“Opening with a quote from Paul Monet, ‘Grief is a sword, or it is nothing’, [David] France’s book chronicles how the activist community fought to develop the drugs that would turn HIV into a largely treatable condition. … [The book] beat titles including Simon Schama’s Belonging and Christopher de Bellaigue’s The Islamic Enlightenment to win the £30,000 award,” the Baillie Gifford Prize.
Tag: 11.16.17
Gaudí’s First Masterpiece, Casa Vicens, Opens To Public In Barcelona
“The Moorish-influenced Casa Vicens, commissioned by the stockbroker Manuel Vicens Montaner [as a residence] and built between 1882-88, was the architect’s first major project. … Fifteen lavishly decorated rooms by Gaudí have been restored with input from the descendants of its original tenants as well as extensive archival research.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.16.17
Did Ken Griffin Buy the Leonardo (or provide $$$ for Art Institute of Chicago to acquire it)?
While we’re all still coming to terms with the fact that a damaged 26″ x 18″ oil-on-walnut painted panel has just sold for $450.3 million, here’s a potential scoop that is based on some data, … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-11-16
“Sotheby’s Drudgery”: My Storify on Contemporary Art Sale Short on Excitement
Last night’s Contemporary Art sale at Christie’s, headlined by a certain very non-contemporary religious painting, was a hard act for Sotheby’s to follow. It did interpose its own anomalous lot to jazz things up – a red Ferrari. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-11-16
Seattle: A Culture Of Growth (For Both Good And Bad)
“Over the past decade, Seattle has added 220,000 jobs, an increase of nearly 15 percent. Amazon, which employs 40,000 people here and holds about one-fifth of the city’s premier office space, has keyed that growth, but the revival has spilled far beyond it. Thirty-one Fortune 500 companies now operate research and engineering hubs in Seattle, up from seven in 2010. More construction cranes are working here than in any other U.S. city, many in the South Lake Union area where Amazon has centered its burgeoning operations. Seattle is now adding about 60 people daily, many of them well-educated Millennials. That’s the city’s most rapid rate of population increase since the Klondike Gold Rush around 1900.”
Kickstarter Launches New Artist Project Subscription Program
Individual artists and collectives, podcasters, and experimental groups create pages on the site, and visitors can subscribe to certain projects, or whatever else the artist decides to make available to them. Artists have the option to create tiers of membership for different kinds of access, and the goal is that these subscriptions will help fund the artist’s future projects, at the same time encouraging the artist to create more content for subscribers.
The Russian Oligarch And The $450 Million Leonardo Painting
One can be forgiven for initially overlooking another elephant in the room — the identity of the seller. When there’s this much money involved, though, it usually pays to follow it, and here the money leads directly back to the Russian billionaire Dmitry E. Rybolovlev.
Can A New “Mayor Of Nightlife” Save New York’s Music Scene?
“The announcement of New York’s Office of Nightlife comes not long after the release of an influential report, in March, by the city’s Office of Media and Entertainment, which oversees the city’s music industry. It found that more tickets are sold for live performances here than in any other city in the world (5.4 million in 2015) and that New York can still support additional venues — but that the most at-risk sector is the small local venue that supports artist communities. Over 20 percent of such venues have closed in the past 15 years.”
Art As Engagement Or Communicator Of Something More?
“There is an interesting link to be made between art and populism. Populism is not only something that embeds itself into actual politics; it is also a disease affecting the art world. In many institutions the focus on popularizing the programs is so big that one wonders whether the emphasis is still on the art that is being shown, or on the mediation between the art and the audience. There has been a shift from what is being shown to how something is being communicated. Yet this communication is often bypassing or reducing what the artistic work is about and the potential experience the work of art can create.”
How Big A Mess Was David Hallberg When His Foot Injury Nearly Ended His Career? This Big
“It turns out he was adrift in a sea of Carlton Draughts … During more than a year of self-imposed exile in Melbourne, he spent hours on park benches, washing away the pain of a wrecked career with six-packs of beer.” Sarah Kaufman looks at Hallberg’s new memoir.
Old Vic Investigation Turns Up 20 Complaints Of Sexual Harassment By Kevin Spacey
“An investigation opened by the theatre, following allegations that the actor had sexually assaulted young men while working [as artistic director] there, led to 20 people coming forward to report incidents of inappropriate behaviour up to 2013. … The Old Vic said a ‘cult of personality’ had existed around Spacey during his time as director and that his stardom and status had prevented people, particularly junior staff and young actors, from speaking out.”