Category: AJBlogs

Having heard Luigi Brugnaro, Mayor of Venice, expound on Tintoretto’s “values” during yesterday’s livestream of the National Gallery of Art’s press preview for the Venetian artist’s first full-scale retrospective in America, I’m convinced that museums need to lay down some content guidelines (especially for non-museum professionals) to discourage pronouncements that are inappropriate for exhibition openings.” – Lee Rosenbaum

The Theme of the 2019 Summit, which took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was Mobile Minds: Culture, Knowledge and Change. And the panel on which I spoke was listed as a provocation called: Actors in Change. Below is a transcript of my remarks. – Diane Ragsdale

I’ve been away for a few weeks, but I don’t want you to miss notice of an excellent exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum: The Lure of Dresden: Bellotto at the Court of Saxony, which runs until Apr. 28. – Judith H. Dobrzynski

Is it mere coincidence that First Lady Melania Trump tweeted a shoutout to the National Endowment for the Arts on the same day that her husband released a FY2020 budget proposal that would eliminate the NEA and NEH? – Lee Rosenbaum

Keith Patchel, a New York-based composer and producer, has created a free online/mobile application called Plinkout, which he is touting as “the easiest way to teach anyone,” especially kids, how to play an instrument as well as how to learn “the core cognitive ideas of music.” – Jan Herman

Silenced at LA MOCA last year, curator Helen Molesworth lets loose. – Lee Rosenbaum

Philipp Gerschlauer, David Fiuczunski: MikroJazz! (Rare Noise Records)
This exploratory venture is subtitled, “Neue Expressionistiche Music,” and the music is, indeed, expressionistic. Ears accustomed to conventional tuning may initially find the microtonal approach difficult to absorb. However, after a hearing or two the microtonality begins to move beyond exoticism, and a listener accepts that the Western equal-tempered scale does not have to be accepted as gospel. – Doug Ramsey

The Rinzai Zen master Ikkyū Sojun (1394-1481) was a poet, musician, artist, and rebel. He led a life of whoring and drinking. His poems — “often erotic, argumentative, contradictory, judgmental, self-doubting, and occasionally shaded with guilt” — are still as startling as the day they were written. – Jan Herman

Chucho Valdés, Jazz Batá 2 (Mack Avenue)
Valdés’s Jazz Batá was considered a departure into the avant-garde when he made it in 1972. Nearly half a century later, the follow-up finds him as adventurous as ever, heading a quartet that concentrates on mastery of the batá tradition of West Africa. – Doug Ramsey

Aaron Shulman’s collective biography of the Spanish Panero family, The Age of Disenchanments — just out from Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins — has a cast of dramatic characters that is nothing less than stunning. – Jan Herman