Artdaily.cc - The First Art Newspaper on the Net

Phoenix Art Museum unveiling 'Expanding Darshan: Manjari Sharma, To See and Be Seen'
PHOENIX, ARIZ.- Phoenix Art Museum is now unveiling the exhibition 'Expanding Darshan: Manjari Sharma, To See and Be Seen', which will be on view until April 14th, 2024. Organized by the Birmingham Museum of Art, Expanding Darshan: Manjari Sharma, To See and Be Seen showcases the remarkable work of global contemporary artist Manjari Sharma, who has photographically re- imagined encounters with Hindu deities in temple settings with custom fabrication. These portraits, which address issues of identity, multiculturalism, and personal mythology, are paired alongside historical sculptural objects from the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, many of which are on view publicly for the first time. By presenting these works together, the exhibition creates a dialogue about the longstanding, inextricable ... More

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago commences 'Descending the Staircase'
CHICAGO, IL.- The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago commences the exhibition Descending the Staircase, opening today and running through August 25, 2024. Drawn from the MCA Collection, Descending the Staircase considers novel artistic approaches to representing the human body. Using the MCAs iconic helix staircase as a central axis, the exhibition spreads across the third and fourth floor of the museum, inviting visitors to descend into realms of the uncanny and fantastical. The exhibition explores figures of all kinds, from the fragmented, abject, and surreal to the curated, self-aware, and media savvy. Descending the Staircase features four sectionsMind, Object, Form, and Actionthat each delve into different questions about the human body through the lens of the contemporary art world. This exhibition brings ... More

The Museum St. John's Hospital in Bruges reopens as new museum focusing on care and hospitality
BRUGES.- The St. John's Hospital in Bruges, one of the oldest and best-preserved hospital buildings in Europe, reopens on 16 December as a completely new, contemporary museum. The new museum is conceived as a place that speaks to the heart, where hospitality - in all senses of the word - and care - through all ages - are central. The magnificent St. John's Hospital has stood proudly at the heart of Bruges' city centre for almost nine centuries. From 1150 onwards, the hospital accommodated the sick and needy. All who needed care or a place to sleep were welcome within its walls. The artworks, preserved there until today, were created specifically for the hospital to offer hope and comfort to the sick and dying or strength and inspiration to the nuns who offered their assistance. The St. John's Hospital owns a unique ensemble ... More

Review: Onstage, the 'Stranger Things' franchise eats itself
NEW YORK, NY.- As theatergoers took their seats, a buttery waft of popcorn in the auditorium was an indicator of what was to come. Stranger Things: The First Shadow a spinoff of the hit Netflix series, Stranger Things brings a high-octane, TV-movie sensibility to the stage, pummeling the audience with horror-show frights and sensory overload: eerie smoke effects, mind-boggling levitations, scary vocal distortions reminiscent of The Exorcist and noise so much noise. Directed by Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot: The Musical; The Crown) and written by Kate Trefry and Jack Thorne in collaboration with the TV shows creators, the Duffer brothers, the show runs at the Phoenix Theater, in London, through Aug. 25, 2024. Its a gaudy, vertiginous fairground ride of a play, exactly what youd expect from a show co ... More

Oil paintings flow past estimates in Neue Auctions online event, led by 'Red Hills'
BEACHWOOD, OHIO.- An oil on canvas painting by Roger Brown (American, 1941-1997) blew past its $1,000-$2,000 estimate to finish at $49,200, and an oil painting by the French artist Felix Ziem (1821-1911) also shattered expectations in Neue Auctions online-only Fine Estates & Collections auction held December 2nd. They were the top two earners of the 417-lot auction. The Roger Brown painting, titled Red Hills, was unframed and unsigned but titled in pencil on verso. It had a canvas size of 22 Â½ inches by 36 inches. The lot was accompanied by a copy of the book Roger Brown, by Sidney Lawrence (1987). Brown was often associated with the Chicago Imagist groups. He was known worldwide for his distinctive painting style and shrewd social commentaries on politics, religion, and art. Browns life was shortened ... More

1863 $20 gold certificate shines at Heritage's FUN Currency Auction
DALLAS, TX.- One of just six known examples of Americas first Gold Certificate will become an undeniable treasure for the winning bidder when it is sold in Heritages January 10-12 FUN Currency SignatureÂ® Auction. The Fr. 1166b-I $20 1863 Gold Certificate PMG Very Fine 25 that will be up for grabs is one of just four in private hands. Within paper currency, there are some major design types that far outweigh the rarity of many numismatic trophies, and the Series 1863 Gold Certificates are a prime example. These were the first Gold Certificates printed and issued, says Dustin Johnston, Vice President of Numismatics at Heritage Auctions. The vast majority of them were redeemed for physical gold, making the survivors unquestioned rarities. Now just four $20 notes and a single $100 are available to collectors. The ... More

Heritage's December 8-11 Animation event celebrating 100 years of Disney tops $3.3 million
DALLAS, TX.- Heigh-ho! Our collective love affair with Disneys rich history continues: From December 8-11, Heritage presented Part II of its celebration of Disneys centennial with an auction that brought in $3.3 million; this followed the auction houses Part I summer event that brought in a record $4.8 million for a combined, whopping $8.1 million for the art of Disney animation in 2023. No other auction house comes close to this level of success in this special category. The December spectacular Celebrating 100 Years of Disney! (1923 - 2023) PART II Signature Â® Auction featuring nearly 1700 lots, was a complete sellout. Part II of this amazing auction celebrating 100 years of Disney continued the record-breaking results we saw this past June, says Jim Lentz, Heritage's Vice President of Animation and Anime Art. The market ... More

The trans comic looking for love 'at the End of the World'
NEW YORK, NY.- The first thing to know about Jes Tom, a stand-up comedian who approaches the craft with a spirit of mischief, is that they only say true things. So when their roughly 75-minute set parcels out recollections of explaining glory holes to their mother, watching their polyamorous girlfriend get married on Twitch or discovering after four years on testosterone that they were newly into men, you would be forgiven for wondering how any one persons dating life could be so complex. I thought testosterone would turn me into a man, but it turned me into a twink, Tom, who is nonbinary, revealed to a cackling West Village audience last week at the Greenwich House Theater in Manhattan. Less Lonely, Toms solo comedy show about their quest for love, sex and gender confirmation at the end of the world, swerves ... More

'Godard Cinema' review: A convention-defying auteur
NEW YORK, NY.- Making sense of the career of Jean-Luc Godard is both impossible and contrary to the spirit of his art. More than any other filmmaker, Godard, over six decades of features, sought with each new work to confound assumptions about how movies could look and sound. He long ago left behind intelligibility, at least in the conventional sense. But if an overview were your goal, Cyril Leuthys documentary Godard Cinema which had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September 2022, just eight days before Godards death at 91 acquits itself reasonably well. It refuses to reduce Godards output to the relatively accessible French New Wave period and tries to deal with him in all his thorniness. There is Godard the film lover turned film director, who had made a decisive break with his childhood and ... More

A playwright revisits his 'Illusion of Suffering' on Broadway
NEW YORK, NY.- As with so many family reunion plays, the squabbling Lafayette siblings in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Appropriate dislodge their share of skeletons from the closets of their childhood home, a former plantation in southern Arkansas. But here those secrets, hovering over everything and everyone, may be actual skeletons, and worse. The increasingly unsettling revelations power what The New York Times Ben Brantley called a very fine, subversively original new play at its off-Broadway premiere in 2014 at the Signature Theater. So subversive and so original that it took almost a decade to reach Broadway. Jacobs-Jenkins, a MacArthur genius grant recipient whose works include bold reimaginings of The Octoroon and the 15th-century play Everyman, got there a bit earlier when he contributed original material ... More

Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea presents 'Experiments in the Existence of Evil'
RIVOLI.- To mark the donation to the Castello di Rivoli Museo dArte Contemporanea of the large installation I numeri malefici (The Evil Numbers), 1978, created by Fabio Mauri (Rome, 1926 - 2009) for the XXXVIII Venice Biennale, the Museum presents the exhibition Fabio Mauri: Experiments in the Existence of Evil. I still dont really know if God cares about art, Ive never understood it, much less my own, which focuses on evil, for which I have a certain eye. - F. Mauri, Un utile esperimento negativo (A useful negative experiment), 2002. Artist and intellectual, Fabio Mauri was born in Rome in 1926 and began publishing his first drawings and articles when he was only 16 years old in the magazine Il Setaccio (The Sieve), which he had founded with Pier Paolo Pasolini in Bologna in 1942. The trauma of the Second World War later ... More