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Clark Art Institute names Daphne Birdsey to lead advancement efforts
WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.- The Clark Art Institute announced today that Daphne B. Birdsey has been selected to serve as its Chief Advancement Officer, leading the Institutes philanthropy and membership programs. Birdsey is currently the Deputy Chief Development Officer for the Directors Office at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She will assume her role at the Clark on November 1, 2021. Daphne Birdsey is an important addition to the Clarks leadership team, bringing extensive experience, and great energy and enthusiasm for deepening our connections with our members, our neighbors, and our supporters, said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. She joins our team at an exciting moment as we are beginning to envision a new generation of programs and initiatives that will enable us to enrich and extend the ways in which the Clark ... More

New immersive iinstallation transforms Rowan University Art Gallery into a microcosmic forest
GLASSBORO, NJ .- Philadelphia-based artists Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, known for their fantastical moving images and alternate realities, have created a new immersive film and installation for Rowan University Art Gallery. Field Companion, set in a microcosmic forest is based loosely on the pine barrens that dot Southern New Jersey. Like many, the duo found refuge and solace throughout the COVID-19 pandemic hiking and foraging in these remote, natural landscapes. As America's social fabric frayed deeply over recent years, they considered forest ecosystems in terms of symbiotic and collaborative relationships that sustain coexistence and community. In Field Companion, the forest has been condensed and transplanted to a terrarium in the artists' studio. Twelve cubic feet of pines, shrubs, ferns, moss, fungus and carnivorous plants are reflected infinitely ... More

Rocky Nook publishes 'The Art & Science of Drawing: Learn to Observe, Analyze, and Draw Any Subject'
SAN RAFAEL, CA.- Drawing is not a talent, its a skill anyone can learn. Rocky Nook introduces The Art & Science of Drawing: Learn to Observe, Analyze, and Draw Any Subject [978-1681987750; $29.95; Rocky Nook, October 2021] by Brent Eviston, a new guidebook that will teach you the fundamentals of good drawing. Based on his more than 20 years of teaching, The Art & Science of Drawing shares author and drawing instructor Brent Evistons secrets that provide the most accessible, streamlined, and effective methods for learning to draw. It begins with the most basic skills like how to hold the pencil and how to draw basic shapes before moving on to more complex subjects like three-dimensional drawing, contour drawing, measuring, and shading, Eviston said. By working through this book, you will learn the skills and processes necessary for good drawing. The Ar ... More

Artcurial to offer works by Enki Bilal in Contemporary Drawing Sale
PARIS.- On 13 October Artcurial will present a sale dedicated entirely to Enki Bilal. This follows Oxymore, the previous sale of the artists work held by the auction house, as well as a host of exhibitions staged around the world that have been supported by Artcurial. This sale will offer around thirty plates and original drawings by the artist, hitherto unseen and taken from his most emblematic albums: Partie de Chasse, the Nikopol trilogy and also TÃ©tralogie du Monstre. Estimates range from 10 000 to 150 000 . Â« Artcurial is honored to organize this sale dedicated to Enki Bilal. It represents a high quality selection of Enki Bilals historic work that collectors have been waiting for Â» Eric Leroy, Expert, Artcurial Enki Bilal was born in 1951 in Belgrade. His childhood and arrival in France at the age of 10 provided inspiration for the captivating world of his albums, animated by ... More

Review: In 'Six,' all the Tudor ladies got talent
NEW YORK, NY.- Are you an Elsa or an Anna? An Elphaba or a Glinda? Or, for those with more classic tastes, a Vera or a Mame? Musicals typically offer just two prototypes of dynamic womanhood: a twinsie set of dark and light. To hit a real Broadway sister lode you have to time travel further back than Frozen, Wicked or even Mame: half a millennium back, as it happens. In Six, the queenhood-is-powerful pageant about the wives of Henry VIII that took a bow finally! at the Brooks Atkinson Theater on Sunday evening, Tudor London is the place to be if youre looking for a sextet of truly empowered, empowering megastars. Of course, you do have to get past the little hitch of divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. But so what if the shows view of the wives is counterfactual? Their power may have been limited during their lives by men, ... More

'Mad' Israeli quest to revive ancient dates bears fruit
KIBBUTZ KETURA.- When Sarah Sallon first thought of cultivating 2,000-year-old date palm seeds from a Roman-era fortress towering above the Dead Sea, she received a less than encouraging response. "The botanical archaeologists said 'you're completely mad. It will never work'," the 72-year-old British-Israeli expert on natural medicine told AFP. But Sallon's bet that the Dead Sea's unique, bone-dry environment could enable the seeds from the Masada fortress to flourish has been proven right. With lots of patience and care, she and project partner Elaine Solowey managed to grow date palms from seeds dating back to the Kingdom of Judah which emerged in the 11th century BC. The kingdom was "renowned for the quality and quantity of its dates", praised at the time for their "large size, sweet taste... and medicinal properties," the two wrote in an article for Science ... More

The 2021 Cordis Prize for Tapestry Shortlist revealed
EDINBURGH.- The worlds biggest prize for tapestry, The Cordis Prize has announced the shortlist of artists to be considered for the 2021 Cordis Prize. The shortlist of 20 artworks by 18 artists will be considered for the Â£8000 prize and exhibited to the public at Inverleith House Gallery in Edinburgh from 23 October to 12 December 2021. A worldwide open call attracted entries from as far afield as Australia, Canada and Russia, from artists working across the weaving spectrum, from traditional methods and fibres, to found materials and unorthodox applications of the Gobelin technique. Those chosen to be exhibited include renowned weavers from Japan, Iceland, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom. Created to reward ambitious and skilled use of tapestry weaving techniques, the prize captures a snapshot of how this classic artform is being developed today. Artworks ... More

Review: In 'Upload,' do blockchains dream of electric lizards?
AMSTERDAM.- Im here, thats for sure! the digital facsimile of a father tells his daughter early in Michel van der Aas new opera, Upload. What exactly it means to be here particularly when someone exists only as consciousness stored on blockchain data spread across thousands of servers is up for debate, and guides the drama in Upload, a masterly weaving of music, film and motion-capture technology that opened at the Dutch National Opera here Friday, before a run at the Park Avenue Armory in New York next spring. But that sci-fi premise is little more than a veneer. Not for nothing did Mary Shelley give Frankenstein the subtitle The Modern Prometheus; the finest genre fiction has always examined humanity through allegory. So, too, does van der Aas spare yet richly complicated work, which is preoccupied less with futuristic speculation than timeless ... More

Musicians flee Afghanistan, fearing Taliban rule
NEW YORK, NY.- More than 100 young artists, teachers and their relatives affiliated with the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, a celebrated school that became a target of the Taliban in part for its efforts to promote the education of girls, fled the country Sunday, the schools leaders said. The musicians, many of whom have been trying to leave for more than a month, boarded a flight from Kabuls main airport and arrived in Doha, the capital of Qatar, around midday Eastern time, according to Ahmad Naser Sarmast, the head of the school, who is currently in Australia. In the coming days, they plan to resettle in Portugal, where the government has agreed to grant them visas. Its already a big step and a very, very big achievement on the way of rescuing Afghan musicians from the cruelty of the Taliban, Sarmast, who opened the school in 2010, said in a statement. ... More

Nora Brown, the banjo prodigy singing tales of Appalachia
NEW YORK, NY.- At an age when most teenagers are busy learning the latest TikTok dance craze, banjo virtuoso Nora Brown has just released her second album of old-time twang. When her parents gifted her a ukulele for Christmas at age six they never envisioned she would emerge as one of the bluegrass world's rising stars. The 16-year-old raised in Brooklyn first encountered the banjo while taking lessons with the late Shlomo Pestcoe, a local expert in traditional music. And now Brown is among the musicians carrying on traditions from the mountains of Appalachia, passed down from the genre's old masters. As a child "I wasn't aware of how unique and how special it was to be learning that, especially in Brooklyn," Brown said. Speaking to AFP at the tip of Brooklyn Bridge Park where she recently headlined the borough's Americana Music Festival, Brown said part of ... More

Silent disco helps South Africans beat virus blues
JOHANNESBURG.- Watching the sun go down on a warm spring day while listening to soundtracks playing on headphones, dozens of people on Sunday danced in a mountain top park in South Africa's economic capital of Johannesburg. It's a budding urban craze spawned by the coronavirus pandemic lockdown which shuttered night clubs in South Africa, the country hardest hit on the continent. President Cyril Ramaphosa last week eased national Covid-19 restrictions to the lowest level ever, allowing larger gatherings. "People are (still) very hesitant about going into clubs and indoor spaces, even though it's allowed now," said organiser Franck Leya, 27. "Being an open place like this, it's not a club... everybody is out, and there is a certain level of social distance automatically without obviously having to tell people," he said. One Sunday a month, revellers dance away ... More