News
The Guardian
Jul 05 2020
Industry welcomes ‘surprisingly ambitious’ sum for museums, galleries, theatres and music venues
- ‘At last a glimpse of hope’: UK arts figures on the rescue package
- Coronavirus – latest updates
- See all our coronavirus coverage
Britain’s beleaguered arts and heritage sectors have been promised £1.57bn of help in a long-awaited rescue package described by the government as the biggest one-off investment in UK culture.
After weeks of desperate warnings that the UK was facing an irreversible cultural catastrophe without targeted support, ministers announced a package that it said would protect the future of the country’s museums, galleries, theatres and music venues.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 05 2020
Protective bubbles | Pandemic literature | Sculptural distancing | Johnson’s gestures | Visiting San Serriffe
In the consideration of larger school protective bubbles, Geoff Barton may be correct that the logistics of keeping children apart will be “mind boggling” (Back to school: what can pupils in England expect from September?, 2 July) but monitoring bubbles could be greatly simplified by the use of different coloured hi-vis waistcoats, which are commonly worn by younger pupils on school trips.
Alan D Connell
Harrogate, North Yorkshire
• It’s not just Contagion that can help us to cope with Covid-19 (I feel fine: fans of world-ending films ‘coping better with pandemic’, 1 July). Turning to literature, there’s not only Camus’s The Plague and Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, but Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), which predicts a 21st-century epidemic, in which everyone dies except the title character.
Michael Bath
Rochester, Kent
The Guardian
Jul 05 2020
My husband, Matteo Adinolfi, who has died aged 91 from Covid-19, was an internationally esteemed immunologist focusing on prenatal diagnosis of gene disorders, and a talented amateur artist.
Matteo was born in Eritrea. His parents, Attilio Adinolfi and his wife, Maria (nee Sellitti) had moved there from Italy, to escape fascism. In 1943, on a visit back to Naples, the family was trapped by the advancing war and unable to return to Africa.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 05 2020
Alison Jacques Gallery, London
Capturing in living colour the daily lives of black families in segregated America, the photographer’s work shocks all over again today
Iced milk, banana splits, pecan ice-cream and butterscotch: they’re all for sale on a sweltering sidewalk in Mobile, Alabama. It is the long summer of 1956. Two women in fabulous sunray skirts and matching earrings stand patiently on the right as a handsome young father in shades helps his daughter to the drinking fountain on the left. Three more children are waiting thirstily for water.
The eye moves round the scene, taking in the sashed dresses, the ads for malts and shakes and newfangled Tupperware. It is a moment before you notice the children’s bare feet, and another before you connect the queue with the other fountain – entirely unused – in the centre. A little girl stands beside it, forbidden to drink. “White Only” is lettered upon it (in white).
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 05 2020
Wherever you are in the world, this week we’d like to see your pictures on the theme ‘block’
The next theme for our weekly photography assignment, published in print in the Observer New Review is ‘block’.
Share your photos of what block means to you – and tell us about your image in the description box.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 04 2020
Boris Johnson wants to rebuild Britain but he will have to do more than change a few planning laws
The logic seems obvious. This country has too little space for housing, too much for retail, so why not convert the latter into the former? As the effects of the pandemic scythe through high street brands – Café Rouge, TM Lewin, Carluccio’s, Bella Italia – felling what were in many cases already wilting businesses, it makes sense, on paper, to hand over the spaces they vacate to people desperate for somewhere to live.
Let us therefore take the step, unusual in these pages, of agreeing with the prime minister. Shortly after he announced his “new deal” last week, he proposed that shops “be converted into residential housing more easily”. There would be the added benefit that any homes achieved in this way would, in theory, reduce the pressure on the nation’s green belts. They might also help to revive towns whose economic and social energy was flagging.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 04 2020
Mark Steinmetz’s pre-Instagram pictures show American teenagers and children at camp experiencing their first taste of independence
For about 10 years from 1986 Mark Steinmetz photographed children at American summer camps. He taught photography to the kids, but he also captured those moments when children discovered the strangeness and possibility of independence for the first time. Summers in bunk beds and cabins and woods stretched ahead of them, communal and lonely by turns. Part of the photographer’s motivation was to recapture the intensity of the periods he had spent away from his own family as a boy.
His pictures are from different camps and different years but they share an emotional trajectory. The children arrive singly, clutching sleeping bags, they slowly overcome fears in ritualised games and campfire bonding, and they leave changed. In this picture the time away is coming to a close. The bus is waiting to return teenagers to the routine of home and school and TV. But as Steinmetz’s says: “Even if they’re miserable and bitching to one another throughout, by the end they’re like: ‘Oh my God, this is ending, you’re my best friend, and this has been the most intense thing I’ve ever done in my life!’”
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 04 2020
Test your arts knowledge with these questions from our critics
The recent TV version of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads featured a slew of 2020 actors reprising roles first taken in 1988 and 1998. Two monologues were newly written, and two, A Cream Cracker Under the Settee and Waiting for the Telegram, were not refilmed, being deemed unbetterable. Who was the original talking head in both cases?
Thora Hird
Alan Bennett
Maggie Smith
The daughter of an Irish musician is currently enthralling some of our Sunday evenings with lashings of laudanum and Maori magic. With which of these songs did her father once top the US Billboard chart?
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
Whisky in the jar
Bright Side of the Road
Which London location inspired Mendelssohn’s popular Spring Song?
Hampstead Heath
Kew Gardens
Camberwell Green
What do Charlize Theron, Zoe Saldana and Christian Bale have in common?
They have all played cyborgs
They all trained in ballet
They all breed koi
Which artist painted himself with seven fingers?
Picasso
Dalí
Chagall
Before he moved into the world of film, the late director Joel Schumacher worked as what?
A department store window-dresser
A firefighter
A limbo dancer
Which of the following is NOT true of Russell Crowe?
He is a fan of Leeds United
He is a trained wrestler
He used to perform in a band under the name Russ Le Roq
Which Victorian novelist was also a theatrical business manager?
Wilkie Collins
Bram Stoker
Anthony Trollope
Which artist painted herself playing a lute?
Artemisia Gentileschi
Lavinia Fontana
Sofonisba Anguissola
Which of these TV titles, as printed here, has a grammatical, syntactical or spelling error?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
Dad's Army
Howards End
Peter Dalton, Wayne Furniss and Jamie Pinchbeck were early, pre‑fame members of which Sheffield band?
Arctic Monkeys
The Human League
Pulp
Who said “in this house with its four walls of glass I feel like a prowling animal, always on the alert”?
Ray Eames
Edith Farnsworth
Lina Bo Bardi
Many Haydn symphonies have nicknames, including one of the following. Which?
The duck
The bear
The budgerigar
In which play is the word “critic” used as an expletive?
Waiting for Godot
Look Back in Anger
The Front Page
Who called what “that great heap of stones”?
Sarah Churchill of Blenheim Palace
King Khufu of the Great Pyramid
Winston Churchill of the Palace of Westminster
Who urged us to Give Ireland Back to the Irish and was banned for their trouble?
Van Morrison
Dexys Midnight Runners
Wings
Neil Jordan’s 1992 thriller The Crying Game borrowed its title from a song released by whom?
Chuck Berry
Dave Berry
Tony Berry
Who is Sasha Fierce?
The actor Alexander Armstrong’s DJ alias
Beyoncé’s braver alter ego
A British dance music producer
15 and above.
You really are the cultural upper crust. Bask in the glory!
9 and above.
Solid work – you clearly know your cultural onions.
0 and above.
Oh... well, the less said about this, the better, eh?
4 and above.
Don't worry, with a little work you'll be one of the cultural elite in no time. See you next week...
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 04 2020
From art to architecture, from festivals to films, our expert guests spotlight the hottest cultural events and share their own summer touchstones
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 04 2020
With the explosion of global protests and activism demanding an end to racial inequality, Jameelah Nuriddin and Erin Hammond consider the complicated relationship between African Americans and the American flag in a series of photos.
The eight images capture a giant 200-year-old flag, a young black woman with a giant afro, and various postures combining the pledge of allegiance and black power poses. They are accompanied by a manifesto, written by Nuriddin, that mirrors the preamble to the US constitution. Nuriddin is also the model in the series.
Continue reading...artforum.com
Jul 04 2020
The Guardian
Jul 04 2020
Ciaran McCrickard began photographing abandoned playgrounds in England at the start of lockdown.
“Parks that would have been well-loved and well maintained by local authorities suddenly looked forlorn, unkempt, forgotten,” says the photographer. “At times they looked post-apocalyptic – empty swings just swaying in the breeze.”
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 04 2020
Throughout June, photographer Joanna Vestey photographed the caretakers of 20 closed London theatres, in situ, for a project titled Custodians for Covid. Its aim, through sales of limited edition prints, is to raise funds for the pandemic-threatened arts institutions
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 04 2020
Covid-19, Black Lives Matter and poetry – the best photography commissioned by the Observer in June 2020.
The Guardian
Jul 04 2020
The musician on being bigger in the US than the UK, his footballer’s legs and owning a guitar used on The Eagles’ Hotel California
Born in London, Gavin Rossdale, 54, co-founded the band Bush in 1992. They went on to sell 20m records and, in 2013, Rossdale was awarded the Ivor Novello award for international achievement in songwriting. The band split in 2002, but reformed in 2010; their latest album, The Kingdom, is out on 17 July. Rossdale has three sons with the singer Gwen Stefani, and is the father of the model Daisy Lowe. He is single and lives in Los Angeles.
When were you happiest?
Last year, when I had all four kids – Daisy, Kingston, Zuma and Apollo – staying with me on my birthday. It was magical.
The Guardian
Jul 03 2020
Black Lives Matter protests, protests in Hong Kong and the impact of Covid-19: the most striking photographs from around the world this week
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 03 2020
Michael Willson is honoured a second time at the 2020 Women in Sport Photo Action awards – for another very different image of Harris
A year ago, the famous image of Tayla Harris taken by photographer Michael Willson, who captured the AFLW player’s distinctive style mid-kick, was selected as the best women’s sport image of the year. The pair have now been honoured for a second time, with Willson again taking out the top prize at the 2020 Women in Sport Photo Action awards for another image of Harris, this time in a boxing ring.
Titled From The Kick to a Punch, the image references last year’s winner, who became an influential actor for change after she was targeted by online trolls. Harris was ultimately immortalised in bronze with a statue erected in Melbourne’s Federation Square.
Continue reading...artforum.com
Jul 03 2020
The New York Times
Jul 03 2020
The Guardian
Jul 03 2020
Half-empty museums, galleries and cinemas sound luxurious, but there will be consequences
Space is a commodity. Cinema, as a cheap-to-enjoy, democratising artform, depends on crowds of people enjoying the same experience. Restaurants work by fitting the maximum number of covers compatible with a pleasant customer experience into their premises. Blockbuster exhibitions generate valuable income for galleries when they attract proper, elbows-out crowds. University lectures offer a convenient way of teaching a large number of students in a single space at once.
Sometimes this makes for a less than pleasant experience. Not everyone wants to be so close to their neighbours in a cafe that they can hear every nuance of their conversation; seeing art can be marred when it becomes a choreographic game, requiring neck-stretching, ducking and side-stepping. Many readers pine for absolute unpeopled silence in a library, and the close-quarters crunch of popcorn or shine of a phone screen in the cinema is a universal irritant.
Continue reading...The New York Times
Jul 03 2020
The Guardian
Jul 03 2020
Pink barrier tape reading ‘Missing Live Theatre’ will be attached to venues as part of an initiative for the ailing industry
The easing of coronavirus restrictions means that England’s theatres are permitted to reopen from 4 July, albeit without live performance. But many major UK venues are not in a position to open their doors yet. A new design project has been launched to wrap some of these empty buildings with a bright message of hope amid the industry’s deepening crisis.
The #scenechange project will see theatres in the UK and Ireland wrapped with pink barrier tape reading “Missing Live Theatre”. It has been organised by a community of designers who work in theatre and want to bring “joy and colour” to venues that currently stand empty, devoid of their usual hustle and bustle. “Theatres which are usually teeming with life feel stark and bleak,” they said, “some even shut away behind hazard tape to prevent them inadvertently being places of gathering.”
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 03 2020
Elsewhere, there are provocative bodies, Don McCullin’s landscapes and a liberating take on LGBTQ+ Britain – all in your weekly dispatch
Titian: Love, Desire, Death
The Greek myths are brought to smokily erotic, achingly emotional life in the series of stupendous canvases this great Venetian painter created for Philip II of Spain in the 16th century. Closed by Covid-19 after just three days, this wondrous reunion of Titian’s fiery dreams is back for the rest of the year as the National Gallery reopens.
• National Gallery, London from 8 July until 17 January
artforum.com
Jul 03 2020
The Guardian
Jul 03 2020
The Swiss painter is known for creating a set of tarot cards, with the Tower seen as a sign of disaster
The late Walter Wegmüller’s version of The Tower, from his 1982 Neuzeit (New Age) Tarot, gives a trippy spin on the card denoting destruction and sudden change. The all-seeing eye of providence – and dollar bill iconography – shoots lightning down on a tower-cum-hungry monster. Its exposed brains are a grey metropolis of whirring cogs, high-rises with outsized TV antennae and polluting factory chimneys. The base is a heap of eggs, the age-old symbol of rebirth. The red tongue recalls the Rolling Stones’ “tongue and lips” logo.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 03 2020
Nicky Woo has won the Marilyn Stafford award 2020 with her project As the Water Comes, documenting rising sea levels in Saint-Louis
The Guardian
Jul 03 2020
The Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum hosts today’s quiz, setting questions to explore art collections of museums closed due to coronavirus
This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions.
Today, our questions are set by the Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum. The museum was founded in 1874 with the bequest and collection of the artist Thomas Stuart Smith. Today, its collection contains more than 40,000 objects, artworks and photographs spanning thousands of years, from local archaeological finds to 19th-century European art.
Continue reading...artforum.com
Jul 02 2020
The New York Times
Jul 02 2020
The New York Times
Jul 02 2020
The New York Times
Jul 02 2020
The New York Times
Jul 02 2020
The New York Times
Jul 02 2020
The Guardian
Jul 02 2020
We must address the absence of black and minority ethnic artists from our public museums and galleries, writes Gilane Tawadros
I was pleased to see the intergenerational conversations between black British artists in G2 (Black British Culture special, 25 June) on racism in the arts. But I was surprised that no mention was made of the visual arts. No black or ethnic minority person has run a major art institution in this country. The first big retrospective exhibition of a black British artist at the Tate – Frank Bowling – only took place last year. Sonia Boyce will be the first black British female artist to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2022, 113 years after it was established.
The Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) was set up in 1994 to address the absence of BME artists from public museums and galleries, despite the fact that in the 1990s, as today, the UK was witnessing a flowering of young artists, film-makers and intellectuals coming up in the wake of earlier generations of visual artists such as Aubrey Williams, Althea McNish and Kim Lim. Almost three decades later, a significant part of the British population cannot see themselves represented by the institutions they fund. In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, we must ask: who owns our art institutions and how should they represent us?
Gilane Tawadros
Chair, Stuart Hall Foundation; founding director, Iniva
The Guardian
Jul 02 2020
Separated portraits of 16th-century high society husband and wife finally back together
A couple painted by the leading renaissance artist Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder before their marriage in 1539 have finally been reunited after an art historian turned detective, spending two decades piecing together clues from across Europe to bring the two-panel portrait together again.
Jakob and Elisabeth Omphalius, scions of high-society in 16th-century Cologne, had stared at each other for over 350 years from their respective wooden panels before being inexplicably separated during a sale at a London auction house in 1896.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 02 2020
Cash awards given to 10 artists who would have been in the running for cancelled 2020 prize
A “fantastic and exciting” list of ten artists who would all have been in the running for this year’s Turner prize have been named as the recipients of £10,000 bursaries.
Tate Britain on Thursday announced the names of artists who will receive no-strings-attached cash awards in place of this year’s abandoned competition.
Continue reading...The New York Times
Jul 02 2020
The Guardian
Jul 02 2020
Afro-surrealism, Hollywood racial imbalances and LGBTQ history are explored by nominees for the £10,000 film-making prize
Arabic science fiction, flying paint and a journey through the black techno scene: this year’s Jarman award nominees offer plenty of vibrant escapism.
Among the six shortlisted artists for the £10,000 prize, which recognises the pioneering work of UK-based artist film-makers, are Jenn Nkiru, whose work is influenced by Afro-surrealism and electronic music, and Michelle Williams Gamaker, who tackles racial imbalances using the language of Hollywood.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 02 2020
Munnings Art Museum hosts today’s quiz, setting questions to explore art collections of museums closed due to coronavirus
This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions.
Today, our questions are set by the Munnings Art Museum, in the beautiful Dedham Vale on the Essex/Suffolk border. The museum is the former home of Sir Alfred Munnings (1878-1959), who is a major figure in the tradition of British horse painting and is celebrated for his depiction of English rural life and landscapes. The museum owns the largest collection of his paintings, drawings and sculpture.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 01 2020
Supernatural grandmothers and a family of 13 living on a boat were among the subjects that caught the eye of the prestigious photography award’s judges
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 01 2020
Black Lives Matter has underlined the crucial role played by black photographers. We asked eight British leaders in their field to pick a favourite image from their archives – and explain why it’s so important to them
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 01 2020
Sotheby’s will auction 1931 charcoal drawing that shines light on artist’s affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter
A tender and largely unseen portrait by Picasso of his lover and muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, which the artist personally kept until his death, is to appear at auction for the first time.
The 1931 charcoal drawing shines light on one of the great love affairs of the 20th century and was made by Picasso when his affair with Walter was still a closely guarded secret.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 01 2020
Critics say the BIPP’s picture on Instagram of black woman hashtagged #nativo highlights profession’s lack of diversity
An image of a black woman posted by one of British photography’s leading organisations has been removed after criticism that it was racially insensitive.
Critics said the photograph, captioned Naomi Black Samba, which was posted on the British Institute of Professional Photography’s (BIPP) Instagram page, played into “racist stereotypes” of black women.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Jul 01 2020
Shutdown and recession have caused artists’ commercial and teaching opportunities to dry up – with little help from government. But some see the crisis as a chance to reset
Australian artist Abdul Abdullah was in New York City showing new works at the famed Armory Show, held this year on Pier 94, when the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
The first case in New York was identified on 1 March. The Armory Show opened four days later. “People were already elbow-touching instead of hugging, but over the course of that week, it all got serious,” Abdullah told Guardian Australia.
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