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Onstage, 'Designing Women' sheds the shoulder pads, not its politics
FAYETTEVILLE, ARK.- Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, an Emmy-nominated writer and producer, started hearing voices earlier this year, voices she hadnt heard in nearly 30 years. Those voices wouldnt shut up. I told my husband, Im going to have to get a gun and shoot them, Bloodworth-Thomason said during a recent phone conversation. She didnt know how else to make them stop. The voices were those of Julia Sugarbaker, Suzanne Sugarbaker, Mary Jo Shively and Charlene Frazier, the characters from Designing Women, the half-hour sitcom that premiered on CBS in 1986. Nominated for a slew of Emmys, it won only one, for outstanding achievement in hairstyling. Set in Atlanta, and centered on a quartet of mouthy women who orbit an interior design firm, it combined feminist politics with click-clack comedy rhythms, celebrating the New South ... More

George Frayne, aka Commander Cody, alt-country pioneer, dies at 77
NEW YORK, NY.- George Frayne, who as frontman for the band Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen melded Western swing, jump blues, rockabilly and boogie-woogie with a freewheeling 1960s ethos to pave the way for generations of roots-rock, Americana and alt-country musicians, died Sunday at his home in Saratoga Springs, New York. He was 77. John Tichy, one of the bands original members, who is now a professor of engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said the cause was esophageal cancer. Although the band lasted only a decade and had just one Top 10 hit, Fraynes charisma and raucous onstage presence as well as the Airmens genre-busting sound made them a cult favorite in 1970s music meccas such as the San Francisco area and Austin, Texas. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen was not the only ... More

Exhibition at Mudam Luxembourg addresses the nature of production, consumption and wealth in the 21st century
LUXEMBOURG.- Post-Capital brings together works of sculpture, painting, photography, video and performance that address the nature of production, consumption and wealth in the 21st century. Developed within a period of significant change and uncertainty, the exhibition takes as its starting point the inherent paradox within a capitalist system that is both dependent upon and threatened by technological progress. Presenting the work of 21 artists from 17 countries it is installed across three floors of the museum. The exhibitions title is adapted from Peter Druckers 1993 book, Post-Capitalist Society, which predicted that the impact of information technology on the labour market would be so great that it would ultimately lead to the fall ... More

Sotheby's opens Burning Man auction with 150+ lots
NEW YORK, NY.- Highlighted by a group of rebel mutant vehicles, genre-defying original artwork, eclectic fashions and accessories, photography, unique experiences, and much more, Sothebys is bringing the experience of Burning Man and Black Rock City to New York with a comprehensive auction and exhibition of more than 150 lots that channel the spirit of Burning Man. Showcasing a diverse range of works contributed by Burning Man artists, community members, and culturally-adjacent artists and collectors, Boundless SpaceThe Possibilities of Burning Man is a unique opportunity to benefit participating artists while raising funds for Burning Man Project to help ensure the nonprofits long-term commitment to facilitating and extending the culture that has issued from Black Rock City into the larger world. Funds will directly support participating artists and Burning ... More

Joslyn Art Museum opens 'Faces from the Interior: The North American Portraits of Karl Bodmer'
OMAHA, NE.- During the early 1830s, a dynamic network of Native American nationslargely
unknown to non-Native people beyond trappers and tradersinhabited the Upper Plains region of North America. The Swiss draftsman Karl Bodmer (18091893) was one of the first European artist-observers to create a visual record of these communities leaders, lifeways, and homelands. Hired by the German naturalist Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied, Bodmer accompanied a scientific expedition from Saint Louis to the northwestern reaches of the Missouri River, a round trip of nearly five thousand miles, between April 1833 and May 1834. Intending to reveal what Maximilian called the natural face of North America, Bodmer produced numerous portraits of Indigenous people that record the lives of specific individuals. ... More

French and Russian art on a 'War and Peace' scale
PARIS.- Sometimes you yearn for the beauty of small things: the haiku, the string quartet, the miniature engraving. And then other times, tovarishch, you need your beauty as big as the motherland. The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art, which opened last week at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, brings to Paris a War and Peace-scale blast of French and Russian painting and reunites, for the first time since 1918, one of the two most substantial art collections of pre-revolutionary Russia. When the French bourgeoisie still disdained the Paris avant-garde, the young Russian textile magnates Ivan and Mikhail Morozov bought the most innovative paintings in the city and bought in bulk. Gauguin, Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso: All their work came east, and would inspire two generations of Russian successors. Alongside their fellow textile boss ... More

Carlisle Floyd, whose operas spun fables of the South, dies at 95
NEW YORK, NY.- Carlisle Floyd, the composer-librettist whose operas explored the passions and prejudices of the South in lyrical tales that drew on rural fundamentalism, the Great Depression, the aftermath of the Civil War and other regional themes, died Thursday in Tallahassee, Florida. He was 95. His death was announced by his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes. Among the leading 20th-century American opera composers, Floyd is often cited with Ned Rorem, Philip Glass, John Coolidge Adams, the Italian-American Gian Carlo Menotti, Samuel Barber and others whose works have joined the standard repertoire, including George Gershwin, who called his Porgy and Bess a folk opera, and Leonard Bernstein, whose Candide was an operetta. The son of an itinerant South Carolina preacher, Floyd grew up with the music of the South: revival ... More

Revisiting a post-apocalyptic play in the pandemic
NEW YORK, NY.- One of the most unbearable things about the pandemic is the uncertainty: about what we can and cannot do, and the way our understanding of what is going on gets tangled in conflicting stories or collapses altogether. And then there is the dread about what will happen next. Or at least that is what I was thinking as I watched this pandemic-era production of Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, Anne Washburns 2012 apocalyptic phantasmagoria about hope, storytelling and The Simpsons. At Theater Wit in Chicago, Jeremy Wechsler, its longtime artistic director, is offering an expressive new staging that leans on the horror of the past 18 months to draw out the works fresh urgency. But he has also found new comfort in its meaning. I saw Mr. Burns twice in the Before Times in 2013, at Playwrights Horizons in New York, and, in 2015, ... More

Fine autographs and artifacts featuring presidential memorabilia up for auction
BOSTON, MASS.- October's installment of RR Auction's Fine Autographs and Artifacts series brings over 800 unique and unusual pieces to the auction block. This sale offers an unparalleled depth of diversity from precious presidential autographs to magnificent music memorabilia: several hundred of these items have not seen the market in decades. Highlights include an incredibly rare William Henry Harrison signature as president. Practically nonexistent ink signature as president, "W. H. Harrison," on an off-white vellum slip clipped from a larger document, signed by Harrison above the printed heading, "By the President," and signed by Secretary of State Daniel Webster. With his presidency lasting only one month, anything signed by Harrison as Chief Executive is extraordinarily rare. (Estimate: $25,000+) An important twice-signed ... More

Rare Jean-Michel Frank chandelier shines at Heritage Auctions Sept. 30 design event
DALLAS, TX.- After almost a century of illuminating the conservatory of the same Illinois house, a rare suspension lamp by renowned French designer Jean-Michel Frank has a new place to call home. Commissioned by influential decorator Frances Elkins for a grand Georgian-style manse belonging to a prominent Lake Forest family, the circa 1928 light made its auction debut at Heritages Sept. 30 Design Signature Auction. With its gracefully curved inverted dome form and subtle scalloped edges, its understandable how the handmade plaster marvel created by a modernist design genius could garner enough attention to realize $87,500 the auctions top price. Jean-Michel Frank is the epitome of elegance, says Heritage Auctions Design Director Brent Lewis. Theres always interest from some of our most important clients when we ... More

Review: In 'Never Let Go,' a solo performer's heart goes on
NEW YORK, NY.- Michael Kinnans Never Let Go is a one-man stage version of Titanic. That would be enough to persuade a lot of people to head to the Brick Theater, the adventurous Brooklyn black box where the show opened this week. Just as many might shrug in reflexive disdain. Kinnan is aware of those potential responses. The program for his show, in which he plays all the parts, claims that his theatrical realization of the movie was created for lovers, fans and even skeptics. Improbably, all three groups may well come away happy: This heart does go on, and for only an hour instead of 3 1/2. Never Let Go is a feat of ingenuity that works regardless of whether you have seen the movie. Its easy to follow the story and identify the characters, even though there is no ocean liner and only minimal costume alterations. Kinnan embodies ... More