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America's first silver dollar helps mint more than $7 million for Heritage's Long Beach Expo US Coins Auction
DALLAS, TX.- A 1794 B-1, BB-1 Silver Dollar, VF30 PCGS sold for $234,000 to lead Heritages Long Beach Expo US Coins SignatureÂ® Auction to $7,009,931 February 8-11. The 1794 silver dollar was one of 41 lots in the auction from The Eric Lane Collection of Early US Dollars. The lots in the collection amounted to more than $1.7 million in the auction. Coin collecting is a lifelong passion for Eric Lane, says Todd Imhof, Executive Vice President at Heritage Auctions. We have been honored with selling other sets assembled by Eric and in this case, one of the finest collections of early U.S. dollars which included every date and type. It is a magnificent collection and we are proud to have delivered ... More

No deposits this year at Love Bank, a museum of affection hit by fire
NEW YORK, NY.- For romantics looking to display their passion and devotion, the Love Bank in Slovakia has plenty of room in its Love Vault where 7,000 people have already deposited their keepsakes and symbols of affection, whether reciprocated or unrequited. But this Valentines Day, the bank will be closed. Its medieval building, once home to the muse for what is called the worlds longest love poem, almost burned down last March the result, apparently, of an electrical fault, not rapture run amok. But love proved eternal. Left intact was the buildings underground vault where couples and aspiring paramours from around the globe have secreted their totems and messages in tiny Love Boxes. Also undamaged: the text of the 19th-century love poem that wraps around the walls of the vault like the ivy of infatuation. ... More

Second City expands to the first city and sets up shop in Brooklyn
NEW YORK, NY.- From the very beginning of the improv theater Second City, its name made clear that it wasnt a New York institution and didnt aspire to be. But after 65 years, the Chicago-based institution that has strongly influenced modern comedy is opening an outpost Monday in Brooklyn, in what is the First City. Its a seemingly counterintuitive time to expand. Improv, once a thriving part of the comedy scene in New York, is at an ebb, and the company itself has been through tough times. Two weeks before the lights were set to officially go up, Ed Wells, Second Citys CEO, showed off its new 12,000-square-foot home on North Ninth Street in Williamsburg even as he acknowledged the headwinds facing the expansion. There is a 190-seat main stage theater with a wraparound mezzanine and a 50-seat black box theater ... More

Qatar Museums to present first survey exhibition of artworks by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist
DOHA.- Qatar Museums will open Electric Idyll the first survey exhibition dedicated to renowned contemporary Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region at the Fire Station: Artist in Residence in Doha on 23 February 2024. Designed as a single, comprehensive installation spanning the more than 650-square-metre exhibition space of the Fire Stations Garage Gallery, Electric Idyll presents a diverse collection of some of the artists most celebrated works combined with new participatory pieces created specifically for this exhibition. Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, the exhibition opens as part of the special February gathering of Qatar Creates, the year-round national cultural movement that promotes and celebrates the diversity of cultural activities in Qatar and connects residents and global audiences ... More

Messums has announced representation of estate of pre-eminent abstract painter John Golding
LONDON.- This presentation at Messums Org London from 14 February 16 March will be the first in a series of exhibitions and events dedicated to John Goldings significant contribution to our understanding of the history of abstract art. It launches ahead of the major retrospective of John Goldings work opening on 9 May 2024 at the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in Mexico City. As a painter, and with a career spanning nearly 60 years, John Goldings oeuvre was rich and diverse, progressing through figuration into a combination of lyrical, informal and hard-edged abstraction. He was a master of the colour field and is perhaps best-known for his large canvases produced from the 1970s onwards dynamic, rhythmic works which exude colour, energy and painterly freedom. Many of these paintings are now represented in notable public collections. ... More

Review: In 'Self Portraits (Deluxe),' a provocateur instigates reflection
NEW YORK, NY.- Playwright and performer Phillip Howze begins Self Portraits (Deluxe), now running at Jack in Brooklyn, by quietly asking for introductions. As he holds up a microphone to spectators (masks are required), Howzes genial facial expressions mirror each persons tone of voice. Its a deceptively empathetic prologue to a fractious and abstracted 80-minute show. In sputtering, stream-of-consciousness-style prose, the artist delves into bouts of self-reflection and social recrimination. Howze muses that hes never heard of a Black man dying on the toilet, confesses that he has a very small penis, and wonders whether theres a condom for life experience. (A flushing sound punctuates each discursive riff.) Make yourself comfortable, he tells the audience, seated at various angles in the center of a low-ceilinged room ... More

'Hills of California' review: A stage mother's unhappy brood
LONDON.- In Jez Butterworths new play, we the audience and protagonists alike are kept waiting and wondering. Its the summer of 1976, and Britain is in the midst of a heat wave. In Blackpool, a seaside town in northwestern England, three sisters (Jill, Ruby and Gloria) are reunited in the guesthouse that had been the childhood home, because their hotelier mother, Veronica, is dying of cancer. They must decide whether to put her out of her misery with a high dose of morphine or to let her continue to suffer. A fourth sister, Joan, had emigrated to the United States 20 years earlier to launch a music career and hasnt been in touch with the family since. Will she come home now? Why did she cut contact? Well, she had her reasons. The Hills of California, written by Butterworth (The Ferryman, Jerusalem) and directed by Sam ... More

Kali Malone studied farming. Fate brought her to avant-garde music.
BERLIN.- At the close of an organ concert this month, Kali Malone, performing at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, did something unusual: She turned off the instruments motor while she and Stephen OMalley of the doom-metal group Sunn 0))) held down the keys. For nearly three minutes, as the air drained from the organs 5,000-odd pipes, the pairs rich chords turned spectral as they faded to silence, wheezing and wavering, like a chorus of sleepy ghosts. The finale was a striking example of the way that Malone, who turns 30 on Tuesday, is rethinking the pipe organ for a contemporary context. Born in Colorado but based for more than a decade in Stockholm and Paris, she has emerged as an unusually versatile star of the avant-garde. In a video interview last month, Malone reflected on the path that led to her new album, All ... More

Cecilia Gentili, transgender activist, performer and author, dies at 52
NEW YORK, NY.- Cecilia Gentili, a fierce advocate for transgender people and sex workers and a powerful legislative lobbyist as well as an author and a bawdy, searing performer died Feb. 6 at her home in Brooklyn. She was 52. Her death was announced by Peter Scotto, her longtime partner. He did not specify the cause. Gentili often joked that she had a masters degree in being an immigrant, a sex worker, a trans woman and an addict. She was an expert because she had lived all of those things. She was born in Argentina and had been sexually abused since she was a child. As a trans woman in Argentina, she said, the only work she had been able to find was prostitution. She left South America for the United States in 2000, seeking safety and a better life. That did not happen. At least not at first. ... More

A 'Mother' is mourned by the queer New Yorkers she left behind
NEW YORK, NY.- The strumming of a Spanish guitar and the voices of Eydie GormÃ© and Los Panchos echoed throughout the hall as Sabor a MÃ played on a loudspeaker. Hundreds of mourners made their way into Judson Memorial Church, near Washington Square Park in Manhattan. Inside the sanctuary, all attention was front and center on an ofrenda, or altar, that was adorned with flowers and flickering votive candles. About a dozen portraits of the same women, activist Cecilia Gentili, smiled out on the crowd. While the loss of Gentili, who died Feb. 6 at 52, could be felt throughout the crowded church, her impact reached far beyond its doors. Cecilias my mother, said Oscar DÃaz, an artist in Queens. Shes an icon. Shes a legend in the trans, undocumented and sex-work community. In recent years, Gentili had branched out from her m ... More

'Retablos: The Art of Devotion' online auction features over 230 lots from Mexico and South America
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Turner Auctions + Appraisals is pleased to present Retablos: The Art of Devotion on Saturday, February 24, 2024. Offering over 230 lots from a private collection in Northern California, the sale features distinctive works from Mexico and South America, including Peru and Bolivia. Almost all works are from the 19th and/or 20th centuries; most are painted in oil on tin or copper; some are framed, most are not. There is also an extensive array of relicario medallions, most from South America, and Bolivia in particular. Other religious or devotional items that round out the sale include crucifixes, santos, wood carvings, painted altars, miniature monstrances, and more. Retablos are a widespread folk art form from the colonial Spanish or Mexican culture that gained popularity in the 19th and 20th centuries. ... More

Antiques dealer's collection of offbeat and extraordinary objects to be auctioned in UK
STANSTED MOUNTFICHET.- Items from the remarkable collection of art and antiques dealer Warner Dailey will be sold on February 22 at Sworders auction house in England. Some 300 lots coming directly from Daileys southeast London residence will be offered. American-born Warner Dailey moved to London as a young man and worked his way up from a counter job at Christies to being a trusted runner for Malcolm Forbes and other notables. For Warner Dailey, the collecting habit was formed early in his life. An only child born in New Jersey in 1945, he was trading badges (pins) in pre-school before graduating to stamps and shells. After moving to London in 1968 with $1,000 and the promise of a job at the front counter at Christies, Dailey soon became entrenched in the auction business. He spent the 1970s and 80s working as a runner, ... More