg provi...
Tags: Art, Media, Theatre, Disney, Broadway, Hamilton, Scott Feinberg, 01.05.21

Let's all meet up in the year 3000! Inside the immersive Doctor Who: Time Fracture

Audiences can explore 17 different worlds, meet Daleks and drink cocktails in an ambitious theatre show this spring‘This entire year for live arts has been a real one step forward, two steps back process,” says Daniel Dingsdale. He’s been one of the lucky ones, working on a huge production that has survived the coronavirus upheaval and is set to open in spring.Dingsdale is the writer of Doctor Who: Time Fracture, an ambitious immersive theatre show officially licensed by the BBC and developed by...
Tags: Television, Doctor Who, Theatre, Bbc, Culture, Television & radio, Stage, Immersive theatre, Fantasy TV, Daniel Dingsdale, Dingsdale

The lives of others: Ute Mahler's images of the real East Germany – in pictures

In 1974, the German photographer set out to convey the truth about how people really lived in the communist GDR – depicting her fellow citizens with a ‘timeless coolness’ Continue reading...
Tags: Art, Europe, Photography, Germany, Society, World news, Culture, Art and design, Communism, Exhibitions, Social history, East Germany

Beirut's wounds on show in display of art damaged by port blast

Exhibition presents torn paintings and grazed sculptures in a museum itself hit by explosionThrough the entrance is a version of Guido Reni’s 17th-century portrait of St John the Baptist, blown to shreds. Nearby, a chandelier lies splattered on the ground where it fell. Mirrors are cracked, paintings ruptured, and roofs in some rooms half-caved in.Beirut is slowly rebuilding from the explosion on 4 August that destroyed much of its eastern seafront neighbourhoods and tore through galleries and h...
Tags: Art, World news, Culture, Middle East and North Africa, Art and design, Exhibitions, Beirut, Lebanon, John the Baptist, Guido Reni, Beirut explosion

Make Your Kids a Custom Coloring Book

Coloring books are a classic gift for little kids. And sure, the young child in your life might love a book full of Daniel Tiger characters or action-packed PJ Masks scenes. But often, a child’s taste is more eclectic than that—they have love for a wide range of characters, shows, movies, activities, and interests.…Read more...
Tags: Art, Customization, Lifehacks, Coloring