Disney-Britton

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Elisabetta Poveledo Journalists look at the Sistine Chapel with its new lighting during a press visit. Courtesy of ArtDaily. VATICAN CITY---To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the restoration of Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican Museums have unveiled a new illumination system that exalts the frescoes in a manner that guarantees fresh awe. The three-million-euro revamp also includes a new energy efficient air-conditioning system designed to offset the environmental wear and tear wrought by six million neck-craning visitors each year. “The frescoes will be the ones to thank us,” the Vatican Museums director, Antonio Paolucci, said Wednesday. “We’re guaranteeing them the best health for centuries to come.”[ link ]

THE BOSTON GLOBE By Mark Feeney Margot Balboni’s “Piazza San Pietro” at Cantor Art Gallery. MASSACHUSETTS---The most unusual area art show of 2014 is “Goya: Order and Disorder,” at the Museum of Fine Arts. It’s unusual because that degree of quality is so uncommon. “The Italian Presepe: Cultural Landscapes of the Soul” may be the second most unusual — unusual because of its subject matter and the imaginatively varied way the exhibition gets at it. The show runs through Dec. 17 at the College of the Holy Cross’s Cantor Art Gallery. A presepe is a nativity scene. [ link ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By TAHLIB CONNECTICUT---Clare Gallery at the Franciscan Center for Urban Ministry opens a showcase  of drawings from Carole P. Kunstadt's "Revelations Series" and recent creations from the "Sacred Poem Series." A reception, panel discussion, and Sacred Harp concert will be held on Thursday, November 13th, from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. The panel includes Kunstadt, Sacred Harp singer Ellen Lueck, Yale University music Professor Ian Quinn, Ph.D., and St. Patrick - St. Anthony Director of Music Ministry and musician Gabriel Löfvall. The concert will combine the choirs of St. Patrick - St. Anthony Church with Sacred Harp musicians and audience members.

ARTNET | NEWS By Henri Neuendorf Cranach Altar (1555) pictured during a service at the Weimarer Stadtkirche in Weimar, Germany. Photo: Maik Schuck via weimar.de GERMANY---The famous Cranach Altar (1555) located the Weimarer Stadtkirche, Germany has been restored to its former glory. The masterpiece of German Reformation-era art will be unveiled on Reformation Day, October 31st, in a televised church service, Die Welt reports. The primary subject of the altar depicts Lucas Cranach the elder with Martin Luther (1483-1546), emphasizing the protestant political affiliations of the region's ruling princes at the time and the members of the congregation. On Friday, Bishop Ilse Junkermann is due to inaugurate the Cranach Altar on behalf of the central German Church of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt. [ link ]

THE INDEPENDENT By Iain Aitch The pair are known in the music world for their portraits of 50 Cent and Tinie Tempah, but have managed to portray the 36 subjects in "Singh" with as much star quality as any chart-topper When our cities' coffee shops, bars and clubs started to fill with young men sporting carefully maintained beards and waxed moustaches, photographers Amit and Naroop began to do double-takes. After all, this was a look the pair – both west London Sikhs – were more used to seeing at their gurdwara than in fashion outlets. The pair are known in the music world for their portraits of 50 Cent and Tinie Tempah, but have managed to portray the 36 subjects in "Singh" with as much star quality as any chart-topper. [ link ]

THE TIMES OF ISREAL By Cathryn J. Prince Kinder,’ three of 22 paper mache heads from Sara Erenthal’s ‘Be!’ exhibit in New York. (Credit: Cathryn J. Prince) ISRAEL---Looking at Sara Erenthal’s art is like reading her diary. It tells the story of how walking away from one life opened the door to another, and as the 33-year-old tells it, another after that. Erenthal was born in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood into the Neturei Karta community, a small ultra-Orthodox group whose teachings call for the end of the State of Israel, and modesty and subservience for women. It shuns even the briefest of encounters with the outside world, whether it’s speaking with less observant Jews or flipping through a magazine. Erenthal said. “I was a good religious kid but I followed the rules more because I was afraid of being punished if I didn’t.” [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Vindu Goel CALIFORNIA---It has long been an open secret in Silicon Valley: Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, is gay. Vivienne Ming, a technology entrepreneur who was born a man and went through transgender surgery in her 30s, said that Mr. Cook took pains to emphasize that being gay is both core to who he is and also merely one part of him. She said that Mr. Cook was particularly deft when he wrote, “I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.” The wording, she said, directly addresses anyone who might use religion to condemn him. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK---In medieval Europe, Christian artists veered between extremes when portraying Jews in religious book illustrations, murals, statues and windows. Sara Lipton, an associate professor of history at Stony Brook University, has studied the spectrum for a new book , “Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography” (Metropolitan Books). In the windows at Chartres cathedral, for instance, she found Jews and Christians alike portrayed as compassionate, generous and foresighted, as well as idolizing money and committing crimes. “You can get almost any message you want out of that building,” she said. [ link ]

GULF TIMES By Anand Holla EXPRESSION: One of the works in Ehab Mamdouh’s exhibition. DOHA---Captivating geometric symbols replace the human form to represent the five postures of prayer. Egyptian-born artist Ehab Mamdouh’s debut exhibition titled Muqeem – A mesmerising call to stillness – promises to be a far-reaching exercise in contemporary Islamic art in how it moves away from calligraphy and embraces the human figure to advance the dialogue. Muqeem Series I opened Thursday and is on till December 12 at Riyadh’s Alāan (meaning Now) – the key contemporary forum, at the heart of the city’s emerging arts scene. [ link ]

THE TENNESSEAN  By Michelle Jones Domenico Beccafumi, “Saint Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata,” ca. 1513-15. Oil and gold leaf on wood, 11 1/4 x 16 1/4 in. (Photo: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles ) TENNESSEE---The fall museum season is the biggest of the year, and this one is particularly good for fans of Renaissance art. This week alone two exhibitions highlighting the period open in this part of the country, including "Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy" opening Friday at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. "Sanctity Pictured" remains on view through Jan. 25. The Frist Center is the exhibition's only venue. [ link ]

CONNECT SAVANNAH By Anna Chandler Paradise Garden in Summerville GA GEORGIA---If you haven’t heard it, the legend goes like this: bike repairman and preacher Finster was working on an old bike when he got a dab of paint on his finger. A face appeared in the paint and spoke to him: “Paint sacred art.” From then on, Finster, who’d never created a work of art in his life, made tens of thousands of numbered works, riddled with Bible verses and wonderful quips of his own philosophy and wisdom. He painted on wood, telephones, Cadillacs, and anything he could find, but his greatest work was his own Paradise Garden, a Garden of Eden-inspired oasis of art and scripture. Spread over four acres in Summerville, Georgia, the Garden featured a Bible House, Mirror House, Hubcap Tower, Bicycle Tower, Machine Gun Nest, and the iconic four-story Folk Art Chapel, all crafted by Finster. [ link ]

WESTERN JOURNALISM By James Beattie "Tweeted images of the Islamic State flag atop the White House and along highways..." A man from Houston, Texas, tweeted images of the Islamic State (ISIS) flag atop the White House and along highways, causing a stir among the public. Abdul-Rahman Baghdadi tweeted ISIS flag stickers affixed to highway signs, an image of the black flag atop the White House, and an image of the United States colored with the black flag. Baghdadi was in the news earlier this month after he declared allegiance for ISIS when he was arrested by the Houston Police Department, according to The Washington Free Beacon. [ link ]

ARABIAN BUSINESS Image for illustrative purposes only (Getty Images). UNITED ARAB EMIRATES---The Louvre Abu Dhabi museum is set to include a Jewish Torah as part of its collection when it opens next year, with an ancient Hindu statue, a Buddha and works of art from African Animism also set to be among a number of religious pieces to be displayed, sources have confirmed. The museum, which is set to open in December 2015, will cost over $630 million to build and covers an area of 64,000 square metre. Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and built on Saadiyat Island, it will have feature a 6,000 square metre space dedicated to permanent installations and 2,000 square metre set aside for temporary exhibitions. [ link ]

THE GUARDIAN By Laura Cumming Visitors to the National Gallery in front of Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride: ‘a secular altarpiece, an inspiration to patience, humility and kindness’. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP UNITED KINGDOM---" Rembrandt: The Late Works " is the experience of a lifetime. It is the first time these astounding masterpieces have been brought together in a single show, and given their immeasurable value – from The Jewish Brideto Bathsheba, Lucretia, The Anatomy Lesson and The Syndics, from the images of sons and lovers to the inexhaustibly profound self-portraits – it may well be the last. Tenderest of all is The Jewish Bride, the man and woman whose names are lost but whose love survives. [ link ] " Rembrandt: The Late Works" is at the National Gallery, London WC2 until 18 January 2015

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS "JESUS DIES" by Douglas Blanchard On October 16, Kittredge Cherry (author) and Douglas Blanchard (artist) released their new book " The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision ," and one week later, Facebook censored advertising for the new book. Thanks however to pressure from gay Christian supporters of both Kittredge Cherry and Douglas Blanchard, Facebook reversed its decision and advertising resumed . The new book about Jesus that challenges viewers by arriving as a young gay man of today in a modern city. “Christ is one of us in my pictures,” says Blanchard. “In His sufferings, I want to show Him as someone who experiences and understands fully what it is like to be an unwelcome outsider.” Blanchard, an art professor and self-proclaimed “very agnostic believer,” used the series to grapple with his own faith struggles as a New Yorker who witnessed the 9/11 terrorist attacks. [ Purchase ]

THE JEWISH WEEK By Lonnie Firestone NEW YORK---‘Islam comes from the desert,” says the character Amir over dinner at his lavish Manhattan apartment. Amir is the central character of “ Disgraced ,” the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Ayad Akhtar, which opens next week on Broadway; it stars Hari Dhillon, Josh Radnor and Gretchen Mol, and features one of the most thought-provoking conversations about religion happening at a dinner table in New York. While the play’s central sphere is Islam, discussion of Jews and Jewishness permeates the dialogue. [ link ] “ Disgraced ,” now in previews, opens Oct. 23 at the Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St. $37.50-$138. Disgracedonbroadway.com. For ticket information, (212) 239-6200, Telecharge.com.

HAARETZ Judaica artifacts produced in the Land of Israel, 1880-1967 ISRAEL---The catalog of the exhibition ‘ Local Judaica ’ shows how the Zionist tradition in applied art was invented in pre-state Palestine. “Local Judaica: Judaica Artifacts Created in the Land of Israel, 1880-1967,” catalog of an exhibition curated by Nitza Baharuzi-Baroz, Eretz Israel Museum, 336 pages, Hebrew and English. [ link ]

BREITBART.COM By Kelli Serio HOLLYWOOD ---Jon Voight and Greg Kinnear have signed on to Paramount Pictures' new faith-based drama entitled Same Kind Of Different As Me, which is an adaptation of the 2006 best-selling nonfiction novel co-written by Ron Hall and Denver Moore. The film stars Renee Zellweger, who announced her return to the big screen last week, and began filming in Jackson, Mississippi on Monday, according to the Los Angeles Times. Same Kind of Different As Me is about a wealthy international art dealer named Ron Hall (Kinnear) who develops an unlikely friendship with a man named Denver Moore (Djimon Hounsou) whom he meets at a homeless shelter. They are introduced by Ron's wife Deborah (Zellweger), who realizes her calling in life is to serve others. She then takes the three of them on a journey that will forever change their lives. Voight will play Hall's estranged father in the film. They later reconcile.[ link ]

THE GUARDIAN By Matthew Ryder Chris Ofili, Iscariot Blues, 2006. Photograph: Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London UNITED KINGDOM---Powerful and deeply uncomfortable new painting expresses the anger and humiliation inspired by ‘stop and search’ at a time when the issue has never been more talked-about. In choosing Blue Devils (2014) as the title of his ominous, dark new painting, Chris Ofili has disturbingly and deliciously subverted that famous Trinidadian Carnival reference, transposing it to the streets of London, Manchester or New York. Through this piece, Ofili adds his voice at a timely point to the long-running debate concerning the relationship of black men with the police, in the United Kingdom and the United States, since it has gained unusual intensity in recent months. [ link ] This essay, Blue Devils by Matthew Ryder, was originally published in Chris Ofili: Night and Day; (c) New Museum, New York; published by Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc., New York, 2014.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS The Vision of Saint John" by El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) (Greek, Iráklion (Candia) 1540/41–1614 Toledo) NEW YORK---To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 1541–1614), this special collaboration will bring together all of the artist’s paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection, the finest outside the Museo del Prado in Madrid, and display them with six loans from the Hispanic Society of America. During the same period, New York’s Frick Collection, whose works by this artist cannot be lent, will exhibit its three El Greco pictures together for the first time. Metropolitan Museum of Art: " El Greco in New York " (November 4-February 1, 2015); 1000 Fifth Avenue (at 82nd Street), New York, NY; (212) 535-7710; met museum.org

THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR By Will Higgins This well in Rev. Levi Coffin's home enabled the family to get as much food and water as it needed for fugitives without arousing the suspicions of bounty hunters seeking runaway slaves INDIANA---A Fountain City home that served as a station of the Underground Railroad is about to become part of a $3.2 improvement effort that would be the costliest such project to date. The Levi Coffin house is thought to have helped 2,000 slaves with its hidden doors and secret nooks. Most of the money will go toward creating a 5,200-square-foot visitors center adjacent to the 1839 home. Levi Coffin and his wife, Catherine, were leaders in the Underground Railroad movement, which before the Civil War helped runaway slaves as they fled from bondage in the southern U.S. to freedom in Canada. [ link ]

ARTNET | NEWS With so many new collectors populating the art world today, it no longer cuts it to simply know the up-and-coming artists and collect their work "deep." Increasingly, collectors are looking to set themselves apart either by collecting with a specific focus (see Peter Marino's Renaissance and baroque sculpture), by looking to a greater cause (see Leonardo DiCaprios taking his environmental activism to the auction block), or by turning yourself into a Renaissance woman of the arts (as per Maria Baibakova). And they're everywhere. Here are twenty of the world's most innovative collectors. [ link ]

WASHINGTON SQUARE NEWS  By Alex Greenberger Chris Ofili's new show, "Chris Ofili: Night and Day," featuring colorful and jarring paintings, can be found in the New Museum. (Alex Greenberger) NEW YORK---“Chris Ofili: Night and Day,” the New Museum’s retrospective of the controversial British artist, opens with a shock to the system, the kind that makes it easy to forget that the rest of the exhibition even exists. In a classic moment in New York art history, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani temporarily pulled city funding from the Brooklyn Museum after it showed Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary” (1996) in its 1999 show “Sensation.” The work of art, like any of the paintings in this gallery, is still sensational today. It depicts a familiar personage — the blue-robed Virgin Mary, shown with her left breast exposed, depicted just as any Renaissance painter might have done it. It is not outlandish, however, to say no Renaissance artist would have painted the Virgin Mary as a...

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE By David Gibson Mark Silk looks at one Connecticut town’s move to a “harvest-themed” celebration . Was it the costumes? The candy? The religious roots that no one actually remembers anymore? I say, just celebrate All Soul’s Day instead and everybody would be happy. Right? [ link ] M aybe not: the Lutheran Satirists get to the heart of the matter

THE INDIANA GAZETTE By Travis Loller TENNESSEE---A Methodist pastor who was disciplined after he officiated at the wedding of his gay son will be allowed to remain an ordained minister. The Judicial Council of the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination ruled Monday that a Pennsylvania church jury was wrong to defrock Frank Schaefer last year after he would not promise never to perform another same-sex wedding. The council ruled on technical grounds and did not express support for gay marriage in general. Its decision is final. [ link ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By TAHLIB INDIANA---Throughout history, Urushi (the Japanese name for lacquer) has been used in a wide variety of ways including in religious items. The oldest lacquer artifacts found so far in Japanese tombs are 6,000 years old, while in Vietnamese tombs archaeologists have found many lacquered objects dating back to the fourth century B.C. Urushi is a viscous fluid organic material that comes from the milky sap of several varieties of an Asian tree belonging to the Anacardiacea family.  Nhat Tran (b. Vietnam) of Indianapolis is one of the few artists today who have undertaken the long and demanding process of urushi painting. "Urushi products can last hundreds of years while retaining their glossiness, smoothness and elegance," writes Tran. "Their colors do not fade with the impact of light and time, and amazingly, as the years go by and the pieces age, their colors keep getting deeper and become more luminous." On November 7, the artist will...

ARTDAILY "Butterflies The Pope" (2003) by Kim Dong-Yoo. Acrylic on canvas, 145.5 x 112.1 cm. HONG KONG--- Christie’s announces "Constructive Units: Korean Modern and Contemporary Art," a new private sale exhibition which will run from 29 October to 18 December 2014 at the James Christie Room, Alexandra House. This exhibition features 28 of the latest works from five artists: Choi So-Young (B. 1980), who will be exhibiting her work publicly for the first time in four years, Chung Doo-Hwa (B. 1968), Hong Kyoung-Tack (B. 1968), Kim Dong-Yoo (B. 1965) and modern master Rhee Seundja (1918-2009). Kim Dong-Yoo creates images from a series of smaller images. By employing multiplication of small “pixels” within a larger image, Kim orchestrates a masterful control of tonal gradient to create a larger, final portrait. [ link ]

THE GUARDIAN The institute library exterior and reflecting pool CAMBODIA---Looking like a futuristic descendant of Angkor Wat , with a cluster of chiselled forms poking up above the trees, Cambodia is to receive a new genocide museum and research institute, designed by London-based Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. Unveiled 35 years after the end of the Khmer Rouge’s brutal reign, the Sleuk Rith Institute will incorporate a museum, research centre, graduate school, document archives and research library, set in an expansive new park south of the centre of the capital, Phnom Penh. The project is the vision of human-rights activist Youk Chhang, 53, who has directed the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) since 1995. He amassed a vast archive detailing the atrocities of the regime led by Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979, when two million Cambodians were slaughtered. [ link ]

BOSTON GLOBE By Don Aucoin From left: Gillian Mariner Gordon, Victor Shopov, Alex Marz, and Alison McCartan in SpeakEasy Stage Company’s “Bad Jews.” MASSACHUSETTS---Families can weaponize your secrets, turn a searchlight on your flaws, and home in on your contradictions like a GPS whose coordinates are always set to one destination: your Achilles heel. That fundamental truth adds the crackle of electricity to Joshua Harmon’s “Bad Jews,’’ now receiving its New England premiere at SpeakEasy Stage Company in a searingly funny production directed by Rebecca Bradshaw. Will it make us laugh? Or wince? Or, as is often the case in this mordantly entertaining and occasionally moving production, both? [ link ]

ARTNET  NEWS By Lorena Muñoz-Alonso Caravaggio, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy (1606). Photo via: The Guardian ITALY---The long-lost original version of Caravaggio's  "Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy" has been identified by one of the foremost experts on the artist, the Independent reports . According to the Guardian , the lucky owners, who live in an unspecified European country, contacted Gregori earlier this year, as they suspected the painting might be a Caravaggio but were unable to read the note on its back. Gregori deciphered the text, written in 17th century-era handwriting, which says the painting was a commission by one of Caravaggio's most important patrons: Cardinal Scipione Borghese of Rome.  Caravaggio is thought to have painted Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy in 1606, shortly after fleeing Rome, following his conviction for murder. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Carol Vogel “Fama” (1605), a pen-and-ink drawing by the Flemish artist Bartholomeus Spranger, whose works will be shown at the Met. Credit Hartung & Hartung Auctioneers Collection NEW YORK---The Flemish artist Bartholomeus Spranger was something of a celebrity in late-16th-century Europe. He secured the patronage of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese of Italy and Pope Pius V ; was the court painter to Emperor Maximilian II in Vienna and served Emperor Rudolf II of Austria. “This is an artist whose due is long past,” said Sally Metzler, who is writing Spranger’s catalog raisonné and is guest curator of the exhibition “ Bartholomeus Spranger: Splendor and Eroticism in Imperial Prague ,” which opens on Nov. 4 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . The show will span the artist’s career, from the paintings he created in Italy, starting with “The Holy Family,” a miniature on copper from the Galleria Palatina in Florence. [ link ]

THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR By Kristine Guerra INDIANA---Before Oct. 6, same-sex couples who were married in other states but sought to get divorced in Indiana were stuck. That's no longer the case. Now that same-sex marriages are recognized by the state, couples who were married elsewhere and are seeking to get divorced in Indiana can do so just as any opposite-sex couples seeking to part ways. However, that doesn't mean same-sex divorce cases will be free of complications. One option, Harmon said, is to treat the cohabitation agreement like a prenuptial agreement. [ link ]

THE GUARDIAN Surprise, 2010. Photograph: Maimouna Guerresi/M.I.A. Gallery AFRICA---The 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, named after the number of countries on the continent, shows off over 100 of the finest African artists. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Randal C. Archibold Israel Reyes Larrea, who named his daughter “Africa” and has devoted a room in his house to a collection of memorabilia from the black communities of Mexico, said he was “Afro-Indian” — with a great-grandmother of African descent. But since moving here a couple of decades ago and marrying a black woman, he describes himself as black. MEXICO---Hernán Reyes calls himself “negro” — black — plain and simple. After some thought, Elda Mayren decides she is “Afromexicana,” or African-Mexican. Or Afromexican. Or “moreno,” “mascogo,” “jarocho,” or “costeño” — some of the other terms sometimes used to describe black Mexicans. This isolated village is named for an independence hero, thought to have had black ancestors, who helped abolish slavery in Mexico. It lies in the rugged hills of southwestern Mexico, among a smattering of towns and hamlets that have long embraced a heritage from African slaves who were brought here to work in mines and on sug...

INDIAN EXPRESS By Dipanita Nath INDIA---Thirty years after the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, a theatre production from New York will replay its horrors through the stories of four young victims. Kultar’s Mime, an “immersive theatre experience” in which acting is supplemented with poetry, painting and music, will be staged at Akshara Theatre on Baba Kharak Singh Marg on October 30 and 31 and St Mark’s Girls’ School in Meerabagh on November 1. It opened at Harvard University on September 27, followed by shows in Boston, New Jersey, New York, Ottawa, Brampton and Toronto. The take-off point of the play is another massacre that had taken place 81 years before – of the Jewish population in the city of Kishinev, the capital of the Russian province of Bessarabia, on April 6, 1903. The plot revolves around a group of Jewish artists in New York City who are commemorating the Kishinev pogrom through an art exhibition and poetry reading. [ link ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Disney-Britton Aïda Muluneh's  " 99 Series " (above) is a photographic series interpreting "Hell" as inspired by Dante Alighieri's epic poem written in the 1300's. Note the deathly white make-up and the three enveloping bloody red hands. "The inferno ," said Aïda Muluneh, "is not down below ; it is here , ever- present ...." Forty African artists, including Aïda Muluneh explore " The Divine Comedy " at the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, and that makes " 99 Series " my NEWS OF WEEK .

ARTDAILY  NEW YORK---Marlborough Gallery announces an exhibition of recent works by Tom Otterness entitled "Creation Myth" which opened on Wednesday, October 22nd and will continue through November 25th of 2014. Creation Myth consists of over twenty sculptures in stainless-steel & limestone, bronze, and marble. The works range in scale from small to monumental. In this exhibition, Otterness alludes to Ovid’s canonical story in the Metamorphoses in which Pygmalion carves a sculpture of a woman in ivory so beautiful and idyllic that he becomes enchanted by her. Upon praying to goddess Aphrodite for a bride, Pygmalion’s sculpture, Galatea, comes to life. The works in Creation Myth, however, feature a woman carving a male figure. Originally from Wichita, Kansas, Otterness has been a resident of New York City since the 1970s and works in Brooklyn. [ link ]

CLEVELAND JEWISH NEWS By Carlo Wolff Dora Maar, “Double Portrait with Hat,” 1936-37 OHIO---Surrealism aimed to bed the mundane in contexts that make it look otherworldly. Paralleling the developing field of psychoanalysis, it explored the subconscious, displaying the stuff of dreams. While Surrealist painting is relatively well known, the profile of Surrealist photography is far lower, though Magritte and Ray also worked in that medium. How fruitful the terrain was for the camera in the 1920s through the 1940s, the peak years of the movement, comes clear in “Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography.” [ link ] Cleveland Museum of Art: “Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography” (Ends Jan. 11, 2015); 11150 East Blvd., Cleveland, OH; (216) 421-7350; clevelandart.org

THE GUARDIAN By Fabin Muir Fabian Muir: ‘The idea for the series came to me while I was in Australia last year. My work had been very focused on post-Soviet areas from the Baltic to central Asia. Something inside me said it was time to do something on my homeland.’ Photographs: Fabian Muir AUSTRALIA---Before Australia’s parliament backed down from a controversial decision to segregate women wearing facial coverings in its public galleries, photographer Fabian Muir set out on a 10,000km journey to photograph the burqa in landscapes across Australia. The resulting work appears in his series Blue Burqa in a Sunburnt Country. [ link ]

GLOBAL TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS Dancing Shiva statue FRANCE---Upcoming $630 million Louvre Abu Dhabi (LAD) museum will reportedly have Hindu Dancing Shiva statue in its permanent collection. This tenth century lost-wax bronze from Tamil Nadu (India) of Chola period, 86 centimeters high, has been in the collection of National Gallery of Australia in Canberra till 2009. A video posted on the LAD website explains the meaning behind various parts of the statue. [ link ]

NYT | MAGAZINE By Mark Oppenheimer Elimelech Ehrlich (seated), a beggar who travels each year from Jerusalem, talking with students outside Beth Medrash Govoha. Credit Peter van Agtmael/Magnum, for The New York Times NEW JERSEY---Once a year, Elimelech Ehrlich travels from Jerusalem to Lakewood, N.J., with a cash box and a wireless credit-card machine. Throughout town, he greets old friends, asking after marriages made since his last visit and new babies. And at every stop along the way, he asks for money. Ehrlich is a full-time beggar. For years, Ehrlich has made a circuit of yeshivas in Israel’s religious cities, like Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, offering his Yinglish patter to pious students in exchange for a few shekels. The yeshiva students may not give much, but nearly all of them give — and there are so many of them. About a mile from Beth Medrash Govoha’s campus, in a second-floor walk-up in a small, nondescript commercial building, there is a rather unusual organization cal...

THE WASHINGTON POST By Anne Midgette The chorus of exiled Palestinians sings in John Adams’s “The Death of Klinghoffer.” The general critical consensus: you may like the opera or not, but it isn’t anti-Semitic. (credit: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera) NEW YORK---Banning “ Klinghoffer ” from the stage is not the right answer. Neither is celebrating it as a perfect work. Alas, neither side has emerged with much understanding of the other, and the martyrdom of Klinghoffer has blurred into the martyrdom of “ Klinghoffer ,” the opera. Which means that either you celebrate the Met or castigate the Met for putting it on, and that the company, despite putting its best foot forward, once again provides a polarizing example of opera’s distance from the city it hoped, with this production, to engage. [ link ]

CURBED By Rachel B. Doyle All photos via the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art HAWAII---During her lifetime, tobacco heiress Doris Duke's grand passion was her 14,000-square-foot palace in Honolulu, which she called Shangri La and filled with priceless pieces of Islamic art and design. The palace, now the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, is nothing short of a wonder. This month the fantastical Mughal Suite, which includes Duke's bedroom, private garden, dressing room and bath, opened to the public for the first time after a five-year, multimillion-dollar restoration. [ link ]

THE HUFFINGTON POST By Matthew Israel To be titled, 2014, acrylic and platinum leaf on canvas mounted on board, 118 1/8 x 118 1/8 inches (300 x 300 cm) © 2014 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. NEW YORK---In retrospect we may consider the 2011 Great Tōhoku Earthquake and tsunami the major career-altering event for Takashi Murakami . Murakami's upcoming exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, titled " In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow ," continues to take the earthquake and tsunami as its departure-point. According to the gallery, the show will feature an immersive installation of sculptures and paintings, which will investigate "the role of faith amid the inexorable transience and trauma of existence." More specifically, the works will merge "earlier faiths, myths, and images into a syncretic spirituality of the artist's imagination." [ link ]

ARTDAILY When you hear the word Vodou, what comes to mind? Zombies, evil spells, or dolls stuck with pins?   ILLINOIS---A remarkable exhibition of over 300 authentic Vodou objects from Haiti will open at The Field Museum on Oct. 24, 2014 and run through April 26, 2015. " Vodou: Sacred Powers of Haiti " looks beyond myths and manufactured Hollywood images – exhibition visitors will see no dolls with pins stuck into them. Instead, the exhibition explores the underground history and true nature of a living religion, and reveals Vodou as a vital spiritual and social force that remains an important part of daily life in Haiti. In the exhibition, the story of Vodou is told from the viewpoints of people who practice the religion. Through text and videos, Vodouists express their points of view about various aspects of their symbols, rituals, and spiritual beliefs. [ link ] Field Museum: " Vodou: Sacred Powers of Haiti " (Oct. 24-April 26, 2015); 1400 S. Lake Shore...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Dan Eldridge The Altar Bar, a Catholic chapel turned concert hall. Courtesy of Flickr PENNSYLVANIA---Like most American Rust Belt towns settled by European immigrant laborers, Pittsburgh in the early 20th century was a deeply religious place, where ornate Romanesque and Gothic chapels, churches and cathedrals rose in nearly every corner of the city. But partly as a result of the steel industry’s collapse, Pittsburgh’s population (now just over 300,000) has been in decline for decades, and congregations have been abandoning their grand old churches in search of smaller, more affordable spaces. Along the way, some of the Steel City’s savviest entrepreneurs have been purchasing many of Pittsburgh’s disused churches and adapting them into clubs, restaurants, theaters and concert venues. [ link ]

GLOBAL POST KOREA---A 73-year-old man has been booked without physical detention on charges of hiding stolen Buddhist artifacts at private warehouses under his ownership since the late 1980s, police said Wednesday. The man, identified by his surname Kwon, is suspected of hiding 48 stolen pieces in storage units in Seoul and the neighboring city of Seongnam, the National Police Agency (NPA) said. Kwon, who serves as the curator of a city-run museum, bought the cultural properties between 1989 and 2012, after they had been stolen from some 20 temples around the country, the NPA said, without clarifying how the items were stolen in the first place.[ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Michael Paulson The Rev. Richard Plishka at Holy Ghost Church in Cleveland. Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times OHIO---The glory days of Holy Ghost Church were years ago, when Catholics packed into the wooden pews, beneath a starry barrel-vaulted ceiling, listening to bells and kissing icons as priests in colorful robes intoned in ancient tongues the liturgies of a faraway land. The congregation dwindled so much that in 2009 the church was closed, but on a bright Sunday this summer, Holy Ghost was alive again. Mary Matei, visiting from Knoxville, Tenn., snapped pictures on her iPhone as priests sang Mass, while Ann Cogar and Sue Koch, sisters from suburban Cleveland, admired stained glass windows and statuary. They were taking part in a Mass mob — the latest trend in Rust Belt Catholicism — which is part heritage tour and part mixer (crudités in the fellowship hall followed the service).  [ link ]

THE HINDU By Shraddha N.V. Sharma Rachna Shukla's photo. INDIA---At a point when photography is a most familiar form of art, when every captured image can be given a face lift and perfected, how can one do things differently? Rachna Shukla, in her recent series, has tried this by capturing what she calls fleeting stillness in black and white photographs. There is something that black and white does to movement, releasing the motion and holding on to the calm too. A sky is made satin and a mundane shack sets off a hundred moving images.  [ link ]

ARTNET | COLLECT Takashi Murakami (Japanese, b.1962) LOT ID: 104513 Flowers Blossoming in this World and the Land of Nirvana, 2013 The present lot by Takashi Murakami , renowned for his super-charged mix of Pop, animé, and otaku within a highly-stylized picture-plane, layers a range of Japanese cultural and religious influences. Murakami is the founder of the postmodern art movement, “Superflat,” which combines elements of Japanese culture with the flattening of the image, which recalls earlier Japanese printmaking from the 19th century. [ Bid ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Swati Khurana Mithai from Usha Foods surround the Hindu god Ganesha. When my 3-year-old daughter told me that she needed something special for Share Day at camp — a sari and a candle dish used for Diwali, the Hindu New Year — I felt surprised and thrilled, and maybe even a little envious. Her pleasure in wearing Indian clothes and celebrating holidays as a young child is very different from what I experienced in my own childhood. Now, this Diwali, I am heartened by how my daughter embraces her Indian-American heritage and by how different my daughter’s America is from mine. In her preschool, there is room for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid and Diwali — which sounds like an America where there is room for us. [ link ]

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE By Cathy Lynn Grossman The new Museum of the Bible logo. Photo courtesy of Museum of the Bible WASHINGTON, DC---Museum of the Bible. That’s it. The name of the museum under construction in Washington, D.C., is official. “We don’t need more to tell people who and what we are,” the museum’s founder and funder, Steve Green, told Religion News Service. But, as always with the Bible, nothing is ever simple. The high-tech museum, set to open in fall 2017, is four blocks from the U.S. Capitol and three blocks from a global tourism mecca, the Air and Space Museum. The new museum will feature standing exhibits on the history and impact of the Bible as well as interactive features to bring viewers into Bible stories and characters. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Stephanie Rosenbloom Most people want to enjoy a museum, not conquer it. Yet the average visitor spends 15 to 30 seconds in front of a work of art, according to museum researchers. “When you go to the library,” said James O. Pawelski, the director of education for the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, “you don’t walk along the shelves looking at the spines of the books and on your way out tweet to your friends, ‘I read 100 books today!'” Yet that’s essentially how many people experience a museum. But psychologists and philosophers such as Professor Pawelski say that if you do choose to slow down — to find a piece of art that speaks to you and observe it for minutes rather than seconds — you are more likely to connect with the art, the person with whom you’re touring the galleries, maybe even yourself, he said.  [ link ]

THE ECONOMIST There used to be thousands of these POLAND---From the 1600s until 1939 Poland was the global centre of the Jewish people, home to the world’s largest Jewish population and its greatest nexus of religious, cultural and political activity. Yet for many more recent visitors, such as the thousands of Israeli schoolchildren who tour the sites of Nazi death camps each year, the telling of Polish Jews’ history has been overwhelmed by the story of their extermination. The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, whose permanent exhibition opens this month, attempts to restore some balance. If it seems increasingly clear that an exhibition on Polish Jewry should not overemphasise its disappearance, that is partly, and unexpectedly, because it seems to be coming back. [ link ]

THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE By Leah Binkovitz Interior of the chapel in Houston, Texas TEXAS--- The Sign: Eighteen inches. That's the distance from which one should view a Rothko painting, according to Mark Rothko. One might have to get closer to read the signs outside the Rothko Chapel though. The placards placed around the tan brick structure are minimal, not much more than museum labels. If the chapel were in a museum, say the Menil Collection next door, it would take little to adapt the muted signage: Rothko Chapel. 1971. Mark Rothko, Philip Johnson, Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry. Commissioned by Dominique and John de Menil. As they are today, the signs offer some fairly vague guidance for visitors who might be unsure how to proceed: stand-squint-sigh or count rosary beads. "All are welcome," one reads. Another, "Guests are invited to experience the silence."[ link ]

ASSOCIATED PRESS WYOMING---Wyoming has become the latest state to allow same-sex unions, bringing the wave of legalizations to a place where the 1998 beating death of Matthew Shepard galvanized a national push for gay rights. Gay couples began to apply for marriage licenses Tuesday morning, albeit far more quietly than in other states where bans were recently struck down. Hundreds of same-sex couples in Idaho and Nevada flooded clerk's offices and courthouses in recent weeks and married immediately afterward to cheering crowds. In Wyoming, however, only a handful of couples received licenses across the state as the change went into effect. [ listen ]

THE HINDU By Neeraja Murthy A work on Lord Venkateswara by artist Kappari Kishan INDIA---A trip to Tirupati reminds devotees of the long-winding queues and waiting endlessly to have a fleeting glance of Lord Venkateswara. “Even if the wait is endless, the darshan is worth the wait,” states artist Kappari Kishan whose one such visit to Tirumala has resulted in a series of works put up at the newly-inaugurated Pipal Tree gallery in Fatehmaidan. At the entrance is a wooden creation which evokes the spiritual feeling. Next are two stones depicting an outline of namam. “This can be used like a paper weight,” he says. Besides a collage work on paper, the canvases are filled with different images of the God with a spotlight on gold colour. [ link ]