Arts news

• Eric Oglander’s Tiny Curiosities Summon a Sense of Simplicity and Play

  13-11-2024 21:43 via artnews.com
  
  Eric Oglander makes his sculptures—poetic and odd, searching and guided by a sense of play—in the back of an eccentric antique shop. Hidden behind a wall in Tihngs, a store he stocks with one-of-a-kind finds, and operates on Sunday afternoons in Ridgewood, Queens, is a workshop filled with scraps of wood, piles of button-down shirts, and other cast-off materials that Oglander crafts into curious contraptions, often at minuscule scale. Some are elaborate and mechanical, like the homes
  
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• British Museum Receives Its Most Expensive Gift, Michelangelo May Have Painted a Woman with Breast Cancer, Two Ben Enwonwu Works Discovered, and More: Morning Links for November 14, 2024

  14-11-2024 14:50 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The HeadlinesBRITISH MUSEUM RECEIVES MOST VALUABLE GIFT. The British Museum has received its highest-value donation to date, as the BBC reports,in the form of 1,700 rare Chinese ceramics worth $1.27 billion. They were donated by the Sir Percival David Foundation, which had previously loaned the precious, thousand-year-old treasures to the museum. British businessm
  
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• San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum to Close to the Public for a Year or More

  13-11-2024 21:00 via artnews.com
  
  The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco will shutter its galleries for at least a year, a move that its leadership attributed to continued financial difficulties resulting from the pandemic.Because of the temporary closure, the museum will lay off some of its employees, though details for those cuts were not available by the time the shuttering was announced on Wednesday. The museum also said it could not yet supply a timeline for reopening.Kerry King, director of the Contemporary Jewish
  
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• Pro-Palestine Activists Call for MoMA to Sever Ties with Honorary Chairman Ronald S. Lauder

  13-11-2024 20:43 via artnews.com
  
  Last night, pro-Palestine protestors gathered outside the Museum of Modern Art in New York as it hosted the annual assembly for the World Jewish Congress, an influential organization led by honorary MoMA chairman Ronald S. Lauder.The World Jewish Congress has repeatedly made statements in support of Israel and claimed that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism. In a 2022 report submitted to the United Nations, the organization denounced what it described as the “false depiction of Israel
  
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• Anna Weyant Graces the Cover of ‘Vogue’ with a Portrait of Kaia Gerber

  13-11-2024 19:04 via artnews.com
  
  A recent cover of Vogue‘s December 2024 issue may look strikingly familiar to art world audiences, who may recognize it as the work of Canadian artist Anna Weyant.One of two iterations—the other shot by American photographer Steven Meisel—captures actor and model Kaia Gerber. Weyant, who became known for her intimate, yet uncanny depictions of girl- and womanhood, has rose to art world stardom in the last few years. The issue’s first U.S. guest editor, fashion mogul Marc
  
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• Yves Bouvier to Stand Trial in France Over Missing Picasso Artworks

  13-11-2024 18:41 via artnews.com
  
  A French court has ruled that Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier and his business partner Olivier Thomas should stand trial over allegations related to the disappearance of multiple Picasso artworks from a storage unit over a decade ago, according to the Art Newspaper.The decision, handed down November 7 by a Paris appeals court, dismissed Bouvier’s attempt to curb the legal proceedings against him related to the works. The case began in 2015 when Catherine Hutin, Jacqueline Picasso’
  
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• Hauser & Wirth Asia Managing Partner Elaine Kwok Departs After Two Years

  13-11-2024 18:00 via artnews.com
  
  Elaine Kwok, a veteran of the Hong Kong art market, has officially left her position at Hauser & Wirth after a two-year stint. The gallery announced her departure in an email to staff.In that email, which was obtained by ARTnews, Hauser & Wirth’s leadership wrote “Elaine’s contribution in leading our Asia activities has been invaluable. Her commitment to our artists, programs, clients, and community, along with the successful opening of our new Hong Kong space she spear
  
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• Amid Art Market Slowdown and High Interest Rates, Specialist Art Lenders Claim Business Is Booming

  13-11-2024 17:30 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.Back in June, Puck’s Marion Maneker created a minor stir when he proposed a previously untold effect of the ongoing art market slowdown. High interest rates, he reported, had slammed the brakes on art lending, the growing business of banks and specialist firms lending against high-net-worth collec
  
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• Steve McQueen Pulls Out of Film Festival in Protest of Its Leader’s Comments on Female Cinematographers

  13-11-2024 17:27 via artnews.com
  
  Steve McQueen, a Turner Prize–winning artist and filmmaker, said he would not appear at a Polish film festival after the event’s leader published a controversial comments on female cinematographers.The Camerimage Film Festival, an event held in Toruń that is focused specifically on cinematography, is still slated to screen McQueen’s latest feature, Blitz, starring Saoirse Ronan as a woman looking for her lost child in war-torn London. McQueen was to be present at the scree
  
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• Working In Public View, Conservators Begin Restoration of Rembrandt’s “Night Watch”

  13-11-2024 16:30 via msn.com
  “The process” — taking place in a glass chamber in a gallery at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum — “will involve removing varnish that was applied during its 1975-76 restoration and will significantly change the look of the painting, making white paint whiter and dark areas more visible.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
  
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• How Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony’s Musicians Saved Their Bankrupt Orchestra

  13-11-2024 16:02 via theglobeandmail.com
  
  “They got in touch with its foundation and creditors, and built a new board. … The newly-formed team of directors and musicians spent months trying to find a way to resuscitate the southern Ontario symphony. And in October, they pulled it off.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
  
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• Vatican Sets Up AI Replica Of St. Peter’s Basilica

  13-11-2024 15:34 via apnews.com
  
  “The Vatican and Microsoft on Monday unveiled a digital twin of St. Peter’s Basilica that uses artificial intelligence to explore one of the world’s most important monument’s while helping the Holy See manage visitor flows and identify conservation problems.” – AP
  
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• ‘Manetsplaining’: author describes impressionist’s ‘agonising’ act of condescension

  13-11-2024 15:15
  
  Washington Post art critic says Édouard Manet launched into ‘painful’ incident with fellow painter Berthe MorisotAlmost 140 years before a term was belatedly coined for the practice of men patronisingly setting women right on how certain things ought to be seen or done, it seems that a certain French painter had already become adept at the art of what must inevitably be called Manetsplaining.Details of this late 19th-century case of mansplaining are laid out in a new book by t
  
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• City Of Spokane To Revive Its Long-Shuttered Arts Department

  13-11-2024 15:01 via spokesman.com
  
  “More than a decade after Spokane’s city arts department was dismantled by former Mayor David Condon, Mayor Lisa Brown has announced that she plans to rebuild it in partnership with the independent nonprofit created in 2012 from the ashes of the former department.” – The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA)
  
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• Julio Bocca To Take Charge At South America’s Leading Ballet Company

  13-11-2024 14:35 via nytimes.com
  
  A major ballet star in the 1980s and ’90s, Bocca is probably Argentina’s most famous living dancer. As of February, he becomes artistic director of the ballet at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. This was the third time he was offered the position. – The New York Times
  
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• Booker Prize 2024: Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital” Scores Upset Win Over Percival Everett’s “James”

  13-11-2024 14:03 via theguardian.com
  
  “Harvey’s tale of six fictional astronauts on the International Space Station was ‘unanimously’ chosen as the winner after a ‘proper day’ considering the six-strong shortlist, according to the judging chair, the artist and author Edmund de Waal.” – The Guardian
  
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• Managing Director – Roundabout Theatre Company

  13-11-2024 03:40 via artsjournal.com
  Roundabout Theatre Company is seeking a strong business and operations leader to serve in partnership with with its Artistic Director to chart the future of the nation’s largest theatre producing organization. The Managing Director’s focus will be on the overall health and welfare of the institution with a major emphasis on operations and financial sustainability. Increasing brand awareness of Roundabout’s work and leveraging real estate holdings and other capital assets will
  
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• Frieze’s Owner Endeavor Reports Higher Q3 Losses After Disclosing Potential Sale of Art Fair

  12-11-2024 23:04 via artnews.com
  
  Endeavor Group Holdings, the Hollywood entertainment company that owns the Frieze art fair and media franchise, reported a loss of $420.36 million for the third quarter, a sharp increase from the $116 million loss recorded in the same period last year.Despite this, the company saw growth in revenue, generating $2 billion this year, compared to $1.34 billion during the same quarter last year, according to an investor report released last week.The report also revealed that the company’s Even
  
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• Pompeii Will Soon Limit the Number of Visitors to its Archaeological Park

  12-11-2024 21:39 via artnews.com
  
  The ancient city of Pompeii, it seems, has taken a liking to the recently implemented “day tripper” tax in Venice, or at least the theory behind it, and will soon put in place restrictions on the number of visitors allowed to visit the well-preserved city per dayUnlike in Venice, which has seen “mixed results” with its new €5 day pass, Pompeii will simply cap the number of people that can visit the site in a day at 20,000. The new policy begins on
  
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• In The Theatre, Digital Tickets And Programs Erase The Physical Record Of Attending

  12-11-2024 21:30 via publicbooks.org
  
  “It has become possible to spend an evening on Broadway without handling a physical document. Still, it may seem sensational to say that a revolution has taken place. A QR code ticket is still a ticket, isn’t it? But with the decline of documents, something other than information may vanish.” – Public Books
  
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• Reconsidering Antiquities, American Museums And The Ethhics Of It All

  12-11-2024 21:18 via wsj.com
  The Museum of the Bible is but one more example of “the massive extraction and transfer of cultural heritage objects from the colonized to the colonizers’ countries. Do American institutions still need to accumulate objects from other countries, considering how many they already own?” – The Wall Street Journal
  
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• How The Brothers Grimm Helped Create The Idea Of Germany

  12-11-2024 21:03 via theamericanscholar.org
  
  “As cultural detectives, they cast a wide net, creating a history for a nation that did not yet exist. The idea of one Germany was itself a fairy tale, a political construct shopping for an origin myth.” – The American Scholar
  
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• Steph Wilson wins Taylor Wessing photography prize with striking portrait

  12-11-2024 21:00
  
  National Portrait Gallery announces £15,000-winning portrait that conveys atypical image of motherhoodA portrait documenting an unconventional and “imperfect” example of motherhood has won one of the world’s most prestigious photography prizes.The National Portrait Gallery has named the British photographer Steph Wilson as winner of the 2024 Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize for her portrait Sonam. The photographer, who works between London and Paris, wins £
  
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• How Might You Use AI In Museums?

  12-11-2024 20:31 via news.artnet.com
  
  The private sector’s reluctance to solve issues that are of great importance to public institutions creates an opportunity to instead build sector-specific tools that will “break the narrative we are sold by large tech companies.” – Artnet
  
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• To What Degree Are Russian Artists Complicit In What Russia Has Become?

  12-11-2024 20:15 via theguardian.com
  
  “Many Russian writers and historians are complicit in facilitating this war. It is their words and thoughts over the past 350 years that sowed the seeds of Russian fascism and allowed it to flourish, although many would be horrified today to see the fruits of their labour … – The Guardian
  
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• Sotheby’s Will Auction Oldest Inscribed Tablet of the Ten Commandments

  12-11-2024 20:15 via artnews.com
  
  Sotheby’s will sell the oldest inscribed tablet of the Ten Commandments in a single-lot sale in December.The 115-pound, two-foot tall marble tablet is approximately 1,500 years old and inscribed in Paleo-Hebrew script. It has an estimate of $1 million to $2 million and will be offered by the auction house’s books and manuscripts department on December 18.“We understood how powerful the object was and we were really thrilled to be able to offer it for sale to the public,”
  
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• Sticker Shock: Renovation Of Stuttgart’s Opera House Could Cost €2 Billion

  12-11-2024 20:05 via pizzicato.lu
  
  The renovation and expansion of the venue will take four years longer than originally planned, and the cost, originally projected at under €1 billion, will soar and could double. Critics of the project are now calling for alternatives, saying that even a new building would be less expensive. – Pizzicato
  
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• Remembering Judith Jamison

  12-11-2024 19:32 via nytimes.com
  
  Jamison was Ailey’s muse, as complicated as that word is, and she was able to bring his feelings, his ideas to life because of who she was. – The New York Times
  
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• Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening Sale in Hong Kong Yields $52.6 M. Led by Rothko at $32.5 M.

  12-11-2024 19:25 via artnews.com
  
  The first two evening auctions following the US national election took place in Hong Kong and Shanghai, with mixed results.The Sotheby’s Hong Kong Modern and Contemporary evening auction took place November 11 at the new Landmark Chater location, bringing in $409.5 million HKD ($52.6 million), within the estimate of $377.8 million HKD–$509 million HKD ($48.6 million–65.5 million). Out of 27 lots, 5 did not sell, for a sell-through rate of 81.5 percent. The unsold lots included
  
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• The Rise Of The (Ubiquitous) Standing O

  12-11-2024 19:15 via nytimes.com
  
  “Over the years it has become more and more pervasive to the point where, on those rare instances when a performance doesn’t get a standing ovation, you can see it on the actors’ faces, like ‘What did we do wrong?’” – The New York Times
  
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