Art News from Around the World

Visual Arts Fri, 27 Feb 2015 15:07 Stedelijk Museum Makes A Startling Public Admission “The Stedelijk Museum in the Second World War” recounts the daring ways in which the museum’s employees fought Nazi censors after Germany conquered the Netherlands in May 1940. But the show also features 16 works in the permanent collection by artists including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Henri Matisse that the museum says it might […]Source: The Wall Street Journal Visual Arts Fri, 27 Feb 2015 09:50 ISIS Destroys Ancient Statues At Mosul Museum – Or So They Think Just days after the extremists burned the rare books in Mosul’s library, they went rampaging through the city museum’s collection of Akkadian and Assyrian statues, smashing the works with sledgehammers and drills. It seems, though, that many of the destroyed pieces weren’t originals. (includes video)Source: Channel 4 (UK) Visual Arts Fri, 27 Feb 2015 09:49 Stolen Picasso Found In FedEx Shipment At EWR “A Picasso painting missing from Paris for more than a decade resurfaced in the United States, where it had been shipped under false pretenses as a $37 holiday-themed ‘art craft.'”Source: New York Times Visual Arts Fri, 27 Feb 2015 07:47 Getty Museum’s Top Curator To Retire After 35 Years Thomas Kren, the associate director for collections (not to be confused with Thomas Krens, the controversial longtime director of the Guggenheim), will depart in October. He’ll be replaced by Richard Rand, senior curator of paintings and sculpture at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass.”Source: Los Angeles Times Visual Arts Thu, 26 Feb 2015 21:00 Westminster Abbey To Add First New Tower In 270 Years The addition “will create public access to a museum of treasures and curiosities housed in the triforium, the church’s attic gallery. At present, the public can get only a distant glimpse of the spectacular and shadowy space through the stone arches 70ft up at the top of the walls above the high altar.”Source: The Guardian Media Fri, 27 Feb 2015 15:24 Hollywood Cheers New Net Neutrality Rules “This is clearly a victory for everyone — not just Hollywood, but everyone who uses the Internet,” said Chris Keyser, president of the Writers Guild of America, West. “It is a critical moment in the ongoing fight for free expression and robust competition.”Source: Los Angeles Times Words Fri, 27 Feb 2015 15:21 The Immortality Of The Written Word (Yeah, All That Is Changing…) “In making the transition from an age of scarcity to an age of glut, the nature of fame itself undergoes a change. One sign of the difference is that it would be hard to find a poet, in the 21st century, who openly claims to write for glory, fame, or immortality. Yet the idea that […]Source: Standpoint Words Fri, 27 Feb 2015 15:13 Writing On The Web, A Deeply Cynical Take “Remember that first question: What is web writing in 2015? Is it still based on the author model? If you enjoy watching a writer’s mind work over time (or you enjoy having that freedom as a writer), is there still a way to do that? Or is the writer’s-voice-driven Internet over, forever, everything’s atomistic now […]Source: The Atlantic Issues Fri, 27 Feb 2015 14:10 How A Radical Idea To Transform Public Spaces Failed In San Diego “The concept behind the Lab — a cadre of designers embedded in the mayor’s office, with the power to revive public spaces around the city and launch a broad campaign of civic engagement — was unique in North America, and almost unimaginable in conservative San Diego. It seemed to answer the long-held desire of architects, […]Source: NextCity Theatre Fri, 27 Feb 2015 13:40 How Women Playwrights Are Marginalized “Of course the heightened visibility of plays written by women is welcome. But all over the country, even at venues which are attempting to make female playwrights’ voices heard, there is often a gendering of theatre spaces when it comes to writers and directors.”Source: The Guardian (UK) The World Fri, 27 Feb 2015 13:09 Full-time Development Assistant at a thriving performing Arts Center in Pasadena, CA Boston Court Performing Arts Center seeks a full-time Development Assistant to assist with planning, administering, and implementation of all fundraising activities, other special projects and events. Source: Boston Court Theatre Issues Fri, 27 Feb 2015 09:42 FCC Approves Strict Net Neutrality Rules, Declares Broadband A Public Utility “Following one of the most intense – and bizarre – lobbying battles in the history of modern Washington politics, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed strict new rules that give the body its greatest power over the cable industry since the Internet went mainstream.” Said the FCC chairman, “This is no more a plan to […]Source: The Guardian Issues Fri, 27 Feb 2015 09:40 The New Net-Neutrality Policy, In Three Simple Phrases “There are three major principles that Internet-service providers – like Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon – have to follow when sending data from their networks to your computer:”Source: The Atlantic Theatre Fri, 27 Feb 2015 09:32 Tonya Pinkins Remembers “Jelly’s Last Jam,” The Show That Won Her Her First Tony “Jelly’s Last Jam was the first musical written and directed by an African American that was not simply a toe-tapping entertainment with happy, singing people of color. … [It] was akin to a Brancusi sculpture of 50 years in the life of an arrogant, racist, braggadocio genius.”Source: Playbill Music Fri, 27 Feb 2015 09:31 Memphis Symphony To Lose Music Director Mei-Ann Chen After Next Season “Roland Valliere, MSO’s president and CEO, said it was no surprise. … Her decision comes at a time when the orchestra has been struggling financially. The MSO announced in January of last year that it was deep fiscal trouble, and it cut staff and expenses to survive the 2013-14 season. It drastically reduced offerings for […]Source: Commercial Appeal (Memphis) Words Fri, 27 Feb 2015 09:03 How A Book Club Is Helping To Keep Ex-Offenders From Going Back To Jail “They were all teenagers then, charged as adults for their violent crimes. At the D.C. jail, they found solace in a book club, reading memoirs and reciting poems they had written. Over the past year, they finally came home. They see themselves as reformed men who did dumb things as kids but who know that […]Source: Washington Post Words Fri, 27 Feb 2015 09:01 “The Little Prince” Goes Out Of Copyright, And Turkish Publishers Go Nuts “In the first two weeks of January, more than thirty Turkish publishers released translations of the 1943 novella. … In a newspaper books supplement the other week, almost half the adverts were for The Little Prince. One publisher put out a mandarine-flavoured edition. Another released three different versions, to show the differences in translation trends. […]Source: London Review of Books Words Fri, 27 Feb 2015 08:49 “Obscene” Poet Wins £40,000 David Cohen Prize For Literature “[Tony] Harrison, 77, wrote his first poems 70 years ago, and has since written a number of films and plays. V., which describes the offensive language graffitied on Harrison’s parents’ grave, contains 25 uses of the word ‘f***’ and 17 uses of the word ‘c***’.”Source: The Telegraph (UK) Words Fri, 27 Feb 2015 08:38 Here Are The Nominees For “Oddest Book Title Of The Year” The shortlist for the Diagram prize includes, among others, Divorcing a Real Witch, Nature’s Nether Regions, Strangers Have the Best Candy, The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones, and The Ugly Wife Is a Treasure at Home.Source: The Guardian Media Fri, 27 Feb 2015 08:10 “The Brother From Another Planet”: J. Hoberman on Godard “Taken with cinema, but not taken in by it, … [Godard] is also the brother from another planet, at once straightforward and cryptic, an epistemologist of cinema, wondering why the film frame became a square and why lenses are round. … What to make of the Godardian mind? You might say that, as prolific as […]Source: The Nation