ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

VISUAL

This Year’s Turner Prize Finalists

Four artists—including three women and one non-binary artist of diverse age ranges, racial and cultural backgrounds—have been shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize, Tate announced on Tuesday morning. - Artnet

The Woman Who Would Bring Stability To LA’s MoCA

The remarkable rate of leadership churn is widely seen as having hurt MOCA’s credibility with donors, artists and the public at a time when other institutions, like the Broad, LACMA, and the Hammer Museum — as well as galleries like Hauser & Wirth — have energized the city’s world-class arts scene. - The New York Times

This Spanish Artist Gave An Empty Medieval Chapel An Flamboyant Makeover — Without Asking Permission

After being hit by "intense inspiration," Jesús Cees has spent much of the past two years painting vivid murals on the previously blank walls of a deconsecrated 14th-century chapel.  He was denied permission to paint in 2018, so he "decided to do it and ask for forgiveness later." - The Guardian

Connecticut Man Pulls Artworks Out Of The Garbage, Finds They’re Worth Big Money

When Jared Whipple first picked up the works, which came from an abandoned barn in Watertown, he figured he could use them in a "haunted art gallery" setup for Halloween.  It turns out the pieces were made by American abstract expressionist Francis Hines. - Artnet

Museums Are Using Virtual Reality To Preserve Holocaust Testimonies

For example, at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, you can slip on a virtual reality headset and enter the world of survivor George Brent, at the moment the terrified teenager stepped off a boxcar at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. - NPR

The Ancients Had A Better Way Of Removing Monuments They No Longer Honored

The ancient Romans are even more famed for the deliberate destruction of images, thanks to their habit, dubbed damnatio memoriae by modern scholars, of destroying all portraits of people deemed enemies of the state. - Slate

Special President Zelensky LEGO Figure Sells Out For Fundraiser

The Zelensky “minifig,” as the figures are known, retailed for $100 each and sold out in hours, as did Molotov cocktail accessories bearing the Ukrainian flag, which sold for $20 each. All proceeds from the sales were donated to the nonprofit humanitarian organization Direct Relief. - Hyperallergic

Art Forgers Who Fooled Experts Talk About How They Did It

“The more successful we were in selling the pictures, the higher we set the bar and the more extra stories we came up with, because we were really enjoying this game. Sometimes we laid trails so elaborate that nobody would ever have discovered them.” - The Observer

A Panel Discussion Gives Away A Toxic Architecture Culture

What began as a SCI-Arc panel on the professional aspects of working in architecture mushroomed into a full-blown controversy that has led to the suspension of two faculty members at L.A.'s famously avant-garde architecture school. - Los Angeles Times

Converting Odessa’s Catacombs Into Bomb Shelters

The Ukrainian port city of Odesa sits atop a labyrinth of catacombs—technically, limestone quarries—which constitute perhaps the world’s largest network of urban tunnels, extending ten stories deep and tracing some fifteen hundred miles beneath the streets. - The New Yorker

Finland Says Seized Russian Art Should Be Returned

The paintings and sculptures, valued at 42 million euros ($46 million), had been on loan from Russian museums to institutions in Italy and Japan. They were seized last weekend in Finland on suspicion of contravening European Union sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. - The New York Times

What, Exactly, Is The Point Of The Venice Biennale?

Looking at the superyachts in the Grand Canal, that the Biennale is a prism of wealth inequality that we’re effectively sanctioning. We go anyway, get numb, tell ourselves it’s important to meet people and grasp the current narrative. But you can’t really grasp it on any kind of granular level. - ArtReview

UN Climate Report Slams Contemporary Architecture

Policies that favor wasteful new construction, and do little to encourage environmentally minded retrofits, have hindered the building industry’s ability to curb its footprint. - Fast Company

The Armenian Christian Who Paints Exquisite Mosque Domes

"When people ask Harout Bastajian how a Christian is creating the decorative program of a mosque, he likes to answer, 'God works in mysterious ways, brings us all together to decorate his house of worship.'" - Hyperallergic

War, Images, And Ukraine

The fact that Ukraine feels more culturally familiar to many people watching these events closely has had a profound impact not just on the kinds of images that are circulating, but also how they circulate. - Washington Post

Our Free Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

Latest

Don't Miss

function my_excerpt_length($length){ return 200; } add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');