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The Phillips Collection announces new Horning Chair for Diversity, Equity, Access, and Inclusion
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Phillips Collection announced Dr. Yuma Tomes as the new Horning Chair for Diversity, Equity, Access, and Inclusion. The Phillips Collection endowed the Chief Diversity Officer position with a historic $2 million gift from Lynne and Joe Horning in 2021, which has dramatically enhanced the Phillipss commitment to diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI). Dr. Tomes is a psychologist with experience in teaching, research, and academic administration. He is the recipient of numerous awards and citations; has conducted research internationally, including in England, Ireland, and South Africa; and his scholarship has been published in a variety of journals and textbooks such as Multicultural Perspectives and Diversity in Action. He has been either certified and/or licensed as a psychologist in four states and has made local ... More

'Alcarràs' wins top prize at Berlin Film Festival
BERLIN.- The top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Golden Bear for best feature film, was given Wednesday to AlcarrÃ s, a contemplative work about peach farmers in a village in northern Spain. AlcarrÃ s, the melancholic second feature by Spanish director Carla SimÃ³n, who comes from a family of farmers, features nonprofessional actors. The film focuses on a family that has been cultivating its land since the Spanish Civil War and is forced to make way for a company wanting to build a solar farm on the property. In an emotional acceptance speech, SimÃ³n dedicated the award to the modest farmers who cultivate the land every day to bring the food to our plates in a way that is a form of resistance. This years jury was led by director M. Night Shyamalan and included Danish actress Connie Nielsen and Ryusuke Hamaguchi, ... More

Beverly Ross, teenage songwriter in rock 'n' roll's youth, dies at 87
NEW YORK, NY.- Beverly Ross, who with hits like Lollipop became one of the top female songwriters in rock n rolls early years, but who ended her career early after a work relationship turned sour, died Jan. 15 at a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. She was 87. The cause was dementia, said her nephew, Cliff Stieglitz. While in high school, Ross would ride the bus from her familys home in New Jersey to hang around the Brill Building, then the center of New York music publishing. There she managed to strike up conversations with songwriters like Julius Dixon. In 1954, when Ross was only 19, she collaborated with Dixon on her breakout song, Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere). A recording of it by Bill Haley & His Comets reached No. 11 on the Billboard singles chart, just months before the bands (Were Gonna) Rock Around the Clock ... More

Afro-Colombian dancing reawakens the Joyce Theater
NEW YORK, NY.- The motion is small, a little twisting in the hips. But like a tremor before an earthquake, it signals larger shifts. Soon drums kick in and dancers explode into percussive action shaking, undulating, whacking the air with the force of those drums. Wonderful moments like this recur in Accommodating Lie, an hourlong work that the Afro-Colombian company Sankofa Danzafro has brought for its return to the Joyce Theater this week. And those explosions of live drumming and dancing reawaken a stage that the omicron surge had kept dark and quiet since late December. But as the works title suggests, Rafael Palacios, the companys director and choreographer, has more in mind. A program note characterizes the work as a powerful call for awareness that seeks to dismantle stereotypes about and around the Black body, addressing ... More

Exhibition features works by artists who have worked on the idea of matter and space from the '50s until nowadays
LUGANO.- Cortesi Gallery Lugano opened its new exhibition in via Nassa 62, dedicated to some of the most important artists who have worked on the idea of matter and space from the 50s until nowadays. Oltre la Materia - Beyond Matter opened to the public on Thursday, 17th February, until the end of April 2022. The show aims to explore different artistic practices which face the topic of physical and environmental dimensions of the art using various mediums, from sculpture to painting and photography. Agostino Bonalumi, Enrico Castellani, Lucio Fontana and Paolo Scheggi started reflecting on the spatial element of painting during the Milan scene of the 1950s-60s. These three masters took the pictorial tradition beyond ... More

The National Gallery reveals initial proposals for NG200 project as public consultation starts
LONDON.- The National Gallery has today (18 February 2022) revealed its initial proposals for works to create a world-class welcome to the millions of visitors it receives each year. To mark its Bicentenary in 2024, the National Gallery will deliver a diverse programme of exhibitions and events across the UK under the banner NG200, as well as launching a suite of capital projects that will benefit all those who visit the Gallery and access its services. Proposed works to the Gallerys Grade I listed building include the remodelling of parts of the Sainsbury Wing, the public realm, and the provision of a new Research Centre and Members House within the Wilkins Building. These sensitive interventions will be pivotal in reshaping the National Gallery for its third century and the next generation of visitors. The initial proposals, now out for public consultation, ... More

'Writing a trauma play makes me want to dry heave'
NEW YORK, NY.- Writing a play is a terribly embarrassing thing, Sanaz Toossi said. The only way you get to the finish line is if you genuinely love what youre writing about. I guess I love writing about Iranian women. Toossi, who completed a Master of Fine Arts in dramatic writing at New York University in 2018, is making a double debut this spring, with English, in previews now and set to run through March 13 at the Atlantic Theater Company, and Wish You Were Here, which is scheduled to begin previews on April 13 at Playwrights Horizons. Both plays are set in Karaj, Iran Wish You Were Here in the late 1970s and 80s, English in the present in classrooms and living rooms mostly populated by women. I feel like your relationships with other women are the most profound and the most devastating of your life, she said on a recent freezing morning at a diner near the Atlantic Theater. Toossi had dre ... More

Leslie Parnas, celebrated cellist and musical diplomat, dies at 90
NEW YORK, NY.- Leslie Parnas, a renowned cellist and teacher whose second-place award at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow at the height of the Cold War helped propel him to a storied career, died Feb. 1 at a rehabilitation facility in Venice, Florida. He was 90. The cause was heart failure, his eldest son, Marcel Parnas, said. Leslie Parnas, who hailed from a family of musicians in St. Louis, was 30 when he won the silver medal at the second Tchaikovsky competition, in 1962, the first time it included a cello category. His success in Moscow, where he performed for Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, earned him global renown and gave him a platform as a musical emissary. He was the only American cellist to win a top award that year the other winners were Russian and his success came only four years after pianist Van ... More

A City Ballet star bids farewell to the 'crazy ballerina life'
NEW YORK, NY.- New York City Ballets fall season came and went, and if Teresa Reichlen was being honest with herself, she wasnt feeling it. This was concerning. What kind of dancer wasnt itching to perform after 18 months off the stage? I had a few shows that were wonderful and felt like theyve always felt, she said, but I was struggling a little bit. Everyone was so, so, so excited to be back, and I just wasnt at that level. An injury kept her from performing in George Balanchines The Nutcracker. One night in December as she played on the floor with her son, Ozzie, now 11 months old, she said a thought crossed her mind: I should be at the theater performing right now, but I wouldnt want to not be here with Ozzie at night. At that moment, she knew what to do. Ive had the crazy ballerina life, she said. Ive traveled all over the world. Ive had the crazy schedule, danced until 1 ... More

Irma Thomas, a soul queen far beyond New Orleans
NEW YORK, NY.- Singer Irma Thomas has long been known as the Soul Queen of New Orleans, a title that feels both richly deserved and far too provincial. Her songs never topped the Billboard pop chart, but they did climb it. And even today, theyre covered by bar bands and in blues jams across the country. Still, if the title suggests a mix of regality and relatability, it makes decent sense. Irma Thomas is, first and foremost, a straight shooter. You feel it in conversation, where shes neither unduly humble nor conceited. And you can hear it in her singing, which achieves the grandeur often expected from R&B singers in the early 1960s, but has always retained a special kind of intimacy; she often sounds a bit like a more plain-spoken Etta James. Straight From the Heart, from her breakthrough 1964 album, Wish Someone Would Care, is a demand ... More

5 monologues, each a showcase for Asian American actors over 60
NEW YORK, NY.- They might be asked to play a person lying in bed, dying of a stroke, or someones horrible mother, or a beloved grandparent struggling with dementia. Commercially speaking, old Asian lady is a huge amount of my opportunity, actor Natsuko Ohama said recently. I like being old Asian lady. But it has its limitations. Director Les Waters became acutely interested in those kinds of limitations as he was watching a dance performance choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker at the Skirball Center in 2020. The dancers in it, he recalled, were older than usual. He was struck by what he saw. Waters, who most recently directed Lucas Hnaths Dana H. on Broadway, and Mia Katigbak, co-founder of the National Asian American Theater Company, had met a few years back at a festival and had agreed to work ... More