Arts news

• Athena 'tennis girl' poster dress sells for £15,500 at auction

  05-07-2014 15:37
  
  Dress featured in classic 1970s poster fetches eight times its original estimate with racquetThe white minidress worn by the model in the famous 1970s "Tennis Girl" poster has been sold for £15,500 at auction.The price was almost eight times the £2,000 estimate set by Fieldings Auctioneers in Stourbridge, which offered the dress along with the tennis racquet featured in the image and two copies of the poster. Continue reading...
  
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• Blockchain Billionaire Justin Sun Allegedly Squashed an Article Critical of His Banana-Eating Stunt

  03-01-2025 23:15 via artnews.com
  
  Blockchain billionaire and art collector Justin Sun made global headlines in November after shelling out $6.2 million at Sotheby’s for Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019), his infamous banana duct-taped to a wall. Sun then ate the banana at a buzzy press conference in Hong Kong. However, it seems Sun didn’t have a taste for all the press that come of it.According to Fortune, the blockchain billionaire and art collector pressured the crypto trade publication CoinDesk to retract
  
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• German Museum Says Visitor Damaged Installation Referencing Palestine

  03-01-2025 22:49 via artnews.com
  
  The Kunstverein in Hamburg, a contemporary art museum in Germany, said on Friday that part of an installation by artist Phoebe Collings-James that references Palestine was vandalized in what the institution described as a “politically targeted” act.The site-specific work, red earth, blood earth, blood brother earth [kick dirt] (2024), was commissioned for the group exhibition “In and Out of Place. Land after Information 1992–2024,” which opened in September. On Inst
  
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• Hidden Medieval Wall Paintings Have Been Digitally Restored in France

  03-01-2025 19:17 via artnews.com
  
  French Medieval wall paintings hidden for more than 500 years in the Angers cathedral have been digitally restored, according to the Hamilton Kerr Institute Bulletin.The late 13th century paintings were whitewashed following a mid 15th-century fire at the cathedral and subsequently boxed behind woodwork by 1786, which protected them from iconoclasts and vandalization during the French Revolution. In 1980, they were found by a priest who had been using the small area for storage. Though French ex
  
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• A brush with Britain’s first abstract artist | Brief letters

  03-01-2025 18:26
  Contenders for the title | Yellow snow | Fluffy jelly | Sunday tea | Tiling with condensed milkRe the hunt for Britain’s first abstract artist (Letters, 29 December), how about a mention for Jacob Kramer’s Rite of Spring of 1920, or better still, Helen Saunders’ 1915 work Abstract Multicoloured Design?
  Dr Michael ParaskosSenior teaching fellow in art history, Imperial College London• You again report on a “yellow snow warning” (1 January). The regular appearanc
  
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• Grand Egyptian Museum, With 12 Galleries Now Open, Recontextualizes Ancient Egyptian History

  03-01-2025 16:29 via artnews.com
  
  After over a decade of development, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) has opened its doors—partially. In late October, GEM opened 12 of its main galleries and began welcoming around 4,000 visitors daily. These galleries, in chronological and thematic order, feature a selection of the collection’s 15,000 artifacts as the museum fine-tunes its operations ahead of what hopefully will soon be its—no pun intended—grand opening.Originally announced in 2002, the GEM has long been
  
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• The Storied Kafka Novella That May Have Never Existed

  03-01-2025 11:00 via artnews.com
  
  Andy Warhol: Franz Kafka, 1980. Did you know that Kafka wrote kind letters to a girl who lost her doll in the park—as the doll? And that this was meant to help her slowly get over the loss of said doll?I, for one, did not. It’s a story mentioned briefly on a wall text at the Morgan Library’s new exhibition in lovely tribute to Franz Kafka, on view through April 13. And reader, it knocked me out. Internet sleuths, of course, don’t be
  
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• Works by Matisse, Frida Kahlo, and Robert Capa Are Entering the Public Domain, With Some Caveats

  02-01-2025 22:11 via artnews.com
  
  Every year, January 1 marks a new crop of artists and artworks entering the public domain, a holiday affectionately known to some as Public Domain Day. This year, works by Henri Matisse, Robert Capa, and Frida Kahlo lose their copyright protections, as do novels like Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. The comics characters of Popeye and Tintin are also entering the public domain alongside those works.The UK-based organization Public D
  
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• Why Is the UK Spending £46 M. on a Statue of Queen Elizabeth When the Culture Sector Is on Its Knees?

  02-01-2025 21:44 via artnews.com
  
  The UK government is calling on artists, architects, and engineers to submit design proposals for a memorial commemorating the late Queen Elizabeth II, and the winning submission will be erected in London’s St. James’s Park near Buckingham Palace. The budget is between £23 million–£46 million—paid for using public funds.The first of the competition’s two phases launched in December and closes January 20. Five shortlisted competitors will then battle it o
  
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• Dame Rosalind Savill obituary

  02-01-2025 20:46
  
  Director of the Wallace Collection museum in London from 1992 to 2011 and a specialist on 18th-century Sèvres porcelainWhen, in 1992, Rosalind Savill announced that she was going to apply for the directorship of the Wallace Collection museum in London, reactions divided roughly in two. One group would smile wistfully and say how much they loved the Wallace, because no one ever went there. The second group would point out that Savill, who has died aged 73 of cancer, was variously unqualifi
  
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• Art World Insiders Make Their New Year’s Predictions for 2025

  02-01-2025 20:29 via artnews.com
  
  Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.With all of the disorienting and often dismaying events of 2024 finally behind us, it’s time to look towards the new year. Even though 2025 will be without a Whitney Biennial or a Venice Biennale, the year isn’t likely to be any quieter than last. As Senior Editor Alex Greenberger wrote in h
  
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• Jeff Koons Says He Won’t Work with AI Anytime Soon: ‘I’m Very Embedded at This Moment in Biology’

  02-01-2025 20:26 via artnews.com
  
  These days, it seems that just about everybody is making use of AI—and not just tech-oriented artists, but world-famous painters, too, from David Salle to Takashi Murakami. One artist who won’t join their ranks, at least for now, is the sculptor Jeff Koons, who told the Guardian this week that he is averse to using AI to produce his art for the time being.“I do not work with AI at this time directly other than to produce options,” Koons told the Guardian. “Here&rsqu
  
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• Pippa Garner, Inventive Artist Who Satirized Consumerism, Dies at 82

  02-01-2025 16:33 via artnews.com
  
  Pippa Garner, an artist who poked fun at consumerism in sculptures and performances that gained a cult following, died at 82 in Los Angeles on December 30, 2024. She had been battling leukemia.The news was announced via Instagram in Garner’s name that is run by friends of the artist, who was legally blind at the time of her passing. A statement accompanying the notice of Garner’s death read: “She wanted a trans President, universal healthcare, the end of testosterone toxicity o
  
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• How Bob Dylan went from being unknown to unforgettable | Letters

  01-01-2025 18:32
  
  Mike Pender recalls being moved by the lyrics of Blowin’ in the Wind, while John Rushton says a recent concert was enhanced by the absence of mobile phonesIn his engrossing piece about A Complete Unknown (‘It’s full of things that didn’t happen – but it feels right!’ Inside the making of Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown. 27 December), Alexis Petridis mentioned that the film is very good at capturing the shock and awe of audiences encountering songs like
  
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• 2025 Preview: 20 Museum Openings, Art Exhibitions, and Biennials to Look Forward To

  01-01-2025 16:00 via artnews.com
  
  Years without Venice Biennales tend to be quieter affairs, but that’s not the case for 2025, which is shaping up to be a particularly busy period for the art world, with long-anticipated museum openings across the globe and experimental biennials staged on nearly every continent. With 2025 finally here, it’s time to start planning. Below, we’ve created a list of 20 art happenings to look forward to next year.
  
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• 2024 — The Year In Art Forgery

  31-12-2024 20:50 via artnews.com
  
  A pan-European forgery network, a disputed Malevich at the Pompidou Center, supposed Monet and Renoir on eBay, yet more fake Basquiats, and the bogus Picassos in Tasmania that went undetected for over three years. – ARTnews
  
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• How Schools Are Expanding What Music Education Is

  31-12-2024 20:32 via cbc.ca
  
  Step into a music class today and you might find laptops, turntables and MIDI controllers joining the expected clarinets, recorders and violins. From elementary through post-secondary schooling, some teachers are expanding music education and encouraging more students to try more contemporary forms of music-making. – CBC
  
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• The State Of British Theatre, In 20 Shows Across All Four Nations

  31-12-2024 20:05 via thestage.co.uk
  “Two decades after theatre’s funding taps were turned off, editor Alistair Smith embarked on a tour from the tip to the toe of the United Kingdom, taking in productions across the four nations and speaking to those behind them, to discover how this period has shaped the industry we see today.” – The Stage
  
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• Studying the Scriptures According To TSwift

  31-12-2024 19:30 via theconversation.com
  
  Swift’s music still forms the basis of their interest in her. Fans study it like scripture, offering various interpretations of the lyrics. Uniting these interpretations is a desire to understand more about the figure of Swift and who she “really” is. – The Conversation
  
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• This Year In Great Sentences, Frank Bruni Edition

  31-12-2024 19:15 via nytimes.com
  In The Times, Jason Farago defended an artistic movement against its detractors: “If you find Monet, Renoir, Degas too pretty and popular — if you think Impressionism is the artistic equivalent of a pumpkin spice latte — I want you to taste the espresso beneath the foam.” – The New York Times
  
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• The Literary World’s Biggest News Stories Of 2024

  31-12-2024 19:01 via lithub.com
  
  “Here are the book-world-adjacent stories that thrilled, disgusted, amused, and otherwise occupied our group chats this year.” – Literary Hub
  
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• 2024: The Year the Art Market Returned to Reality

  31-12-2024 19:00 via artnews.com
  
  Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.It is tempting, at the end of the year, to look back and try to draw some grand conclusion about the events, large and small, that appear to have moved the art market one way or another over the last 12 months. December is as good a time as any for reflection, but it’s important to consider the pa
  
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• Musicians We Lost In 2024

  31-12-2024 18:44 via gramilano.com
  
  A list of prominent musicians who dies in 2024. – Gramilano
  
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• Best of 2024: the year in illustrations for Guardian US stories

  31-12-2024 18:26
  
  From online privacy to sex parties and an election illustrated entirely with cut paper, this is how artists illustrated the year’s biggest stories for Guardian US Continue reading...
  
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• The Top Library Stories Of 2024

  31-12-2024 18:21 via publishersweekly.com
  It’s been a challenging year for libraries. – Publishers Weekly
  
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• Top Archaeology Stories Of 2024

  31-12-2024 18:15 via hyperallergic.com
  From sexy frescoes emerging from the ashes to hidden cities surfacing due to Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scans, archaeologists continue to make discoveries that transform our understanding of the past and how best to preserve it for the future. – Hyperallergic
  
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• The “Unphilosophical” Life?

  31-12-2024 18:15 via unherd.com
  Thinking hard makes sense if you want answers; it makes less sense if the highest reward you anticipate from your intellectual efforts is surprise. The difference between a philosophical life and an essayistic one is that the former aims at knowledge, while the latter aims at novelty. – Unherd
  
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• In Memoriam 2024: Notable Artists, Dealers, and Collectors Who Died This Year

  31-12-2024 18:15 via artnews.com
  
  There were times in 2024 when it felt as though an entire chapter of art history was being lost. Crack open a modern art textbook, and note how many figures from the section on Minimalism died this year alone: Frank Stella, Carl Andre, Richard Serra. Stella and Serra’s deaths, plus those of artists working at the same time like Faith Ringgold and Jackie Winsor, recently moved critic Barry Schwabsky to ask if an entire New York scene had died this year as well.It wasn’t just artists i
  
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• Have A Listen To The Earliest Known Recording Of A Country Music Song

  31-12-2024 18:06 via bbc.com
  
  “A wax cylinder containing the oldest recorded country song was discovered in Pennsylvania. The track, ‘Thompson’s Old Gray Mule,’ was recorded in 1891 and sung by Louis Vasnier, a Black man from New Orleans.” – BBC
  
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• Why Are We So Fascinated With Our Own Demise?

  31-12-2024 17:30 via theatlantic.com
  
  Young people today are no less obsessed with climate disasters than Gen X was with nuclear war. Where we had nightmares about missiles, theirs feature mass extinctions and climate refugees, wildfires and water wars. And that’s just the beginning. – The Atlantic
  
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