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Sam Fender, a songwriter caught between stardom and his hometown
NORTH SHIELDS.- Sam Fender, a singer-songwriter often labeled Britains answer to Bruce Springsteen, realized his life had changed for good on Halloween. This year he bought eight massive boxes of chocolate for any children who might knock on his door in North Shields, a working-class town on the banks of the River Tyne in northeast England. Fender expected the stash to last all night, but it went almost instantly. Everyone in the neighborhood was, like, Thats Sam Fenders house, lets go knock! the musician recalled in a recent interview at his studio a short walk from the town center, in a nondescript building surrounded by car mechanics workshops. The trick-or-treaters parents were more keen on getting selfies with the star than candy, whether they knew his music or not. That scared us a bit, he said. It was just nuts. Over the past year, Fender, 27, has become one ... More

On Broadway stages, the beautiful rooms are empty
NEW YORK, NY.- When Bobbies balloons are more fascinating than she is, your production of Company has a serious problem. Im speaking of the inflatable Mylar numerals that, in the current Broadway revival of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical, keep drawing the eye away from the main character as she is feted by friends on her 35th birthday. Those balloons stand-ins for Bobbies disappearing youth arent the only scene stealers. Bunny Christies ingenious design for the revival is filled with visual gimmicks that in representing the productions themes keep crowding out the characters. During the song Another Hundred People a barbed tribute to the missed connections of urbanity large neon letters that spell the shows title start wandering about the stage, as if stalking the cast. Eventually, three of the letters regroup to spell NYC: a neatly made ... More

Ben McFall, 'the Heart of the Strand,' is dead at 73
NEW YORK, NY.- Ben McFall, the longest-tenured bookseller in the history of the Strand, New Yorks renowned bookstore, who for decades peered above his spectacles at a line of acolytes, tourists and young colleagues for whom he incarnated the stores erudite but easygoing spirit, died Dec. 22 at his home in Jersey City, New Jersey. He was 73. Jim Behrle, his partner, said the cause was a fall. He added that McFall had pulmonary fibrosis, which had recently rendered him nearly bedridden. McFall enjoyed duties and perks not given to any other Strand employee. For much of his tenure, he was the only person in charge of an entire section. Not only that, the fief he governed the fiction shelves provides the Strand with the core of its business in used books. He determined the price of each used hardcover novel and book of stories and then affixed a Strand sticker to the dust jacket. ... More

Maggie Gyllenhaal has dangerous ideas about directing
NEW YORK, NY.- Maggie Gyllenhaal has never shied away from difficult roles. The actor has been pushing boundaries for years with performances of complicated characters like an assistant playing sadomasochistic games with her boss (Secretary), the daughter of an arms dealer caught up in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (The Honorable Woman) and a sex worker in 1970s New York (The Deuce). But its the job of director and screenwriter of The Lost Daughter, an adaptation of Elena Ferrantes novel of the same title, that may be her riskiest role yet. The film, set on a sun-drenched Greek island, stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a middle-aged literature professor on a solo working vacation who gets entangled with a young mother, Nina, played by Dakota Johnson. As she becomes more involved with Nina and her sprawling family, Ledas past and the decisions she made as ... More

A story of love and obsession
NEW YORK, NY.- The Harlem house had been empty for eight years when in 2010 British poet James Fenton and Darryl Pinckney, an African American cultural critic and author, decided to rescue it. They had seen the place mainly by flashlight because the windows (there are more than 50) were covered in plywood and sheets of plastic. Inside, there were 17 closet toilets and an indeterminate number of one-room apartments. There were dead pigeons and crack vials. The basement was underwater. Someone had been systematically breaking in to steal the lead pipes and had opened the water main. It was, as Fenton said, totally disgusting and horrible. But it was also beautiful, at least on the outside. Built in 1890 as a family home for John Dwight, a founder of Arm & Hammer, the house was a fanciful shape, with a stack of four oval rooms, one on each of four floors, that ballooned out onto 123rd Street, and an imposing Neo-Renaissance entry, with an arch and pillars. More recently, it had been a single-room-occupa ... More

In Mexico, women directors take the lead
MEXICO CITY.- As a young girl growing up in 1980s Mexico, the idea of becoming a filmmaker was almost unthinkable for Fernanda Valadez. Other than a movie club at the local university, there were no cinemas in her hometown, Guanajuato, and films made by women were few and far between. The dream of making cinema was something far away, she recalled recently. We grew up with the feeling that making films was very difficult. Some 30 years later, however, that dream has become very real. Valadezs debut film, Identifying Features, won two top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020, and this year it won best picture, director and screenplay, among other prizes, at the Ariel Awards, Mexicos equivalent of the Oscars. After decades of fighting for recognition in an industry dominated by men, filmmakers like Valadez are setting Mexican cinema ablaze, not just ... More

Sneaker sellers wrestle with price spikes after Virgil Abloh's death
NEW YORK, NY.- One late Sunday morning last month, Tia Hall was having breakfast with her girlfriend when a series of alerts popped up on her phone. When we have website sales, we have this distinct ding on our phone, said Hall, who owns Sneak City, a store in Seattle that deals in new and preowned sneakers. We were eating our oatmeal and then ding ding ding ding ding. All of those sales were for Off-White shoes, Hall said. Within an hour, her inventory (about 20 pairs) had sold, including a Nike Air Jordan 1 design priced at $7,500. By then, Hall had learned what incited the rush: the announcement that Virgil Abloh, designer of Off-White and mens artistic director for Louis Vuitton, was dead at 41 after a private battle with a rare cancer. In the immediate aftermath, sales and searches for Ablohs designs reportedly surged on resale websites. But prices also surged, as ... More

British Museum and Shropshire Museums to develop new Partnership Gallery
LONDON.- The British Museum announced plans to develop an exciting new Partnership Gallery at Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery (SM&AG), part of Shropshire Museums, focusing on the national and international significance of Bronze Age Shropshire. Ambitious in scope, this partnership will create the UKs first pre-Roman British Museum Partnership Gallery with fantastic highlights dating from the period in Bronze Age Britain between 4,500 and 2,600 years ago. By immersing visitors in the rich and varied deep history of the wetlands of Shropshire Marches, the new Partnership Gallery follows the British Museum Spotlight Loan Gathering light: a Bronze Age golden sun, which was on display at Shrewsbury Museum from 10 September 12 December 2021. Both the Spotlight Loan and Partnership Gallery are initiatives as part of the British Museums National Programmes to work ... More

'Emily in Paris' and the city I thought was mine
PARIS.- I still have the text message saved from my best friend here that arrived last October with the urgency of a high-speed TGV train. It just said omg, with seven additional Gs, and preceded a screenshot of American actor Lily Collins sitting at the CafÃ© de la Nouvelle Mairie in the 5th Arrondissement of Paris: my go-to cafe in the city, with the best sausage and lentils at lunch and a view onto an obscure little square behind the PanthÃ©on. You are all over the show, my friend texted me, and for weeks after I endured brutal mockery that my Parisian bolt-hole was about to become a tourist site, like Carrie Bradshaws brownstone or the Harry Potter train station platform. Id lived in Paris, knew my way around French culture and French men (Id just married one). Id postured as some sophisticate with better taste than the millions who come through each year. And here was Emily, in one ... More

The Hamburger Kunsthalle presents the first solo exhibition in Germany of the work of Toyen
HAMBURG.- The Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting the first solo exhibition in Germany of the most important and influential Czech woman artist of the twentieth century, who went by the name of Toyen (Marie ČermÃnovÃ¡, b. 1902 in Prague, d. 1980 in Paris). Her fascinating and multifaceted oeuvre occupies a unique position in the male-dominated Czech avant-garde as well as in the context of international Surrealism. Toyen continued to do innovative work until well into the 1970s, producing poetic and provocative images that oscillate between reality and imagination, the seductive and the abysmal, and leave an unforgettable impression. This first comprehensive monographic show dedicated to the founding member of the Surrealist group in former Czechoslovakia assembles 300 works from all of the artists creative phases. 100 paintings, 180 drawings, collages ... More

William Morris' beloved country home Kelmscott Manor to reopen after major refurbishment programme
LECHLADE.- The doors of Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire the beloved country home of William Morris, the internationally-renowned craftsman, designer, author, poet, pioneer socialist, widely regarded as the father of the Arts & Crafts Movement, will finally reopen its doors to the public on Friday 1 April 2022, having been closed since 2019. During the past 30 months a major conservation and refurbishment programme has been achieved. Practical completion of the capital phase was made possible by a Â£4.3 million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Â£1.3 million raised to date from the still on-going Kelmscott Manor: Past Present & Future Campaign, which continues to actively raise additional necessary funds. (*Please see notes to editors). Aside from vital structural repairs to the 17th century manor house and its historic farm outbuildings, a new learning and activity ... More