Artdaily.cc - The First Art Newspaper on the Net

NASA Mercury mission headset crosses the block at Heritage Auctions
DALLAS, TX.- Has anyone ever felt so strong a need to connect through a call from home? To say the astronauts aboard the Mercury missions, the first manned spaceflights conducted by NASA between 1961 and 1963, were in uncharted territory is an immeasurable understatement. Space travel had been the subject of dreams and study for years, but imagine being Alan Shepard, who rode the Mercury space capsule Freedom 7 on a 15-minute, suborbital flight that covered 302 miles, or the first manned flight in orbit, the Feb. 20, 1962 Freedom 7 mission commanded by John Glenn. Those astronauts' lifeline back to NASA was their communication with Chris Kraft, NASA's first Flight Director and the creator of Mission Control, which now bears his name. During the first voyages to space, astronauts spoke to Craft through his Personal ... More

One of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's annotated Columbia Law school books gavels in at Heritage Auctions
DALLAS, TX.- A Columbia Law School textbook once owned and full of notes by one of the unquestioned giants of the U.S. legal system will occupy a new shelf after it is sold in Heritage Auctions' Manuscripts Auction May 19. Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Personal Heavily Annotated Columbia Law School Book, The French Legal System An Introduction to Civil Law Systems likely is the first of her textbooks ever brought to market, one of the texts that helped to launch the career of a pioneer in the battle for women's rights and LGBTQ rights, who changed the role of women in the legal world. "Our Nation has lost a jurist of historic stature," Chief Justice John Roberts said after Ginsburg died Sept. 18, 2020. "We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn, but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth ... More

Work by Circle of Rubens gallops to £72,500 at Parker Fine Art Auctions
FARNHAM.- An oil on panel Study of a Man on a Rearing Horse catalogued as Circle of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) fetched Â£72,500* at Parker Fine Art Auctions in a sale of Fine Paintings and Frames today (Thursday, May 13, 2021) in Farnham, Surrey. The framed painting, which measured 13.75 x 9.75 (35 x 24.7cm) had come from a private collection and was bought by a member of the trade bidding on the phone. Auctioneer Buffy Parker commented: What a great start to the sale this is a house record for us. Although the painting was damaged, the main areas werent affected and obviously that didnt put people off bidding. It received 87 bids in total. The second highest price of the sale, comprising 600 lots, was a large painting of Capel Soar in Gwynedd - believed to be the most remote chapel in Wales - by Iconic Welsh artist Sir ... More

Tomaso De Luca wins the second edition of MAXXI BVLGARI Prize
ROME.- Tomaso De Luca (Verona, born in 1988, living and working in Berlin) is the winner of the second edition of the MAXXI BVLGARI PRIZE, the project that brings together MAXXI the National Museum of 21st Century Arts and Bvlgari, which has been a symbol of Italian excellence for over 130 years, to support and promote young artists. His work A Week's Notice renders all diversity a wealth for humanity and has been selected by the international jury for its subtle poetics, maturity and ethical, social and political involvement. A Weeks notice has also received a special mention from the audience. The winner was announced today, Thursday 13 May, during a ceremony streamed at 7pm CET on www.maxxi.art and attended by Giulia Cenci, Renato Leotta and Tomaso De Luca, the three finalists, Jean-Christophe Babin, CEO of Bulgari, Giovanna ... More

Romanian ex-dictator Ceausescu's plane set for auction
BUCHAREST (AFP).- The presidential plane used by Romania's former communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is to go under the hammer later this month, the Artmark auction house announced on Wednesday. "The Rombac Super One-Eleven plane, seen by Nicolae Ceausescu as a crowning achievement of Romanian industry, will have a starting price of 25,000 euros," Artmark said ahead of the May 27 sale. Ceausescu used the plane between 1986 and December 1989, including on his last trip abroad to Iran. That visit came shortly before the revolution which overthrew him and ended in his execution on Christmas Day 1989. Since then the plane has been in a hangar belonging to the Romavia state aviation company, which went bankrupt in 2014 and whose assets are being sold. The plane was made under licence from the British Aircraft Corporation ... More

Met Opera announces its first live concerts since shutdown
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The Metropolitan Opera will perform again for a live audience, 430 days after the coronavirus shut down its theater. Members of the companys orchestra and chorus, joined by prominent soloists and led by its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will give two concerts at the Knockdown Center in Queens on Sunday, the Met announced Wednesday. The concerts will go on despite continuing labor tensions at the Met, which have threatened the intended reopening of its Lincoln Center home in September. Scheduled for 6 and 8:30 p.m. Sunday, the program, called A Concert for New York, includes selections by Mozart, Verdi and Terence Blanchard, whose Fire Shut Up in My Bones is planned to reopen the Met on Sept. 27 and will be the companys first opera by a Black composer. The soloists ... More

New York is reawakening. It just needs its tourists back.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- For 10 straight years leading up to the coronavirus pandemic, a torrent of tourists from around the world poured into New York City, with their numbers rising to a record level in 2019. They crowded sidewalks, jammed museums, packed theaters and delighted merchants, spending billions of dollars that created hundreds of thousands of tourism-related jobs and fueled an economic boom. Then they were gone. When the city went into lockdown in March 2020, all that tourist trade the vacationers, business travelers, day-trippers and honeymooners disappeared. Now, New York needs those tourists and their disposable income back, if it is to fully recover. Before the pandemic, tourism accounted for more than 280,000 jobs more than 7% of all private-sector employment and generated $46 billion in ... More

For West End's return, cleansing spirits and an aching for change
LONDON (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- At 7:30 p.m. Monday, Maureen Lyon will be murdered at St. Martins Theater in London, her screams piercing the air. Her death is a moment many in Londons theater industry will welcome for one simple reason: Its the opening of The Mousetrap, Agatha Christies long-running whodunit, and it will signal that the West End is finally back. For the past 427 days, the coronavirus pandemic has effectively shut Londons theaters. Some tried to reopen in the fall, only for England to plunge into a new lockdown before they even got to rehearsals. They tried again in December, and several musicals, including Six, about the wives of Henry VIII, reopened to ecstatic audiences. But just days later, the shows were forced closed once more. This time, the comeback is meant to be for good. Prime Minister Boris ... More

When COVID dropped the curtain on Broadway actors, TV kept the lights on
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Back in March, actress Kelli OHara arrived on Rhode Islands Gold Coast. A company of theater heroes, with enough combined Tonys to crowd a mansions mantels, met her there. It was almost like Broadway said, Were shutting down, OHara recalled during a recent telephone interview. So 20 of us got together and said, Lets go do a play in a seaside town. But OHara and colleagues like Christine Baranski, Nathan Lane, Debra Monk and Cynthia Nixon hadnt come to Newport for a summer stock job. Or even for the clam cakes. They were on location for The Gilded Age, a robber baron costume drama from Julian Fellowes that will premiere on HBO in 2022. With Broadway theaters closed since last April, The Gilded Age joins current series like The Good Fight, Younger and Billions and upcoming ones like The Bite and a Gos ... More

Can's live shows will be heard at last, thanks to a bootlegger in big pants
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In February 1972, following the surprise success of the single Spoon, the experimental rock group Can staged a massive free concert in its Cologne, West Germany, hometown. To better entertain the crowd, it punctuated the music with a slapdash circus, including a juggler, a singing saw player and a team of acrobats. The band planned to document the event with a live recording, as well as a concert film directed by Peter Przygodda, who became Wim Wenderss editor. The film footage turned out fine shot in part by the renowned cinematographer Robby MÃ¼ller but there was a glitch with the audio. Something went wrong and the equipment didnt record, Irmin Schmidt, one of the groups founders, recalled ruefully in a phone interview last month. Schmidts keyboards and Michael Karolis guitar ... More

How will California's arts institutions recover?
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- As California emerges from the pandemic, were beginning to get hints of the ways that life will be different permanently. Arts institutions of all shapes and sizes are in particular flux right now as they contend with the collision of long-brewing funding challenges and lingering effects of prolonged shutdowns. My colleague Adam Nagourney, who recently started a new beat covering West Coast cultural affairs, wrote about how thats playing out in Los Angeles, especially after the death last month of Eli Broad, the towering philanthropist who, before his retirement three years ago, had done so much to shape the arts landscape. I asked Adam about his new role and about the article. Heres our conversation: Tell us a little about your new beat. What will you be covering? I am going to be covering West ... More