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A new art prize: The Belvedere Art Award
VIENNA.- The Belvedere Art Award was established in 2022 to reflect forward-looking dynamics in society and contemporary art. Funded by Vendome Projects, the art award advances an inclusive, queer-feminist, future- and diversity-oriented approach in response to current discourses and the awareness of the many exclusions in the museum and exhibition fields, not the least of which is manifested in the awarding of prizes. Local and international experts will determine the prize winner: in a two-stage selection process, each of the five nomination jury members will identify two emerging artists with a connection to Austria. A five-member selection jury will then determine the winner of the award. Age, gender, and nationality do not play a role in the selection process. In addition to the prize money ... More

A Polish artist with varied talents
NEW YORK, NY.- Growing up in Lublin, Poland, Agnieszka Polska had little access to contemporary art. So a visit to the Tate Modern on a trip to London as a teenager, she said, was a revelation. Two decades later, Polska is an artist and filmmaker whose video works have been featured at institutions like the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Berlins Hamburger Bahnhof, where in 2018 she was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie. But she continues to be influenced by that visit to the Tate Modern, particularly one piece she saw, Bruce Naumans video Good Boy Bad Boy (1985). It is a work about how art can affect the viewer, about how powerful art is and how it can be used for good and bad reasons, good and bad practices, said Polska, 37. I ... More

A pioneering artist and her nemesis, side by side
NEW YORK, NY.- Dont talk to me about Monet! That command, from American artist Joan Mitchell, indicated how much she hated being compared to Claude Monet, as the art historian Suzanne PagÃ© discovered when she visited her in VÃ©theuil, near Paris, in 1982. She was a very strong personality and could be very direct, said PagÃ©, who, that same year, staged a major solo show of Mitchells work at the MusÃ©e dArt Moderne in Paris. She described the painters residence as a very pretty house with a terrace and garden, where she hosted and mentored many young artists, with music always playing in the background. It was as if she was painting the musical notes, PagÃ© said. Thirty years after her death, Mitchell is now being officially paired with Monet. Two exhibitions collectively titled ... More

Catskill Art Space opens with James Turrell and a lofty vision
LIVINGSTON MANOR, NY.- On Oct. 22, a stretch of Main Street in this hamlet in New Yorks Sullivan County will join the list of often unexpected and rural places to see art installations by James Turrell. The Catskill Art Space, a local arts nonprofit that is celebrating its half-centennial with a rebranding as a new art destination, will include not just a Turrell work, Avaar, but also two Sol LeWitt wall drawings. The three artworks are semi-permanent loans that will be on long-term view alongside rotating shows of works by artists with connections to the region. Work by artists of this caliber is certainly a stretch for an organization of our size, said Sally Wright, the executive director of the organization, which was known for 50 years, until last month, as the Catskill Art Society. Its also a stretch for a town with a f ... More

Strawberry Hill House announces the acquisition of a magnificent 17th-century Chinese vase with a macabre past
LONDON.- One of the most iconic and macabre objects owned by Horace Walpole (1717-1797) has been reacquired by Strawberry Hill House, thanks to the Acceptance in Lieu scheme. The beautiful, large blue and white vase achieved a certain notoriety after Walpole's favourite cat, Selima, drowned in it while trying to catch goldfish, which the author kept in it. The incident was later immortalised in a mock-heroic ode by Walpoles friend, the poet Thomas Gray - Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes (1747). The cats death actually occurred at Walpoles London house, in Arlington Street. The bowl, along with many other work ... More

A new leader at New York Theater Ballet and a call for new audiences
NEW YORK, NY.- Steven Melendez is a stickler for dramatic detail. In a recent rehearsal of the pas de deux from Agnes De Milles Carousel, Melendez, the new artistic director of New York Theater Ballet, watched the dancers with close attention, frequently stopping them to ask about the intention behind each movement. When you put your hand out to raise her chin, what is that? he asked Nathan Rommel, a recent recruit. Rommel reflected for a moment and came back with an answer. OK, I want to see that, Melendez said. On a chair in the small studio at St. Marks Church in-the-Bowery in the East Village lay a worn paperback copy of An Actor Prepares, Stanislavskis 1936 exploration of the actors craft. Melendez requires all new dancers in the company to read it. I have to train the danc ... More

Review: Seven dancers step into the rhythm of a Moroccan night
NEW YORK, NY.- It begins with the mystical image of seven men facing the back of the stage, their bodies lit in silhouette in front of a painted gauze backdrop that sometimes looks like marble and at other times, clouds. The landscape is trippy ominous and enigmatic as the dancers, taking their time, slowly round over to pick up jackets placed at their feet. In a daze of slow motion, they put them on: one sleeve on, one hanging limply. Their arms rise and fall. Are they praying to an unseen god? Gradually their feet begin to echo a rhythmic step that has them bouncing in place or gliding across the stage until they form a wide circle, finally spinning around to show us their faces. Its hypnotic, this eternal rhythm. When they all get going, its like the sound of a heartbeat: seven dancers, one sound. The titl ... More