Art News from Around the World

Visual Arts Thu, 26 Apr 2018 19:32 This Year's Turner Prize Finalists Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson, who chairs the jury, said the judges had chosen "an outstanding group of artists, all of whom are tackling the most pressing political and humanitarian issues of today".Source: Visual Arts Thu, 26 Apr 2018 15:04 Art History Gets The TED-Talks Treatment "The [Heni Talks] website currently has 25 videos and plans to post new films once every two weeks. Many are presented by high-profile artists and art-world figures such as Damien Hirst, Jeremy Deller and The Art Newspaper's new editor, Alison Cole. ... The video subjects range from important works such as the Mona Lisa, and […]Source: Visual Arts Thu, 26 Apr 2018 13:03 They've Found Winslow Homer's Camera, And It May Change The Way We Look At His Art "Little did the Bowdoin College Museum of Art know that an unsolicited phone call it received in 2014 would lead to an exhibition this summer that may change the way Winslow Homer is viewed in art history." Judith H. Dobrzynski reports.Source: Issues Thu, 26 Apr 2018 22:01 The Bizarre Russian Big Money Culture Machine Those who are familiar with the state’s cultural agenda in Russia are no longer surprised by these kinds of events, but it’s still difficult to get used to. You’re a good artist if you earn a lot, and preferably, have a wide audience. For the BraVo prize, as written on the website, any artist could […]Source: Ideas Thu, 26 Apr 2018 21:33 How Communist Bulgaria Became A Hotbed Of Thinking (And Worrying) About Robots Bulgarian engineers and cyberneticians, champions of this new technology, increasingly worried about what this meant. In the ivory towers of places such as the Institute of Technical Cybernetics and Robotics in Sofia, they wrote detailed papers on robotic movement, image recognition, planning algorithms. They ran experiments and built labs to test how to perfect Man-Machine […]Source: Ideas Thu, 26 Apr 2018 21:01 It Used To Be Possible To Know Anything. Here's The Last Man Who Pulled It Off It hardly seems likely that the life of an obscure Anglican clergyman should recommend itself to the attention of a modern biographer; the shelves of second-hand bookshops are the sepulchers of many an Essex parson's dutifully compiled Life and Letters. But Sabine Baring-Gould happens to have been the last man who knew everything.Source: Words Thu, 26 Apr 2018 20:32 Libraries Are Messy, Flawed Human Places If Stuart Kells wants to show that libraries are human places, he has also chosen stories that reveal their venal side. His librarians can be thieves, hoarders, or shameful caretakers. Even when they love books, they can’t be trusted with them. In its ideal form, a library protects books, celebrates them, and also makes them […]Source: Issues Thu, 26 Apr 2018 20:02 Small Study Suggests Childhood Trauma May Lead To More Intense Creative Experiences A study of 234 performing-arts professionals found those who experienced intense childhood trauma—about 18 percent of the participants—reported higher levels of anxiety and internalized shame. But "they were also more fantasy prone, a factor that may enhance creativity," write Paula Thomson of California State University–Northridge and S.V. Jaque of York University.Source: Issues Thu, 26 Apr 2018 19:04 Athenian Symposia And Parisian Salons, Reinvented For Millennials "On a mild spring evening, ten people gathered for dinner in a converted brewery in east London to speak of serious things. The event was hosted by Norn, a hospitality company that describes itself as an 'offline social network'. Members can stay for a month or more in its houses in London, San Francisco, Berlin […]Source: Ideas Thu, 26 Apr 2018 18:01 You Can't Do Philosophy Properly Without Considering Human Nature (This Should Be Obvious, But ...) "A strange thing is happening in modern philosophy: many philosophers don't seem to believe that there is such a thing as human nature. What makes this strange is that, not only does the new attitude run counter to much of the history of philosophy, but - despite loud claims to the contrary - it also […]Source: Music Thu, 26 Apr 2018 17:31 Gianandrea Noseda Quits Turin Opera The Teatro Regio appointed a new superintendent, William Graziosi, this week, which means Mr. Noseda would have had to reapply to keep his post as music director, the position he has held since 2007. Instead, he took his name out of contention, calling the theater’s recent actions “disappointing and disheartening.”Source: Media Thu, 26 Apr 2018 17:02 Marvel's Avengers Movies Have Begun Subverting Their Own Ideas About Superheroism "After kicking things off with stirring origin movies like Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger, the series has gradually started to examine the shaky underpinnings of its heroic Avengers, and is now laying the groundwork for their calamitous upending."Source: Dance Thu, 26 Apr 2018 16:31 Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker: Where Music And Dance Begin And End "I never thought of music as just the basic energetic impulse that makes you want to dance; it was always like a textbook, something worth studying. If you consider choreography to be an organization of movement in space and time, then it is very instructive to look at scores and understand how composers organize their […]Source: Dance Thu, 26 Apr 2018 16:03 A Ballet Danced By Snails Wearing LEDs "On a Friday night in central London, 176 shelled gastropods 'dance' around me ... to a stretched-out, 47-minute long looping rendition of Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', played at 35 BPM - the tempo of a snail's heartbeat. The whole thing may sound like a Trent Reznor studio experiment (Nine Inch Snails, if you will), […]Source: People Thu, 26 Apr 2018 15:42 My Refreshing (and Challenging) Tea With Glenda Jackson It was around this time in the interview that all hell broke loose. After sharing that I had made the trip from Los Angeles expressly to see her Lear, I told her that she had helped me to hear a line from the play as if for the first time. When Lear painfully acknowledges a […]Source: People Thu, 26 Apr 2018 14:36 Photographer Laura Aguilar, 58 "[Her] powerful, quietly beautiful photographs explored the lived realities of members of various marginalized groups, including women, lesbians, Latinas, the working class, overweight people, and those with learning disabilities." (She was especially known for her nude self-portraits taken in desert landscapes.) "Long under-recognized by mainstream institutions, her work had a sudden resurgence in popularity last […]Source: Music Thu, 26 Apr 2018 14:05 How Pretty Yende Became The Star Coloratura Soprano She Couldn't Conceive Of Being The South African soprano was astounded when her coaches in the young artist program at La Scala told her to study the role of Lucia de Lammermoor. "I could barely sing a high C," she says now - but also, as she asked her teachers, "Who looks like me and sings this repertoire?" (Kathleen Battle […]Source: Issues Thu, 26 Apr 2018 13:34 The Foundation Dedicated To Funding 'Hard-To-Fund Work' Mike Scutari profiles the Michael Kelley Foundation for the Arts, endowed by the late sculptor, which works to fill in the gaps left by the mega-gifts-to-mega-institutions that has developed in Los Angeles.Source: Words Thu, 26 Apr 2018 13:18 George R.R. Martin Has A New 'Game Of Thrones' Book Coming (But It's Not The One Fans Are Panting For) "[The author] told fans today that the long-awaited sixth volume in his Game of Thrones fantasy series, The Winds of Winter, would not be published this year - but softened the blow by revealing that his 'imaginary history' of the Targaryen family in Westeros would be released on 20 November. Fire and Blood is set […]Source: Music Thu, 26 Apr 2018 12:47 San Francisco Conservatory Of Music To Build New 12-Story Facility (And Finally House Its Students) With a lead gift of $46.4 million from biotech investor William Bowes, the school will construct a building - just across the street from Davies Symphony Hall - with two recital halls, rehearsal and recording studios, a restaurant, and apartments for 420 students.Source: