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After decades, the Philharmonic's hall sounds and feels more intimate
NEW YORK, NY.- Raise your hand if you ever thought you would go see the New York Philharmonic, Americas most venerable orchestra, by entering off Lincoln Centers plaza through a wide-open garage door. No one? But yes: The main entrance of David Geffen Hall the Philharmonics home, newly, completely and happily renovated after a wait of decades is now a big glass wall that can swoop up in good weather. And the past week has been bright and mild in New York. So as audiences drifted in for some of the first concerts in the revamped hall, the lobby inside and the plaza outside merged, without any barrier. Its a new degree of informality, matched once you get into the transformed auditorium. The vast, drab shoe box that the city knew as Avery Fisher Hall after 1973 a few years before a major remodeling attempted to fix the acoustics ... More

Jack Brogan, quiet force behind Light and Space artists, dies at 92
NEW YORK, NY.- They were the men and women behind Southern Californias Light and Space movement. Some of them were called the Finish Fetish artists because of their manipulation of surfaces. Starting in the 1960s, Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, Peter Alexander, Helen Pashgian and other artists began experimenting with new materials and technologies including acrylic, urethanes and resin that were often polished to a high sheen or rendered so that they disappeared altogether. Jack Brogan, a laconic, denim-clad craftsman raised in Tennessee, was their all-important collaborator and fabricator, even if his contributions often went unrecognized. When Alexander began to make his luminous resin cubes, he turned to Brogan for help. For John McCrackens high-gloss fiberglass and resin plinths and planks, Brogan pushed the artists already ... More

Geffen Hall commissions new art that honors Black and latino history
NEW YORK, NY.- Public art commissions are tricky. The creator has to make something thats accessible but enduring, relevant to the site but also able to stand on its own. Still, Jacolby Satterwhite and Nina Chanel Abney, tapped by Lincoln Center, the Public Art Fund and the Studio Museum in Harlem to celebrate the reopening of David Geffen Hall with a pair of major new installations, make it look easy. Satterwhite, 36, a Brooklyn-based artist, works in performance, 3D animation and sculpture, often incorporating drawings by his mother, Patricia Satterwhite, into elaborate installations. Abney, 40, best known for painting, also lives in New York and is a public art veteran. (Their pieces will stay up 18 months before giving way to new commissions.) Between them, the artists incorporate the history of the Lincoln Center and its performing companies, and also ... More

Off Frieze's beaten path in London
LONDON.- Visitors to Frieze have an embarrassment of other attractions to choose from in London. All they need to do is step off the fairgrounds in Regents Park and roam the capitals many museums and galleries. Here is a selection of exhibitions taking place during Frieze week. Queens Gallery Ever wondered what treasures were contained in Britains Royal Collection, which Queen Elizabeth II had custody of for seven decades until her recent passing? Regular glimpses into the collection are provided by the Queens Gallery, part of Buckingham Palace. (It originally served as Queen Victorias private chapel before it was left in ruins after a World War II air raid and was turned into a museum in 1962.) Currently on display is Japan: Courts and Culture, a selection of more than 150 exquisite Japanese treasures received by the British court over ... More

Kate Nash keeps getting back up. This time, Off-Broadway.
NEW YORK, NY.- What stuck out at a recent rehearsal of the new musical Only Gold was how little Kate Nash stuck out. It wasnt just that her hair was not its signature fiery red anymore, but a shade of auburn. Nash, who wrote the score and plays the narrator, quietly melded with the rest of the cast, as director-choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, of Hamilton fame, fine-tuned a couple of numbers. When not actively participating in a section, she tended to stand against a wall, her eyes intently tracking the dancers. The London-born singer-songwriter spent a decade and a half releasing records and touring the world in 2007, her debut single, Foundations, was No. 2 in Britain while her debut album, Made of Bricks, hit the top spot of the charts there and she also acted in the Netflix wrestling comedy GLOW. But despite Only Gold ... More

Eleven paintings by Canadian artist Maud Lewis bring a combined $559,510 at auction
NEW HAMBURG.- Eleven original paintings by the acclaimed Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis (1903-1980) sold for a combined $559,510 in an online-only Canadiana & Folk Art auction held October 8th by Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd., based in New Hamburg, Ontario. Overall, 344 lots came up for bid in the auction, which grossed a robust $871,695. All figures quoted in this report are in Canadian dollars. Of the eleven Maud Lewis paintings in the auction, Winter Sleigh Ride was an expected top earner, with a pre-sale estimate of $20,000-$25,000. It ended up selling for $100,300. The signed, circa 1955, 9 inch by 11 inch mixed media on beaverboard was a delightful and early Christmas season scene, similar to a later image used for a series of Canadian postage stamps. Maud Lewis was one of Canadas most renowned artists, the subject ... More

Studio ceramics highlight Bonhams Los Angeles Design Sale
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Bonhams Modern Design | Art auction will present an important collection of museum-quality studio ceramics on October 25 in Los Angeles, included in a selection of over 300 lots spanning Art Nouveau and Mid-Century Modern to Arts & Crafts and Contemporary Studio Design. Of particular note is the collection from renowned artist Vicci Sperry (1990-1995). Immersed in the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 20th century, Sperry worked in a largely male-dominated field, exploring abstraction and spiritualism through a new modern approach to painting. She studied under Hans Hofmann and exhibited her work in galleries in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, where she eventually settled in 1960. Sperry was an avid collector and patron of the arts, noted for purchasing Jackson Pollocks last known painting, and her collection ... More

Steinbeck's letter offering advice on love sold for $32,426 at auction
BOSTON, MASS.- A John Steinbeck handwritten letter offering his wise, fatherly advice on matters of the heart sold for $32,426, according to Boston-based RR Auction. The remarkable two-page draft letter to his 14-year-old son, Thomas, is dated November 10, 1958. In it, Steinbeck's sage advice to his love-torn son, in part: "if you are in lovethat's a good thingthat's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you." On losing, Steinbeck said, "If it is right, it happensThe main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away." The text of this famous letter has been widely circulated in print, Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, published by Penguin in 1989, and by outlets large and smallthese enduring words thus form a bridge between one of America's greatest writers and contemporary pop culture. It is a marvelous ... More

Masterpieces by Emily Carr, Paul Kane, Tom Thomson expected to fetch upwards of $8M at Cowley Abbott Auction
TORONTO.- One of Canadas preeminent, largest and most exhibited private collections of historical Canadian art will go under the hammer in a special series of three landmark live auction events held by Cowley Abbott. Expertly curated over a period of 60 years, the collection of rare and remarkable artworks features prime example, museum quality paintings, drawings and sculptures by Canadas most celebrated historical artists including an Emily Carr masterwork (The Totem of the Bear and the Moon, 1912, auction estimate: $2 million $3 million), that could challenge the current artist record at auction, and an extraordinarily rare and stunning Paul Kane canvas (Ojibwa Camp in the Spider Islands, c. 1845, ... More

Chaucer the rapist? Newly discovered documents suggest not.
NEW YORK, NY.- For nearly 150 years, a cloud has hung over the reputation of Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of The Canterbury Tales long seen as the founder of the English literary canon. A court document discovered in 1873 suggested that around 1380, Chaucer had been charged with raping Cecily Chaumpaigne, daughter of a London baker. In the document, Chaumpaigne released Chaucer from all manner of actions related to my raptus a word commonly translated as rape or abduction. In recent decades, the suggestion that Chaucer had been accused of rape helped inspire a rich vein of feminist criticism looking at sex, power and consent in stories such as The Wife of Baths Tale and The Millers Tale, which contain depictions of sexual assault (or what to modern readers appears like it). But this week, two ... More