| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Monday, March 29, 2021 |
| | | Is a long-dismissed forgery actually the oldest-known biblical manuscript? | |
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The bible of Idan Dershowitz, an Israeli-American scholar at the University of Potsdam, at his home in Somerville, Mass., Feb. 26, 2021. In a just-published scholarly article and companion book, Dershowitz marshals a range of archival, linguistic and literary evidence to argue that a certain biblical manuscript was an authentic ancient artifact. Amani Willett/The New york Times.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In 1883, a Jerusalem antiquities dealer named Moses Wilhelm Shapira announced the discovery of a remarkable artifact: 15 manuscript fragments, supposedly discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea. Blackened with a pitchlike substance and their paleo-Hebrew script nearly illegible, they contained what Shapira claimed was the original Book of Deuteronomy, perhaps even Moses own copy. The discovery drew newspaper headlines around the world, and Shapira offered the treasure to the British Museum for 1 million pounds. While the museums expert evaluated it, two fragments were put on display, attracting throngs of visitors, including Prime Minister William Gladstone. Then disaster struck. Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau, a swashbuckling French archaeologist and longtime nemesis of Shapiras, had been granted a few minutes with several of the fragments, after promising to hold his judgment until the museum issued its report. But ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Kentwell Hall owner Patrick Phillips poses outside his historic stately home near Bury St Edmunds in eastern England on March 25, 2021. The sprawling redbrick house and grounds of Kentwell Hall, built up in the time when the Tudors ruled England, have, like so many of Britain's stately homes, faced an existential threat during the pandemic. In the face of mounting financial woes, owners of historic houses are calling on the government to allow them to reopen faster. DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS / AFP.
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| Palmer Museum of Art showcases the exuberant art of Lucille Corcos | | Moderna Museet presents the first major museum presentation of Lea Porsager's work | | World Chess Hall of Fame exhibition celebrates the legacy of Keith Haring |
Lucille Corcos, Everybodys Downtown, 1948, tempera on board, 14-1/2 x 11-1/8 inches. Collection of David and Susan Werner.
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA.- The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State is pleased to announce The Wit and Whimsy of Lucille Corcos, an exhibition featuring the playful work of mid-twentieth-century artist and prolific illustrator Lucille Corcos (19081973). Organized by the Palmer Museum, the exhibition is the first devoted to Corcos in more than twenty-two years and her first solo museum exhibition ever. This vibrant exhibition shines the light on a little studied, but influential, figure in the development of the modernist primitivist tradition in American art, said Erin M. Coe, director of the Palmer Museum of Art. It provides a rare opportunity to see a broad range of works by an American woman artist who should be much better known. Lucille Corcos was born and raised in New York City and studied at the Art Students League in the late 1920s. Following her breakthrough cover for the ... More | |
Lea Porsager, CALIBRATION CROSS, 2020 © Lea Porsager. Photo: Malle Madsen.
STOCKHOLM.- Moderna Museet is presenting the exhibition Stripped, featuring Danish artist Lea Porsager. The exhibition features new works, where human meets non-human in an exploration of science, mysticism and feminism. In this first major museum presentation of Lea Porsager, visitors will encounter an artistic practice that explores the boundaries between the physical and the metaphysical, making Porsager one of the most talked about Nordic contemporary artists today. Lea Porsagers artistic practice is consistently characterised by her fascination for spirituality and physics, especially quantum physics. She approaches these fields from a feminist and queer perspective. The works are speculative and imaginative, at once both material and immaterial. The art is engendered in a spirit of gravity mixed with irony, where the grave aspect consists of penetrating as deeply as possible into the material, while irony is a disruptive force ... More | |
Vilac, Keith Haring Chess Set, 2019, Collection of the World Chess Hall of Fame, Keith Haring artwork copyright ©️ Keith Haring Foundation_Photo by Austin Fuller.
ST. LOUIS, MO.- The World Chess Hall of Fame is hosting the exhibition, Keith Haring: Radiant Gambit, celebrating the legacy of world-renowned artist Keith Haring. Keith Haring: Radiant Gambit features artwork by Haring, a world-renowned artist known for his art that proliferated in the New York subway system during the early 1980s. The exhibition includes a never-before-seen private collection of Harings works and photographs of the artist, bespoke street art chess sets from Purling London and newly-commissioned pieces by Saint Louis artists, all paying homage to the late icon. The World Chess Hall of Fame is honored to present the art of Keith Haring in this exhibition, which includes work spanning the entirety of his career, said WCHOF Chief Curator Shannon Bailey. Harings influence, even though he passed away over 30 years ago, is still prevalent to this day. ... More |
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| Edward Jenner pioneered vaccination. Will his museum survive a pandemic? | | MACBA re-examines the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres | | Sotheby's to offer three supremely important Ming and Qing Imperial seals |
Smallpox vaccination instruments and techniques on display at Dr. Edward Jenner's House, Museum and Garden in Berkeley, England, March 9, 2021. Mary Turner/The New York Times.
by Megan Specia
BERKELEY (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- It has been called the birthplace of modern vaccination. More than 220 years ago, the residents of an English village lined up outside a small wooden hut to have their arms scratched with a lancet as they were given the first vaccine for smallpox. The pioneering local doctor administering the vaccine, Edward Jenner, called the modest building in his garden the Temple of Vaccinia, and from this place grew a public health movement that would see smallpox declared eradicated globally by 1980. But a new scourge has left this place where the gnarled wooden walls of Jenners hut still stand at a museum at the home and garden dedicated to his legacy shuttered to the public, its future on shaky ground. Even as Jenners work was cited time and again as the world raced toward a coronavirus vaccine, the museum at his former home has ... More | |
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled" (Perfect Lovers), 198790. Wall clocks. Original clock size: 13.5 inches diameter each. Edition of 3, 1 AP. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT . Gift of the Peter Norton Family Foundation © Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Courtesy of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.
BARCELONA.- Sweets, stacks of paper, clocks, mirrors, curtains and billboards are some of the materials that Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Guáimaro, Cuba, 1957 Miami, USA, 1996) uses to create powerful and poetic works that challenge viewers by encouraging them to construct their own narrative. The exhibition Felix Gonzalez-Torres: The Politics of Relation, curated by Tanya Barson, brings together forty of his works at MACBA and explores a new interpretation of Gonzalez-Torres work by highlighting a political reading with an emphasis on its relation to the location of this exhibition in Barcelona. This new curatorial project places the work of Gonzalez-Torres in relation to postcolonial discourse and the connected histories of Spain, the American continent and the Caribbean, and puts a particular emphasis on the personal through issues ... More | |
A Superb Imperial Green Jade Memorial Seal of the Yongle Empress Wen, Ming Dynasty, Hongxi Period (1424-1425), 10.5 cm. Est: HK$25,000,000 - 30,000,000 / US$3,220,000 - 3,870,000. Courtesy Sotheby's.
HONG KONG.- This April, Sothebys will bring to auction three of the most important Chinese seals ever to come to the market. Each one a priceless record of imperial Chinese history in its own right, together these three seals rank among the most important historical objects of any period or geographic region ever to appear at auction. Originally the preserve purely of the Emperors of China, imperial seals were used as a singular stamp of authority akin to that of a signature each one carved with language unique to the Emperor it served. Today, very few imperial seals survive. Those to be offered this spring include: the only surviving imperial seal from the Ming dynasty (est. HK$25-30m / US$3.2-3.9m / £2.3-2.8m); the largest and most important seal ever carved for the Kangxi Emperor, who in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, was the single most powerful person on earth, ruling over a vast ... More |
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| Bulldozers and looting threaten Libya's ancient treasures | | Studio Erwin Olaf announces upcoming exhibitions and catalogue | | The boom and bust of TikTok artists |
Local policemen patrol by a colonnade from the remnants of the Temple of Demeter in the ruins of Libya's eastern ancient city of Cyrene on March 10, 2021. Abdullah DOMA / AFP.
SHAHAT (AFP).- The spectacular ruins of the ancient Greek city of Cyrene survived Libya's 2011 revolution and an ensuing decade of lawlessness, but today they face new threats: plunder and bulldozers. Under balmy spring sunshine, a handful of tourists take advantage of the North African country's months-old ceasefire to wander around the temple of Zeus, perched atop a wind-battered hill near the eastern end of Libya's Mediterranean coast. There are no queues here. The scarce visitors -- all Libyans -- amble through the sanctuary of Apollo and the amphitheatre, before visiting a museum housing faceless busts of Greek divinities and naked statues in marble. Founded in the seventh century BC, Cyrene "was one of the principal cities in the Hellenic world", according to the UN's cultural agency UNESCO, which added the site to its World ... More | |
Erwin Olaf, April Fool 2020, 11.05am. Image: Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery New York, USA.
AMSTERDAM.- Studio Erwin Olaf announced several upcoming solo exhibitions and a forthcoming catalogue, all debuting in 2021. On April 8 Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York will open Erwin Olaf New Series: April Fool and In the Forest, and on May 14 the Kunsthalle München will open Strange Beauty, Olafs first retrospective in Germany. Strange Beauty will be accompanied by a new catalogue, released in the US on May 25. In addition, the Suwon Museum of Art in Suwon, Korea will open a solo exhibition by Olaf on December 14. A photographer and multimedia artist, Olaf takes as his subject societys marginalized individuals, including women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community, to explore everything from pressing social and political issues to more meditative aspects of human emotion, motivation, and thought. Drawing on the tropes of art history and cinematography, Olaf creates photographs, often using elaborate staging, costumes, and m ... More | |
An iPhone displays Ben Labuzzettas TikTok account in New york, March 3, 2021. Amanda Picotte/The New York Times.
by Zachary Small
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Although he had rarely touched a paintbrush before, Matthew Chessco found himself reaching toward the canvas to pursue his dreams after quitting a career in mechanical engineering only four days into the job. Reinventing himself through months of trial and error, he might have taken the conventional route and tried to partner with a gallery to sell his paintings. But when it came time for Chessco to start exhibiting, he logged onto TikTok. There, his neon-colored portraits of icons like Bob Ross, George Washington and Megan Thee Stallion have garnered more than 2 million fans a crowd several times larger than the followings of critically acclaimed artists like Jeff Koons and Kehinde Wiley on Instagram. Chesscos audience clicked in appreciation of his Warhol-inspired ... More |
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| John Michael Kohler Arts Center presents 'Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola: Magic City' | | The National 2021 opens at three of Sydney's leading cultural institutions | | Exhibition at Maruani Mercier brings together works by Stefan Brüggemann and On Kawara |
View of Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola: Magic City, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2021. Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
SHEBOYGAN, WI.- Magic City, a large-scale installation by Nigerian-American artist Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, is on view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center through July 11, 2021. Conceived as a modern-day sanctuary, the site-specific installation explores the commodification of Black culture and the relationship between Africa and Black America. Magic City marks the 29-year-old artists first major solo museum exhibition, which can also be seen virtually on the museums website beginning on February 19. The evocative nature of objects is at the core of Magic City. In Akinbolas mystical space, mass-produced and readymade materialsspecifically those with cultural currency in the Black communityare transformed into animistic power objects that communicate the complexities of identity. Duragsfabric scarves used to maintain Black hairreplace oil paint as a medium for creating monumentally-scaled action paintings; ... More | |
James Tylor, 'We Call This Place Kaurna Yarta' 2020. Engraved daguerreotype photographs, vinyl, installation dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Vivien Anderson Gallery, Narrm (Melbourne) © the artist. Photo: AGNSW, Felicity Jenkins.
SYDNEY.- A major survey of contemporary Australian art, The National 2021: New Australian Art, opened across three of Sydneys leading cultural institutions, the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), presenting 39 new commissioned projects by established, mid-career, emerging artists and artist collectives from across the nation. The third iteration in a series of biennial surveys, originally launched in 2017, The National 2021 showcases the varied and vital work being made by Australian artists, in urban and regional centres, as well as remote communities, by artists of different generations and cultural backgrounds. Three distinct exhibitions have been developed by four curators, Matt Cox and Erin Vink (AGNSW), Abigail Moncrieff ... More | |
Stefan Brüggemann, Hyper-Palimpsest, 2019. Acrylic and spray paint on wood. 2 panels, each: 205 x 120 x 5.5 cm.
BRUSSELS.- This exhibition brings Stefan Brüggemanns Hyper-Palimpsest and On Kawaras Today series together for the first time. The works share a central concern in their engagement with the experience of time and being in the world. Where Kawaras work explores these ideas in series, developing his investigation from one canvas to the next over the course of a lifetime, Brüggemann works on a different axis. His engagement with these questions is a layered exploration that belies an archaeological sensibility in its emphasis on depth and its invitation to the viewer to dig down into the work. Brüggemanns work requires that the viewer spend time unearthing and piecing together its fragments, while Kawaras work plays with the fragmentation of time revealing the deeply arbitrary nature of the symbols and systems that we use to codify it. Between these axes of contemplation and immediacy we can chart the hyper ... More |
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Hieronymus Bosch's 'Christ Mocked' in 10 minutes | National Gallery
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Alice Boyd - the lost Pre-Raphaelite- featured at Bonhams 19th Century Art sale in London
LONDON.- Aspiring artist Alice Boyd was 36 when, in 1859, she met the 47-year-old Pre-Raphaelite painter William Bell Scott. The encounter changed both of their lives. She was eager for experience beyond the confines of her aristocratic background, he to escape the monotony of a loveless marriage. Alice and Scott quickly became inseparable and from 1860, they set up a menage à trois with Scotts forbearing wife Letitia. Summers were spent at Boyds family seat at Penkill Castle in Ayrshire; the rest of the year they lived at the Scotts house on Cheyne Walk in London. It was there that in 1875, Alice painted The Thames from Cheyne Walk, the charming picture which is to be offered at Bonhams 19th century and British Impressionist Art sale in London on Wednesday 31 March. It is estimated at £15,000-20,000. Alice Boyd (1823-1897) came from a wealthy, ... More
Exhibition of works by Ed Shostak and his alter ego, Rose Royale on view at David Richard Gallery
NEW YORK, NY.- David Richard Gallery is presenting Ed Shostak / Rose Royale: A Queer Perspective From Postminimalism to Social Practice, Selected Works: 1963 2020, an exhibition curated by Isaac Aden and David Eichholtz. This is the gallerys first major exhibition for the artist Ed Shostak who passed away in April of 2020 from the Covid-19 virus. It is unusual to uncover an artist of his pedigree for which so little is publicly known after establishing himself amidst the visual arts most notable institutions and exhibitions, such as his inclusion in the first 1973 Biennial Exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Shostak cloistered himself in his downtown loft relentlessly working and opting for a less mainstream practice. This exhibition is the first look at many of his late works. For those who are interested in reconsidering the parallel arcs ... More
New publication captures a portrait of the nation during the first national lockdown
LONDON.- The National Portrait Gallery is to publish Hold Still, a new book of photographic portraits from the Hold Still exhibition, on the 7 May 2021, marking one year since HRH The Duchess of Cambridge and the Gallery launched the ambitious community project to create a collective portrait of the UK during lockdown. Featuring an introduction from The Duchess of Cambridge, the new publication, which is supported by Co-op, will include the one hundred portraits selected for the Hold Still exhibition from 31,598 submissions during the projects six-week entry period. Focussed on three core themes Helpers and Heroes, Your New Normal and Acts of Kindness the images present a unique record of our shared and individual experiences during this extraordinary period of history, conveying humour and grief, creativity and kindness, tragedy and ... More
Cities worldwide dim lights to mark Earth Hour
BUENOS AIRES (AFP).- From Singapore to Buenos Aires, cities around the world turned off their lights Saturday to mark Earth Hour, with this year's event highlighting the link between the destruction of nature and increasing outbreaks of diseases like Covid-19. After starting in Asia, the call to action on climate change made its way around a planet reeling from the coronavirus pandemic. As the day came to an end, it was the turn of the Americas, where the lights dimmed at the Obelisk in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro's Museum of Tomorrow and the BBVA tower in Mexico City. In London, the Houses of Parliament, London Eye Ferris wheel, Shard skyscraper and neon signs of Piccadilly Circus were among the landmarks flicking the switches. "Its fantastic news that parliament once again is taking part in Earth Hour, joining landmarks across ... More
Guangdong Times Museum opens an exhibition of works by Candice Lin
GUANGZHOU.- Through the solo survey of Pigs and Poison, Candice Lin links her long-term research on the histories of addictive plants, viruses, migrant labor, colonial goods to the city of Guangzhou (Canton). Prior to becoming a treaty port of opium and coolie trade, Canton had been a gateway of colonial goods such as porcelain, tea, silk and silver bullion even before the British Empire superseded Spain as the hegemon of maritime trade. Pigs refers to the Pig Trade of coolie labor after the signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, and Poison refers to the opium that caused the two Opium Wars between imperial China and the British Empire in the nineteenth century. After British Empire abolished the transatlantic African slave trade in the early nineteenth century, cheap labor from China and India were sought-after to further promote free trade ... More
Major group exhibition that explores artistic forms of resistance from across the world
ST. LOUIS, MO.- The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis opened Stories of Resistance, a major group exhibition that explores artistic forms of resistance from across the world. Through visual narratives, the artists amplify and bring to focus the multitude of conditions that ignite and inspire people to resist. Resistance emerges from both within and outside of governmental, corporate, or institutional structures and systems of power. It takes shape in labor movements, protests, and in speaking out about injustice. Resistance is as loud as shouts, drums, and mass marches in the streets, and as quiet as hands sifting through archives, recovering and rewriting histories that had been erased. Stories of Resistance is on view through August 15, 2021. St. Louis serves as an ideal platform for Stories of Resistance. Resistance movements that have ... More
World Press Photo opens in Hong Kong after being nixed over security fears
HONG KONG (AFP).- An exhibition of World Press Photo winners opened at a different venue in Hong Kong Sunday after a local university called off the event that features images of the city's 2019 pro-democracy protests because of security fears. The cancellation of the event, a showcase of the annual competition that awards "the best visual journalism" around the world, came as Beijing and local authorities oversee a sweeping crackdown on dissent in the city. The exhibit was to be held from March 1 at the Hong Kong Baptist University, but the school pulled out three days before its opening, citing "safety and security" concerns, forcing the award's organising committee to find a new venue. After the opening reception on Sunday, it will be open to the general public from March 29 until April 10 at a private venue. "We feel very strongly that this is a celebration ... More
Musicians hungry to perform make a Manhattan storefront their stage
NEW YORK (AFP).- After a year that saw concert venues go dark and stages moved online, an empty storefront in New York has offered a glimmer of hope to artists and audiences ravenous for live music. Musicians across the genres are performing pop-up concerts on Manhattan's Upper West Side for lucky passersby: on a recent morning it was Beethoven and Debussy that harmonized with a city soundscape normally dominated by car horns, construction work and pigeon coos. It marked the first time Michael Katz, a cellist, was able to play with piano accompaniment in a year; Spencer Myer performed on a white Steinway in an experience he said musicians worldwide have been "starved for." Perhaps more importantly, the "Musical Storefronts" shows provide an opportunity to interact with an audience, even if they're watching through a window from the sidewalk ... More
Britain's stately homes struggle to survive with Covid restrictions
BURY ST EDMUNDS (AFP).- The sprawling redbrick house and grounds of Kentwell Hall, built up in the time when the Tudors ruled England, have, like so many of Britain's stately homes, face an existential threat during the pandemic. The turreted house near Bury St Edmunds in eastern England has survived over 450 years of tumultuous history but is in need of critical repairs it cannot afford after closing its doors to visitors at the start of the outbreak. In the face of mounting financial woes, owners of historic houses like Patrick Phillips, who bought Kentwell in 1971, are calling on the government to allow them to reopen faster. The former senior lawyer, who has been restoring the house for decades said he has had to "cut back everything to the bone" after its £1.5-million ($2-million, 1.75-million-euro) turnover in 2019 fell by 90 percent in 2020. ... More
In troubled Sahel, memories of a cinematic golden age
BAMAKO (AFP).- The wall of a house in Torokorobougou, a district in the Malian capital Bamako, suddenly lights up as a black-and-white film starts to roll. The audience falls silent as the title of the documentary, "Sigui", flashes up on the screen. It's one of French director Jean Rouch's seminal films, charting a secret ceremony of central Mali's Dogon ethnic group which is held once every 60 years. Rouch, who died aged 86 in a road accident in Niger, is the only person to have ever recorded it. He shot around 140 films over his long career, including many in West Africa and particularly the Sahel state of Niger. While his work has faced criticism for reflecting the condescending colonial attitudes of the time, the film-maker-cum-ethnographer was a prime mover in the Sahel's cinematic tradition and a champion of local directors. But memories of Rouch's work are fading, while ... More
Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour announces Contemporary Craft Fair
LONDON.- Artefact, a new contemporary craft fair, will launch this summer at Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, the worlds premier design destination, from 22 29 June 2021. Attracting top designers, architects, collectors, art-lovers and style-seekers, the physical event will feature an impressive rollcall of contemporary craft and visual arts galleries from the vibrant British craft scene. They include Cavaliero Finn, Candida Stevens Gallery, Jaggedart, Katie Jones, madeinbritaly, Ting-Ying Gallery and Vessel Gallery, with more to be announced. As the world changes at an unprecedented pace, technology can make life more efficient, but often to the detriment of carefully crafted pieces. Artefact is both a marketplace and a celebration of contemporary craft, encouraging visitors to experience the tactility and joy that handmade objects can bring ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Mental Escapology, St. Moritz
TIM VAN LAERE GALLERY
Madelynn Green
Patrick Angus
Flashback On a day like today, French painter Georges Seurat died March 29, 1891. Georges-Pierre Seurat (December 1859 - 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism. In this image: Georges Seurat (French, Paris 1859-1891 Paris), Pierrot and Colombine Ca. 1886 - 88. Conté crayon on paper, 9 3/4 x 12 3/8 in. (24.8 x 31.2 cm). Kasama Nichido Museum of Art.
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