Artdaily.cc - The First Art Newspaper on the Net

Michael Morgan, adventurous Oakland maestro, dies at 63
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Michael Morgan, the music director of the Oakland Symphony in California, who in his 30 years in that post sought to bring orchestral music to a broader audience, particularly young people and people of color, died Aug. 20 in Oakland. He was 63. The cause was complications of an infection, the orchestra said. Morgan had received a kidney transplant in May and had just resumed conducting last month. As one of the few Black maestros leading a substantial professional orchestra, Morgan was eager to diversify the symphonys programming and its audience. My main goal, he told the weekly newspaper The California Voice in 1991 as he was beginning his Oakland tenure, is to show the rest of the field of orchestra music that you can make an orchestra relevant and of interest to the community, especially ... More

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago appoints Laura Herrera as Senior Director of Communications and Content
CHICAGO, IL.- Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, announces the appointment of Laura Herrera as Senior Director of Communications and Content, a newly created position that advances the museums values, mission, and efforts across all digital, interpretive, marketing, press, and publication platforms. In her new role, Herrera will catalyze the museums vision to spark meaningful engagement with art, artists, and ideas, provide forums for new perspectives, and build bridges between people and communities. Herrera will focus on shaping a future MCA audience that reflects the ever-evolving cultural fabric of Chicago while maintaining the museums international reputation ... More

Earliest Hong Kong banknote sells for £161,200 at Dix Noonan Webb
LONDON.- A remarkable and recently discovered Hong Kong 1860 Five Dollar Banknote - the earliest known fully issued banknote of any denomination for Hong Kong sold for Â£161,200 (including buyers premium) at Dix Noonan Webb in their auction of British, Irish and World Banknotes today (Thursday, August 26, 2021) at their Mayfair saleroom (16 Bolton Street, London W1J 8BQ). It was estimated to fetch Â£30,000-50,000. The consignor was unsure how it arrived in the UK, but it is believed that it came back to the UK in the late 1800s, probably with a British person working or travelling in the Far East, and lay undiscovered for over 150 years. Bought by a collector in Hong Kong, the note was issued by the Oriental Bank Corporation - the first bank to open a branch in Hong Kong - the note is dated 1 June 1860, and has the serial number ... More

Sequins and soul-searching in the competitive dance world
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In spring, Siara Fuller, the artistic director of Charlotte Performing Arts Academy in North Carolina, brought a group of students to a dance competition in Fort Mill, South Carolina. It was, in many ways, an ordinary weekend within the extraordinary world of competitive dance: Hundreds of young dancers assembled at a convention center, donned glittery costumes and giant false lashes, and presented spit-polished routines for a panel of judges. (Because of COVID-19, the dancers accessorized with face masks.) But a moment from that weekend nags at Fuller, who is Black, as are most of her students. Nine of her dancers performed a jazz piece set to BeyoncÃ©s Crazy in Love, which featured fan kicks and pirouettes hallmarks of competitive jazz while also, as Fuller described it, getting a little funky. ... More

At Rockaway, dancing for the sea, the sky, the sand and the birds
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The beach is a moody place, you know? choreographer Moriah Evans said. Rockaway Beach, stretched under a sky of filmy clouds, was certainly in a mood last Friday as waves sprouted higher and higher and the squawks of sea gulls were interrupted by the alarming beeps of a weather alert. Whoa, what is that? Evans asked before muttering under her breath, Get out now. A storm was brewing, but Evans was only mildly agitated. It is what it is. The backdrop of her newest work, a one-off, is the ocean. Shes giving spontaneity a serious whirl. In the aptly named Repose, 21 dancers will progress from Beach 86th to Beach 110th streets Sunday starting at 1 p.m. Performing several movement scores drawn from everyday actions and responses to nature at the beach, the dancers will travel 1.4 miles ... More

Freeway sculpture unveiled in Melbourne's west
MELBOURNE.- Melbournes public art scene has a stunning addition, with a new sculpture unveiled alongside the Princes Freeway in Werribee. Backyard, by local artist Jon Campbell, represents a stylised pop version of Campbells childhood backyard in the western suburb of Altona. Described as a linear, multi-coloured design, like a billboard floating in space, Backyard invites viewers to reflect on their own environment and the spaces they inhabit. It serves as a visual reminder of the $1.8 billion Western Roads Upgrade project the biggest single investment in Melbournes suburban road network, which has delivered eight priority upgrades including three new bridges over the freeway, road widenings, intersection upgrades, 30 kilometres of duplicated lanes and major road rehabilitation works. The works were delivered by Major Road ... More

Road car choice of F1 drivers Juan Manuel Fangio, Jean Behra and Mike Hawthorn to be offered at H&H Classics
LONDON.- Coming to auction for the first time in its sixty-six year history, this very special Aurelia B20GT is worthy of close inspection and another long-term custodian! Offered for sale with original buff logbook, Lancia Consortium paperwork and numerous bills / invoices. A surely unrepeatable opportunity. A Highly desirable Fourth Series variant with the stronger De Dion tube rear suspension and larger 2.5 litre V6 engine. Subject to a bodywork restoration during 2011 it is a UK supplied car re-finished in its original cellulose livery and is believed to have covered just 44,000 miles from new. Richard Heseltine, writing in Motor Sport magazine, said of the Aurelia: Time was when Lancia had its own unique style and disdained ... More

ACE Open announces Allison Chhorn as the recipient of the 2022 Porter Street Commission
ADELAIDE.- ACE Open announced Allison Chhorn as the recipient of the 2022 Porter Street Commission. Now in its second year, the Porter Street Commission annually awards $20,000 to a South Australian artist at any stage of their career to create an ambitious new work to be presented as a solo exhibition at ACE Open in the following year. Made possible by the Porter Street Fund, which exists as a result of the sale of the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA)s Parkside property, it is open to those working across all contemporary art forms and is designed to support a significant next step in a South Australian artist's career and exhibiting trajectory. Allison Chhorn is a Cambodian-Australian film-maker and multidisciplinary artist. While specialising in painting during her Visual Arts studies at UniSA, she discovered photography, installation ... More

Big bold gold
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- I just like the sound of it, Natasha Ghosn said about naming her jewelry and fragrance brand Mondo Mondo. I was thinking of Mondo films, Italian, kitschiness and campiness. Ghosn, 34, began her line in 2008, when she was living in New York making digitally printed T-shirts that she painted by hand. Now the brand has come to exemplify the bold, 1980s-influenced jewelry of the moment. After years when subtle jewelry delicate bands, thin chains, little studs dominated trends, Mondo Mondo stands apart. Its jewelry for extroverts, or at least those who want to look like one. The extravagant, gilded shapes wink at the 1980s designs by Christian Lacroix, Moschino, Verducci and Chanel. But rather than being collected by socialites to be worn at luncheons, the necklaces and earrings and rings and cuffs ... More

Jean Breeze, first woman of dub poetry, dies at 65
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Jean Breeze, a passionate Jamaican poet who reveled in the performance of dub poetry, a half-spoken, half-chanted style of storytelling often backed by the rhythms of reggae, died Aug. 4 at a hospital in Kingston. She was 65. Her death was announced on social media by her British agency, Renaissance One Writers and Events. No cause was given, but she had a chronic lung disease for years. Breeze, known as Binta, was widely acknowledged to be the first woman to make a name for herself in the male-dominated genre of dub poetry. (Dub is a recording term that refers to the process of adding or removing sounds.) The genre originated in Kingston in the 1970s and was amplified in London and Toronto, both cities with large populations of Caribbean immigrants, and it was in England that Breeze rose to fame. ... More

Why the baby on Nirvana's 'Nevermind' album is suing now
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Spencer Elden was 4 months old when he was photographed by a family friend in 1991 drifting naked in a pool. The picture, taken at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena, California, would be used that year for the cover of Nevermind, Nirvanas seminal second album that helped define Generation X and rocketed the Seattle band to international fame. In the decades that followed, Elden appeared to celebrate his part in the classic cover, recreating the moment for the albums 10th, 17th, 20th and 25th anniversaries, though not naked. Its cool but weird to be part of something so important that I dont even remember, he said in 2016 in an interview with The New York Post, in which he posed holding the album cover at 25. Now, however, Elden, 30, has filed a federal lawsuit against the estate of Kurt ... More