Arts news

• 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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• Texas Officials File Complaint Over Controversial Sally Mann Photographs

  06-01-2025 21:14 via artnews.com
  
  Photographs by Sally Mann on view in a group exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas have been decried by locals and elected officials as containing what they have deemed as inappropriate depictions of children.Sally Mann has spurred controversy for years over her photographs of her rural Lexington, Virginia, home, which include nude depictions of her underage children. In 1992, the New York Times Magazine cover article, “The Disturbing Photography of Sally Mann,&rd
  
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• Andrea Carlson’s Frenetic Landscapes Channel Disjointed Histories and Deep Time

  06-01-2025 20:47 via artnews.com
  
  Andrea Carlson’s fascination with landscapes began with a painting her parents hung in her bedroom when she was a child. She describes it as “cheesy” and “syrupy,” the kind of deer-gazing-at-mountains scene that numbs the eye. But the painting’s atmosphere—its intimation of something ineffable just over the hill—would lull her into a meditative state, and she’d fall asleep imagining herself in that unreal valley. “I’m wondering if
  
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• Nick Cave’s $1 M. Airport Art Grounded Over Safety Concerns After Part Falls to the Floor

  06-01-2025 20:24 via artnews.com
  
  A kinetic sculpture by Nick Cave formerly installed at the Kansas City International Airport’s new terminal may be permanently grounded after its spinner broke off and fell to the floor in October. A subsequent engineering report found that thought the $1 million artwork did not injure anyone during the incident, the spinners’ connectors cannot support the work’s weight and movement over time, posing a risk of future failures. City officials later removed the sculpture, which f
  
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• Video Art Giant Steina Gets a Mind-Altering Retrospective

  06-01-2025 19:25 via artnews.com
  
  I can think of just one artist who has bragged about making her viewers throw up, and that artist is Steina, a giant of video art history whose survey at Cambridge’s MIT List Visual Arts Center is now in its final days. A friend of the artist viewed her 1993 installation Borealis and had to dart away as a result, feeling the sudden urge to vomit, Steina once recalled. The reasons why are obvious: Borealis, like many other works by Steina, utilizes video technology’s perception-alteri
  
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• Newsmakers: Arushi Kapoor Discusses Why the Luxury Real Estate Industry Needs More Art Advisers

  06-01-2025 18:59 via artnews.com
  
  Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, a new ARTnews series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world.On the first day of the November marquee auctions in New York, art dealer and adviser Arushi Kapoor announced a new strategic partnership with the global real estate brokerage The Agency. The partnership, dubbed the Agency Art House, offers art advisory services for clients who recently bought a new luxury home, are looki
  
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• Turkish Farmer Unearths Massive Roman Mosaic While Planting Cherry Trees

  06-01-2025 17:08 via artnews.com
  
  At the end of last year, a farmer in eastern Turkey discovered a rare, largely intact late Roman mosaic while planting a cherry orchard. Spanning almost 1,000 square feet, the mosaic is thought by archaeologists to be the largest example of its kind unearthed in the country.Hidden for hundreds of years under 50 cm of loose topsoil in the village of Salkaya in Elazığ province, 300 miles east of Turkey’s capital Ankara, the mosaic is believed to have been laid in the late 3rd centu
  
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• Canadian Artist and AIDS Activist Joe Average Dies, New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission Wants to Landmark Sotheby’s New Building: Morning Links for January 6, 2025

  06-01-2025 15:29 via artnews.com
  
  To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.The HeadlinesIN MEMORIAM. ANYTHING BUT AVERAGE. The Canadian artist and AIDS activist known as Joe Average has died aged 67 in his home in Vancouver, reports The Art Newspaper. Despite the name he took on, there was little that was average about the artist born as Brock David Tebbutt. Diagnosed with AIDS in 1987, he dedicated his life to art and to
  
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• Santa Monica Post Office, a New Boutique Art Fair, Launches in Los Angeles

  06-01-2025 15:28 via artnews.com
  
  While the art world has felt bleak amid a buckling market, a new art fair is gracing Los Angeles this year. Named for its location, Santa Monica Post Office, will run concurrently with Frieze LA and Felix art fair in February.The new boutique art fair may be small in size, but it is expected to pack a big punch. The LA fair was born from the earlier and smaller project Place des Vosges in Paris, also named for its location, for which a limited number of notable international galleries staged a s
  
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• Movie Producer Is A Title With No Defined Meaning, But Winners Get An Oscar Speech

  05-01-2025 18:30 via nytimes.com
  
  “Since producers — genuine producers — have such all-encompassing responsibilities on films, maintaining faith even as doors slam in their faces (and working without much remuneration until relatively late in the process), their claim on the Oscar for best picture is a strong one.” – The New York Times
  
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• Welsh art already has a home – let’s develop that instead of building another | Letter

  05-01-2025 18:15
  
  Rosslyn Morgan responds to a call for a new national gallery for Welsh artClearly “no Welsh art” was an absurd and unfounded statement, as Peter Lord says (Exhibition debunks ‘no Welsh art’ myth amid calls for permanent national gallery, 26 December). It seems to me, however, that Lord and others may be conveniently forgetting the fact that since 2011, the National Museum Cardiff has been designated as the national art gallery for Wales – “of an international
  
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• Let’s get a heat pump into every new home | Brief letters

  05-01-2025 18:15
  
  Environmental nudge | A mad world | The B-word | Abstract artists | Pushing AIRather than wasting time and money on “nudge units” to boost the take-up of heat pumps (Report, 1 January), the government just needs to order housebuilders to install them at the time of construction (ditto solar panels) – gaining cost benefits from economies of scale too. Sadly, MPs don’t seem to have any guts.Norman Miller
  Brighton, East Sussex• Re the existential threat of nuclear war (
  
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• Georgia O’Keeffe, When She Was At Home

  05-01-2025 18:00 via theatlantic.com
  
  Photographer Todd Webb chronicled much of the artist’s private life. For instance, “O’Keeffe kept a series of Chow dogs, which she loved for their loyalty and dignity, their massive beauty. Their coats were so thick that she had a shawl made from the sheddings.” – The Atlantic
  
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• The Editorial Staff At An Academic Journal Resign En Masse

  05-01-2025 17:30 via wired.com
  
  At Elsevier’s Journal of Human Evolution, what with the mass use of AI in production, high charges to authors, and a unilateral restructuring of editorial staff and duties, the editorial board decided the time was right to get out – and to start working on a new, independent journal. – Wired
  
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• Screenwriter And Film Director Jeff Baena Has Died At 47

  05-01-2025 17:00 via nytimes.com
  
  The co-writer of I Heart Huckabees and the director of Life After Beth, which starred his wife, Aubrey Plaza, Baena “often elevated dark thematic elements with humor in his works.” – The New York Times
  
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• Tom Johnson, Minimalist Composer And Village Voice Critic, 85

  05-01-2025 16:30 via nytimes.com
  
  “Johnson provided a national readership with access to performances that might be attended by only a dozen listeners, and possibly never heard again. He saw himself as a participant within the scene, and he provided such generous coverage that he became known among composers as ‘Saint Tom.’” – The New York Times
  
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• In Perilous, Lean Times, Why Not Start A Performing Arts Organization Dedicated To Bach?

  05-01-2025 16:00 via seattletimes.com
  The founder of the Seattle Bach Festival: “In our postpandemic reality, there is so much to do in the rebuilding of community bonds, and music is a very powerful and healing way to do that.” – Seattle Times
  
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• The Quiet Power Of Ursula Le Guin’s Activism

  05-01-2025 15:30 via lithub.com
  
  “In 1963 she wrote in a private note, ‘My job is to write well not to carry signs. You cannot do both at this point.’ In the margin, arguing with herself, she replied, ‘Phooey!’” – Lit Hub
  
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• Yes, We’re Still Asking Whether Cinemas Will Survive

  05-01-2025 15:00 via bbc.com
  
  Part of that is because of the strikes: 2024, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty much sucked for movie theatres. But next year? Things might improve. – BBC
  
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• What Will Happen At The Golden Globes Tonight?

  05-01-2025 14:30 via vulture.com
  
  “They’re a dress rehearsal, a campaign event, and a two-minute warning all at once, preparing everyone for the final push to Oscar-nomination morning.” – Vulture
  
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• A Book Tracking App Tried Using AI To ‘Roast’ Its Customers

  05-01-2025 14:00 via nytimes.com
  
  And that choice turned some readers’ year-end summaries into screeds about their needing to read white cis male authors, which didn’t land particularly well. – The New York Times
  
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• The Rise Of Influencer Snark

  05-01-2025 13:30 via slate.com
  Who polices social media influencers? Turns out, it’s Reddit. “One of the biggest ways you can hold influencers accountable is through their financials. … Snarkers can demonstrate the power of public opinion and how that public opinion can be swayed to entice folks to drop a brand deal.” – Slate
  
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• Facebook Quickly Deletes Its Too-Honest AI Profiles

  05-01-2025 13:00 via msn.com
  “Did Meta create you to drive profit? I asked. Answer: ‘Behind the noble goal, yes — Meta hoped virtual companions like myself would increase engagement on their platforms, especially among older users — driving ad revenue and platform growth through emotional connections.’” – CNN (MSN)
  
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• Daniel Rivera talks about preparing young people for collegiate training in the arts

  04-01-2025 17:22 via artsjournal.com
  Daniel Rivera, College Track Mentorship Program Manager at the New World Symphony, discusses preparing young people for the collegiate experience in the arts.
  
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• On my radar: Rebecca Frecknall’s cultural highlights

  04-01-2025 16:00
  
  The theatre director on the best novel she’s read in a long time, Tracey Emin’s latest exhibition, exercising in the dark, and a Middle Eastern vegetarian restaurantThe theatre director Rebecca Frecknall grew up in Cambridgeshire and studied drama at Goldsmiths. Currently an associate director at the Almeida, from 2026 she will move to the same role at the Old Vic. Frecknall had a huge hit with the 2021 revival of Cabaret with Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley – it won seven Ol
  
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• From Edvard Munch to Central Cee: Observer critics choose their cultural highlights for 2025

  04-01-2025 14:00
  From Thom Yorke’s Shakespearean score to 25 years of Tate Modern, Bridget Jones to Leigh Bowery, our writers anticipate the most exciting shows, releases and events of the yearAmerican auteurs return Continue reading...
  
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• ‘This reminds me of how unglamorous the film industry can be’: Jake Polonsky’s best phone picture

  04-01-2025 11:00
  
  During a long night on a TV shoot, the photographer seized the moment when he spotted two extras trying to get some restIt was nearly 1am and Jake Polonsky, on the 24th floor of Tower 42 in central London, was three hours away from the end of his day. The director of photography, who has worked on shows including Black Mirror and Billions, had spent the day preparing for a night shoot.His shooting schedule for season two of the Apple TV show Surface was running over three nights, from 5pm t
  
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• From Nosferatu to Patience: a complete guide to this week’s entertainment in the UK

  04-01-2025 07:00
  
  The classic 1922 exsanguination enthusiast gets a creepy 2024 makeover, and there’s a new supercop in town in Channel 4’s crime dramaNosferatu
  Out nowDirector Robert Eggers has been carving out a niche for himself in the shadows for quite some time, with films such as The Witch and The Lighthouse taking a dark, artistic approach to both character and subject matter. Now he’s turned his hand to cinema’s founding vampire legend, with a toothsome remake of the 1922 classic.
  
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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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