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New-York Historical Society examines how monuments shape public consciousness and our shared history
NEW YORK, NY.- The New-York Historical Society presents Monuments: Commemoration and Controversyon view January 28 July 3, 2022an exhibition that explores monuments and their representations in public spaces as flashpoints of fierce debate over national identity, politics, and race that have raged for centuries. Offering a historical foundation for understanding todays controversies, Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy features fragments of a statue of King George III torn down by American Revolutionaries, a souvenir replica of a bulldozed monument by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage, and a maquette of New York Citys first public monument to a Black woman (Harriet Tubman), among other objects from the Museums collection. The exhibition reveals how monument-making and monument-breaking have ... More

Ron Goulart, prolific writer who spanned genres, dies at 89
NEW YORK, NY.- Ron Goulart, a remarkably prolific science fiction, fantasy, mystery and romance novelist who cast Groucho Marx as a detective and collaborated with William Shatner on a series of books set in the 22nd century, died Jan. 14 in Ridgefield, Connecticut. He was 89. His wife, Frances Sheridan Goulart, said the death, at a nursing home, was caused by respiratory arrest. Goulart wrote at least 180 books and that number may underestimate his output. His goal was to write as many books as Isaac Asimov, who at his death was credited with having written about 500. He might have gotten writers block at some point, but it didnt last long, his wife, who herself has written 16 books, said in a phone interview. He would just switch from one genre to another if he got stuck. Well known to aficionados but without a bestseller to his name, Goulart ... More

The Met Opera never missed a curtain. It hopes audiences rebound.
NEW YORK, NY.- On Saturday evening, if all goes as planned, the Metropolitan Opera will celebrate a milestone: reaching a long-planned midwinter break without having had to cancel a single performance, even as the pandemic created havoc backstage. As the omicron variant spread through the city in December and January, the virus upended the Mets operations, with at least 400 singers, orchestra players, stagehands, costume designers, dancers, actors and other employees testing positive, according to a snapshot of cases provided by the Met on Friday. But there are encouraging signs that at the opera house, as in the city, the recent surge has peaked and cases are falling dramatically again. During the first week of January, as cases were reaching new heights in New York, more than 100 employees at the Met tested positive, including six solo ... More

Sweden's songwriters dominated U.S. pop. Now, they're looking to Korea.
NEW YORK, NY.- When Swedish songwriter Ellen Berg first heard a K-pop track, in 2013, her reaction was typical of many Western listeners: What the hell is this? she recalled thinking. Berg, 31, was studying at Musikmakarna a songwriting academy about 330 miles north of Stockholm and her class had been asked to write a Korean hit. To get the aspiring songwriters in the mood, the students listened to I Got a Boy by Girls Generation, a wildly popular K-pop girl group. Its one of the craziest K-pop songs ever, Berg said recently by phone. The track includes raps, bursts of high-speed dance music and even a verse in the style of a rock ballad. Its really five different songs in one, Berg said. The class was given a week to write something like it. It didnt go very well, Berg said with a laugh. Eight years later, Berg has certainly improved ... More

Rare Kurt Cobain NFT debuts on SuperRare
NEW YORK, NY.- SuperRare, the pioneering marketplace for curated NFT artwork, presents On Stage with Henry Diltz the debut NFT Collection by renowned rock n roll sharpshooter and official Woodstock music festival photographer Henry Diltz. For this dynamic drop, Diltz has meticulously animated and brought to life, each photograph which will be minted only once. The sale opens to bidders worldwide with a one-of-a-Kind Kurt Cobain snap, capturing the incredible energy and stage presence of Nirvana's formidable front man, on January 26, 2022 at 9am PST /12pm EST. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain was captured in concert (Los Angeles, 1993), for this authentic, animated, and indelible image, opening with a reserve price of 7 ETH. Reminiscing on his killer capture of Kurt Cobain in concert, Diltz states, I dont know where it came from, but I got that ... More

Dovecot brings the archive of Morris & Co., one of the world's best known interior brands, to Scotland
EDINBURGH.- Dovecot, the world-renowned tapestry studio in Edinburgh, presents a new interpretation of William Morris wallpaper designs. Opening 28 January 2022 this major exhibition highlights why Morris is regarded as one of the most successful pattern designers of all time and why his designs continue to set trends worldwide. William Morris (1834-1896) is one of the worlds most successful pattern designers. A British craftsman and pioneer of modern design, Morris started designing wallpapers in the 1860s. Within a decade, he was creating some of his most enduring designs including 'Larkspur', 'Jasmine' (both 1872), 'Willow' (1874) and 'Marigold' (1875). The exhibition features over 130 works from the Sanderson and Morris & Co. archives spanning from the 1830s to the 1920s. It traces the history from the founding of Morris & Co. Key ... More

The evolution of Black music, and a man's soul, in one show
NEW YORK, NY.- A Black man in New York City, during the Harlem Renaissance, is hoping for a life without bigotry. This is Harlem after all, a Black enclave, the epicenter of culture and creativity. Here, hed have an easier time in getting along. Or so he thought. He soon learns that utopia is an illusion, that racism prevails no matter the location. In the North, he discovers, the racism is subtle: Hes somehow not the right fit for his job, though his supervisor, a white man, says hes doing well. Others think hes too uppity, so he is let go. Distraught, he undergoes a procedure to turn himself white and retreats to Atlanta. There he sees how prejudiced whites speak of Black people when they arent in the room: The n word is tossed around with the hard -er. He soon realizes that his new skin tone cant save him, either. The life he wants means ... More

Ingleby Gallery exhibits James Hugonin's most recent series
EDINBURGH.- This exhibition marks the end of James Hugonins most recent series, collectively titled Fluctuations in Elliptical Form, a sequence of eight paintings begun in 2015 and completed at the end of 2021. Seven of the eight paintings are reunited in this exhibition. For the last four decades, James has pursued a deeply personal way of making pictures in which small marks of wax-thinned oil paint are applied across an underlying grid, with each painting taking, on average, a year to complete. For almost all this time he has lived and worked in his native Northumbria, in a home shared with the artist Sarah Bray, who he met as a fellow student at West Surrey College of Art and Design, Farnham, in 1973. They live on the edge of the Cheviot Hills, on the English side of the border country with Scotland, in a house on a hill looking towards Lindisfarne ... More

Rago/Wright to bring Gene Moore's Tiffany & Co. circus to town
LAMBERTVILLE, NJ.- Rago/Wright will bring a remarkable selection of circus figures designed by Gene Moore for Tiffany & Co. to auction as part of Jewels XOXO on February 9th. Rarely presented in such quantity, these 60+ original sterling and enamel figures were collected over decades by Hollywood and Broadway producer Robert Boyett, and are sure to enchant generations to come. Renowned the world over as a boundary-pushing window designer for Tiffany & Co., Gene Moore was a master of fantastical world-building. From the mid-1950s to the late 1990s, Moore crafted wildly enchanting scenes for Tiffanys Fifth Avenue flagship, even incorporating the contemporary art of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol. In the 1980s, he branched out into designing a new sort of spectacle drawn from historic Americana: a circus in miniature, ... More

Los Angeles is changing. Can a flagship theater keep up?
LOS ANGELES, CA.- For 55 years, the Center Theater Group has showcased theater in a city that has always been known for the movies. Its three stages have championed important new works Angels in America, Zoot Suit and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, to name three of its most acclaimed offerings while importing big-ticket crowd pleasers from Broadway (coming this spring: The Lehman Trilogy). But this Los Angeles cultural institution is at a crossroads as it goes through its first leadership change in 17 years and confronts questions about its mission, programming and appeal in a changing city, all amid a debilitating pandemic. Michael Ritchie, the organizations artistic director, announced last summer that he would retire nearly 18 months before his contract ended in June 2023; he stepped down at the end of the December, citing the need ... More