| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Sunday, November 7, 2021 |
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| | Smithsonian moves toward returning Benin bronzes | |
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The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, Oct. 12, 2018. The head of the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of African Art said Friday that museum officials have removed its Benin Bronzes from display and plan to begin the process of potentially repatriating the priceless West African artifacts that were looted by the British Army more than a century ago. Jared Soares/The New York Times.
NEW YORK, NY.- The head of the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of African Art said Friday that museum officials have removed its Benin Bronzes from display and plan to begin the process of potentially repatriating the priceless West African artifacts that were looted by the British army more than a century ago. The announcement makes the Smithsonian the latest Western cultural institution and one of the most prominent to date to agree to explore returning items that were stolen in 1897 from Benin City, in what is now Nigeria. The move was first reported by The Art Newspaper. A spokeswoman for the Smithsonian Institution confirmed the accuracy of the report. I can confirm that we have taken down the Benin Bronzes we had on display and we are fully committed to repatriation where it is warranted, the museums director, Ngaire Blankenberg, said in an email to The New York Times. We cannot build for the future without making our best effort at healing t ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Almine Rech London, in collaboration with the John Giorno Foundation, opened a solo exhibition by John Giorno, marking the artistâs first posthumous solo show in the UK. The exhibition runs through November 13, 2021.
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| Slave room discovered at Pompeii in 'rare' find | | Fire ravages African mask collection in DRCongo | | Florence's Uffizi gallery highlights plight of acid victims | 
The little slave room contains three beds, a ceramic pot and a wooden chest.
by Ella Ide
ROME.- Pompeii archaeologists said Saturday they have unearthed the remains of a "slave room" in an exceptionally rare find at a Roman villa destroyed by Mount Vesuvius' eruption nearly 2,000 years ago. The little room with three beds, a ceramic pot and a wooden chest was discovered during a dig at the Villa of Civita Giuliana, a suburban villa just a few hundred metres from the rest of the ancient city. An almost intact ornate Roman chariot was discovered here at the start of this year, and archaeologists said Saturday that the room likely housed slaves charged with maintaining and prepping the chariot. "This is a window into the precarious reality of people who rarely appear in historical sources, written almost exclusively by men belonging to the elite," said Pompeii's director general Gabriel Zuchtriegel. The "unique testimony" into how "the weakest in the ancient society lived ... More | | 
Masque nganga ngombo. Bois, raphia tissé, fibres végétales. 28 cm. 20e siècle. République démocratique du Congo, Pende. Musée ethnologique de Berlin.
KIKWIT.- A fire has destroyed historic masks and other artifacts worth millions of dollars at a museum in the Democratic Republic of Congo, its director said Saturday, voicing suspicion at the inferno's cause. A video of the night-time blaze shared on social media showed huge flames engulf the building constructed in 2008 with financial backing from former colonial power Belgium. "The fire happened in the night of Thursday to Friday," said Aristote Kibala, founder and director of the museum in the western town of Gungu. "The museum contained more than 25,000 items or works of art worth up to $15 million dollars. We weren't able to save a single thing." He suggested the cause might not be accidental. "The exact causes of this heinous act are not yet known, but I know I have always been fought by several of the country's politicians," Kibala said. He said he heard a "cannon ... More | | 
Installation view.
ROME.- Portraits of acid attack victims have gone on show at Italy's Uffizi art gallery alongside a sculpture by Baroque master Bernini of his lover whose face he disfigured out of jealousy. The exhibition at the prestigious Florence museum aims to show the horror of violence against women -- starting with one of the world's greatest sculptors. In 1638, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, mad with jealousy after discovering the beautiful Costanza Piccolomini Bonarelli was having an affair with his brother, commissioned one of his servants to disfigure her. He was slapped with a mere fine, while Costanza was shut away for four months in a monastery. "The idea of this exhibition is to make all visitors who come to the Uffizi in search of beauty aware of the fact that beauty without ethics is impossible," Uffizi director Eike Schmidt said in a media release video. He said he hoped the contemporary exhibit would "change the system" and the mentality which "too easily finds excuses for people who have committed ... More |
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| Israeli court freezes sale of Auschwitz tattoo stamps | | Annie Leibovitz, the un-fashion photographer | | Exhibition of new and recent works by Qiu Xiaofei opens at Pace Gallery | 
According to Tzolman's, there are only three such stamp sets known in the world, with this being the largest.
JERUSALEM.- An Israeli court issued an injunction Wednesday halting the auction of tattoo stamps used by Nazis on Jewish and other inmates of Auschwitz, following an appeal from a Holocaust survivor group. Tzolman's Auctions, a Jerusalem seller, had listed eight original tattoo stamps of digits used to brand inmates at the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. A million Jews died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was set up by Nazi Germany in what is now Poland during World War II, along with tens of thousands of others including Catholic Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war, between 1940 and 1945. "The original stamps used to tattoo the numbers on Auschwitz prisoners," Tzolman's website bragged. "The most shocking Holocaust item." According to Tzolman's, there are only three such stamp sets known in the world, with this ... More | | 
The photographer Annie Leibovitz at her home in Rhinebeck, N.Y., Oct. 8, 2021. Gillian Laub/The New York Times.
by Patricia Morrisroe
NEW YORK, NY.- Annie Leibovitz would like to make one thing clear upfront: She is not a fashion photographer. Given that her new book, Wonderland (Phaidon), is an anthology of fashion images shot mainly for Vogue, thats curious. But because the book, which arrives Nov. 17, was built on Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland, perhaps its not so curious after all. As Alice confronts a cast of bewildering characters, she asks, Who in the world am I? Leibovitz, through fashion, poses the same question. Ive grown doing work in this genre, she said, but it didnt go along with my perception about myself and my work. I come from a place where I want things to really matter. Ambivalence and irony are in the book, she told me later. As a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, Leibovitz ... More | | 
Qiu Xiaofei, Soviet Emissary, 2020-2021. Oil on linen, 250 cm à 200 cm (8' 2-7/16" à 78-3/4") © Qiu Xiaofei, courtesy Pace Gallery.
NEW YORK, NY.- Pace Gallery is presenting Qiu Xiaofeis latest solo exhibition Divination whose title is derived from a famous chapter of The Songs of Chu, an ancient Chinese anthology of poetryat 540 West 25th Street in New York, featuring his explorations in painting since 2019. The new and recent works on view trace the artists return to figuration and symbolism after his 2018 solo exhibition, revealing how the artist pursues and evokes a contemporary impetus for painting in more ancient traditions of art history. This exhibition marks the first presentation of the artists latest works outside of China. As a leading figure in the new generation of painters in China, Qiu Xiaofeis practice has always centered on a strong art consciousness and self-revolutionary introspection. For him, painting was a major source of cognitive exploration as he grew up, and the artist also believes the ... More |
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| Exhibition of new work by Radcliffe Bailey opens at Jack Shainman Gallery | | David Zwirner opens an exhibition of works by Ruth Asawa | | Virginia Museum of Fine Arts presents 'Man Ray: The Paris Years' | 
Radcliffe Bailey, Haitian Fight Song, 2021. Mixed media including flock, acrylic paint, smoke, and mylar elements adhered to glazing, 76 x 55 x 6 inches. Courtesy the Artist and Jack Shainman.
NEW YORK, NY.- Jack Shainman Gallery is presenting Ascents and Echoes, an exhibition of new work by Radcliffe Bailey at the 513 West 20th Street and 524 West 24th Street locations. While continuing Baileys exploration of the coalescence of time, history, and collective memory, this body of work marks a departure from figurative photographic source imagery and a foray into the less tangible worlds and truths found in abstraction. This is Baileys seventh exhibition with the gallery. Much of Baileys practice revolves around a fascination with the American South, which he views as one large state that carries its own histories and practices. It is a state in which the Black community has poured their own blood, sweat, and tears, only to see a range of promises lie unfulfilled. This is particularly represented in the mixed media cabinet work, Slow Blues, in which Bailey images a slice of the United States that is instantly ... More | | 
Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.237, Hanging Six-Lobed, Interlocking Continuous Form), c. 1958. Private Collection © 2021 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy David Zwirner.
NEW YORK, NY.- David Zwirner is presenting Ruth Asawa: All Is Possible at the gallerys 537 West 20th Street location in New York. Organized by Helen Molesworth, this exhibition situates Asawas iconic looped- and tied-wire sculptures in the context of her extraordinary drawings and her lesser-known sculptural forms, offering viewers one of the most comprehensive looks at this artists work to date. This larger context illuminates an artist in pursuit of form as a means to reshape how we see and perceive the world as well as offering a model for thinking about the avant-gardes long-held desire to place art and life in a permanently dynamic conversation. An influential artist, devoted activist, and tireless advocate for arts education, Asawa is best known for her extensive body of hanging wire sculptures. These intricate, dynamic, and sinuous works, begun in the ... More | | 
Lee Miller, 1929, Man Ray (American, 18901976), gelatin silver print. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment, 2021.72 © Man Ray 2015 Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris 2021.
RICHMOND, VA.- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts announced its exhibition, Man Ray: The Paris Years, on view in Richmond from October 30, 2021, through February 21, 2022. Organized by Dr. Michael Taylor, VMFAs Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Art and Education, the exhibition includes more than 100 compelling portrait photographs made by the artist in Paris between 1921 and 1940, featuring cultural luminaries such as Barbette, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Ernest Hemingway, Miriam Hopkins, James Joyce, Henri Matisse, Méret Oppenheim, Alice Prin (Kiki de Montparnasse), Elsa Schiaparelli, Erik Satie, Wallis Simpson and Gertrude Stein. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Emmanuel Manny Radnitzky grew up in New York and adopted the pseudonym Man Ray around 1912. A timely sale of paintings to Ferdinand Howald, an art ... More |
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| Chloe Sells presents her latest body of work at Galerie Miranda | | A new kind of Native American dance troupe | | How Esperanza Spalding and Wayne Shorter realized his dream: an opera | 
Chloe Sells, High As Hope, 2019. Chromogenic print with acrylic paint, 76 x 56 cm Unique.
PARIS.- For her second show at Galerie Miranda, Chloe Sells presents her latest body of work that includes a book project with images from her time as one of the last personal assistants to the celebrated cult journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: a savage journey to the heart of the American dream (1971) and other writings on American politics and life. Sells draws upon this experience to not only depict the intimate home and lifestyle of the author but to also revel in the powerful landscapes of their shared home, Aspen,Colorado. In an expressive series of images the artist combines documentary works and hand-printed photographs that are overlaid with traditional marbling techniques from Italy and Japan. The result is a series of unique tableaux, as much paintings as photographs: a psychedelic ride through the Rocky Mountains and into the living room of one of the most unconventional ... More | | 
Tyrenn Lodgepole (Navajo), a member of the dance troupe Indigenous Enterprise, in Phoenix, Oct. 25, 2021. Tomás Karmelo Amaya/The New York Times.
by Brian Seibert
NEW YORK, NY.- One day in October, the dancer Kenneth Shirley got a message from Injury Reserve, a hip-hop group he had befriended in Phoenix, where he grew up and still lives. The band was performing in Manhattan and had noticed from Shirleys Instagram posts that he was on the East Coast, too. Would he like to come to the show as a guest? Yes, he answered, though that meant a 3-1/2-hour drive from Jacobs Pillow, the dance center in Massachusetts where he and the group he leads, Indigenous Enterprise, had a rehearsal residency. But he also had another idea: Since it was Indigenous Peoples Day, Oct. 11, would Injury Reserve like his troupe to do a set? And so, at the Bowery Ballroom that night, an audience expecting rap and maybe a mosh pit opened a circle on the floor so that Shirley and his crew, Native Americans ... More | | 
The saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter in Los Angeles, Oct. 26, 2021. Erik Carter/The New York Times.
by Giovanni Russonello
NEW YORK, NY.- In fall 2018, Esperanza Spalding had just released 12 Little Spells, a bold foray into using music as a healing practice, and a significant creative leap in her career. She was a newly minted professor at Harvard University, and thriving in the role. But Spalding the virtuoso bassist, vocalist and four-time Grammy winner who is on the shortlist of young musicians representing jazz to the greater public was worried. Her concern was Iphigenia, the opera that she was working on with her musical hero-turned-mentor-turned-collaborator, saxophonist-composer Wayne Shorter. His health was fading fast, and the opera was threatening to become his Sagrada Familia: a monument to what might have been. Shorter had a long-simmering dream to produce a full opera, eventually landing on an update of the ancient Greek ... More |
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Monet and the First Forays into Abstraction
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 'The Visitor' lags behind the timesNEW YORK, NY.- What comes to mind when you think about immigration, ICE and deportation? Im willing to bet more than a few George Washingtons that its not musical. Perhaps it is doable to respect the politics around these issues and the immigrants trying to build a life in the United States in this format, but its tough. Which is why the new musical The Visitor feels so obtuse and helplessly dated. Dated because it is based on Tom McCarthys 2008 film, a well-meaning artifact of the post-9/11 years about a couple of people living in the country without legal permission helping a white middle-aged professor get a new lease on life. The film resonated in a time before we had a president who fiercely fought to keep immigrants out, and before calls for diversity echoed throughout our institutions. In the film, an economics professor named Walter Vale ... More  After 14 years, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss finally reuniteNEW YORK, NY.- Raising Sand, the 2007 duet album by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, started as an experiment, a modest side project for two longtime bandleaders to revisit old and recent songs. It was a hushed, long-breathed album with a haunted twang, yet it turned into a blockbuster selling more than 1 million copies and winning five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. A follow-up would have seemed like an obvious next step. Yet it has taken 14 years for the arrival of that sequel: Raise the Roof, due Nov. 19. Raise the Roof almost magically reclaims the spectral tone of Raising Sand, then finds ways to expand on it, delving further into both quiet subtleties and wailing intensity. Its a little bit more smoky, a little bit more lustrous than the first record, Plant, 73, said by phone from his home in western England. Its definitely ... More  New funding offshoot expands grants to arts groups in the SoutheastNEW YORK, NY.- Last year, when the Ford Foundation announced an initiative to give more than $100 million to arts groups run by people of color, none of the 20 initial recipients were in the Southeast. So Suzette Surkamer, president and chief executive of South Arts, a nearly 50-year-old nonprofit in Atlanta, emailed Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, offering to share some thoughts on arts groups in the region that she and her colleagues were familiar with. Now South Arts is receiving $3 million from Ford and raising an additional $3 million from other donors that will be distributed as grants to 12 to 15 arts groups led by people of color in the Southeast. That program, called Southern Cultural Treasures, is a supplement to last years initiative, Americas Cultural Treasures, in which Ford and other organizations and philanthropists ... More  JoAnna Cameron, an early female superhero on TV, is dead at 73NEW YORK, NY.- JoAnna Cameron, who in the 1970s portrayed Isis, the first female character on television with superpowers, and appeared in more national network television commercials than anyone else, died Oct. 15 in Oahu, Hawaii. She was 73. The cause was complications of a stroke, said Joanna Pang Atkins, who starred with Cameron on the Saturday morning childrens series Isis. Cameron, who broke into the movies in 1969 with a small part in a Bob Hope film, blazed a trail when she arrived on the small screen as Isis in September 1975, two months before Lynda Carter made her first appearance as Wonder Woman. The Bionic Woman, starring Lindsay Wagner, began in January 1976. Isis starred Cameron as Andrea Thomas, a high school science teacher who had acquired the powers of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of healing ... More  Latin Grammy-winning singer Mendonca dies in Brazil crashBRASÃLIA.- MarÃlia Mendonça, a popular Brazilian pop singer who was known as The Queen of Suffering for her soulful, angst-filled ballads, was killed Friday in a small plane crash in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. She was 26. The singers press office confirmed Mendonças death and said her producer, Henrique Ribeiro; her uncle who was also her assistant, Abicieli Silveira Dias Filho; and the pilot and co-pilot of the plane were also killed. The plane had been headed from the city of Goiania to Caratinga, where Mendonça was to have performed in a concert Friday night. There was no immediate word on the circumstances leading up to the crash. The authorities said they were investigating. Mendonça was iconic in a type of Brazilian country music called sertanejo, a popular genre in Brazil. Her legions of fans found power in her song ... More  Norman Rockwell's beloved 'Home for Thanksgiving' sells for $4.3 million to benefit American Legion PostDALLAS, TX.- Norman Rockwell's Home for Thanksgivinghas a new home, just in time for Thanksgiving, as the beloved painting of a doting mother and her soldier son peeling potatoes sold Friday at Heritage Auctions for more than $4.3 million. For decades, the 76-year-old oil has been in the custody and care of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., on behalf of its nearby neighbors, the Eugene M. Connor Post 193 of Winchendon, Mass. Proceeds from the sale of Home for Thanksgiving will benefit the Massachusetts American Legion Post, to which the work was long ago donated. The painting, which first appeared on the cover of the Nov. 24, 1945, issue of The Saturday Evening Post, was but one of numerous highlights in the Nov. 5 American Art Signature® Auction that realized $11,189,813 to become the most successful fine-art auction ... More  Scott Williams, part of Chicago's first three-peat team, brings 1991 ring to auctionDALLAS, TX.- "I've always enjoyed my memories more than the items from the past," says Scott Williams, who, in the span of a single year, went from being passed over in the NBA draft to a co-starring role on the Chicago Bulls' first championship team in 1991. In time, Williams would spend 15 seasons in the league and garner two more titles, back to back to back with a Bulls team led by a fellow Tar Heel named Michael Jordan, who considered Williams the missing piece to the championship puzzle. In fact, it was Jordan who told Bulls general manager Jerry Krause to sign Williams. "Things work out the way they're supposed to sometimes," says Williams, the only NBA player to have shared locker rooms with Jordan and a rookie named LeBron James. All of which is to say, Williams accrued a lifetime's worth of memories during that extraordinary ... More  Dittmar exhibition focuses on future of the planetEVANSTON, ILL.- For artist Stefan Petranek, multimedia techniques can change the views we hold of Earth. The exhibition Anthro-obscene: What We Choose Not to See opened Oct. 29 and will continue through Dec. 8 at Northwestern Universitys Dittmar Memorial Gallery. The gallery is located inside Norris University Center, 1999 Campus Drive on the Evanston campus. A photo-based artist, Petranek works in a variety of media ranging from historic photographs to video sculptures. Focusing on subjects that range from genetics to climate change, his work explores how contemporary culture, especially through advances in science and technology, affects our perception of nature. Anthro-obscene presents a selection of works addressing the artists concern for the future of the planet. Entering a conversation with the viewer about ... More  Belgian painter Jan Van Imschoot opens an exhibition at Galerie TemplonPARIS.- Following on from his 2020 exhibition, Le bouillon de onze heures, an homage to Dutch artist Willem Claeszoon Heda, Flemish painter Jan Van Imschoot unveiled the second part of a trilogy dedicated to the masters of Western painting. La Présentation des absents sets up an encounter between two imaginaries: the artists and that of the man he considers to be the unrivalled master of modern French painting, Ãdouard Manet. Van Imschoot wanted first and foremost to pay tribute to Manet's deep-reaching knowledge of the traditional Northern School and his admiration of Flemish painting, possibly sparked by his relationship with Dutch pianist Suzanne Leenhoff who went on to become his wife. Van Imschoot set himself the task of studying Manet's language, much as Shakespearean language is learned, with a particular ... More  Bruneau & Co. will conduct a Historic Arms & Militaria auctionCRANSTON, RI.- Bruneau & Co.s fall Historic Arms & Militaria auction, planned for Saturday, November 20th, is packed with over 500 items focusing on the French & Indian War, American Revolution, Civil War, World Wars I and II, as well as modern firearms. Offerings will be ideal for anyone from the beginning collector to advanced collections. The auction will begin promptly at 10 am Eastern time, online through several bidding platforms and live in the gallery at 63 Fourth Avenue in Cranston. It will be the second Historic Arms & Militaria auction for Bruneau & Co., in the firms newly created Arms & Militaria department headed by director Joel Bohy, a veteran of the arms and militaria scene. Im thrilled to be presenting my second Historic Arms & Militaria auction with the team at Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers, Mr. Bohy said. Company president Kevin ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
RIBA 
The Kingâs Animals 
DOMENICO GNOLI 
Karlo Kacharava
Flashback On a day like today, Spanish painter Francisco Zurbarán was baptized November 07, 1598. Francisco de Zurbarán (baptized November 7, 1598; died August 27, 1664) was a Spanish painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes. Zurbarán gained the nickname Spanish Caravaggio, owing to the forceful, realistic use of chiaroscuro in which he excelled. In this image: A visitor looks at Pablo Picasso's 1911-1912 oil on canvas "Homme a la guitare", left, next to Francisco de Zurbaran's 1630-1634 oil on canvas "Saint-François d'Assise dans sa tombe" exhibited at the Grand Palais museum in Paris, Monday, Oct. 6, 2008.
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