Disney-Britton

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Lorenzo de Caro's "The Israelites Worshiping The Golden Calf" (c. 1758) in the permanent collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts This week, we are attending the annual conference of Grantmakers in the Arts in Detroit, a city with a rich culture of creativity, and religious diversity. Once one of the wealthiest cities in the nation, today it remains a city that its cultural community boasts on the nation's top art museums, and admission is free to residents. Baroque painter  Lorenzo de Caro  (1719 – 1777) is one of the artists in the collection of the Detroit Institute of the Arts. In his era, palaces filled with lively Baroque art reflected the desire of his countrymen for opulence. Inspired by Exodus 32, his "Israelites Worshipping The Golden Calf" shows figures dancing in the opulent fashions of Caro's day, and it reminds us that where we focus our resources is what we worship. Visit...

T MAGAZINE By Katie Chang An interior view of St. Victor as it prepares to reopen to the public after three years. In this section, overlooking the altar, the muralist Santi Moix included verses by the Catalan poet Josep Vicenç Foix. Credit Ricardo Labougle As a child, the Barcelona-born painter Santi Moix often made weekend trips with his father to Saurí, a remote Catalan village of 16 people perched high in the Pyrenees. Now, at 57, Moix is perhaps the closest thing Saurí has to a local celebrity, having built a career exhibiting work at the Brooklyn Museum and Milan’s M77 Gallery, and at Prada’s SoHo store (a 2013 commission) featuring his abstract, hypersaturated flora and fauna murals. Five years ago, the local government and bishop asked if the artist might come and paint the interior of St. Victor, the village’s 1,100-year-old Romanesque church, whose plain stone walls had become dull and decrepit over time. Moix, who isn’t religious, was reluctant. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Ted Loos The chef Daniel Humm at home in Manhattan, where he has an untitled glass work by Daniel Turner and chairs by Franz West, from his “Uncle” series. Credit Emily Andrews for The New York Times Chefs are known to enjoy the company of others in their field. But Daniel Humm — one of the best chefs working today — takes a different social approach. “Most of my friends are artists,” said Mr. Humm, 41, who wears the toque at Eleven Madison Park , which reopened earlier this month after a renovation by the architect Brad Cloepfil and his firm Allied Works. Like many art collectors, Mr. Humm claims emphatically that he’s not a collector. But in the Upper East Side apartment where he lives, he surrounds himself with works by the likes of Lucio Fontana (a serene grid of dots on a black canvas), Rita Ackermann (a painterly swirl of blue and pink that seems to channel Monet), Daniel Turner (several works) and Franz West (chairs from his ...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Josh Winegar's Untitled from "Burst Apart/ Burst A Part", 2015 SPRINGVILLE, Utah -- Sacred Spaces: Archetypes and Symbols, a curated invitational, will run concurrently with the 32nd Annual Spiritual and Religious Art of Utah exhibition. For this exhibition, SMA invited 35 contemporary Utah artists to exhibit works exploring some of the archetypes and symbols that are associated with Sacred Spaces. Nine archetypes will be represented in the exhibition including: Sacred Center, Temple, Cosmic Mountain, Ascension and Descension, Gardens, Underworld, Waters of Life, Tree of Life, and Cosmogram. "S acred Spaces: Archetypes and Symbols ", runs October 18, 2017 - January 10, 2018 at the Springville Art Museum, Springville, Utah.

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Hannah Beech Mourners who spent the night waiting to attend the cremation of King Bhumibol Adulyadej in Bangkok. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times BANGKOK — Capping a year of national mourning, Thailand will cremate its celebrated King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Thursday evening, in a $90 million ceremony that symbolizes both the bountiful devotion of his subjects and the earthly abundance of what many consider the world’s wealthiest monarchy. The cremation, which will begin at 10 p.m. in central Bangkok, is considered the concluding chapter in a journey that will return the divine monarch to the mystical Mount Meru, the heavenly heart of the Buddhist and Hindu realm. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Subscribe to recieve the ballot to vote for the Alpha & Omega Prize for Contemporary Religious Art The Alpha Omega Arts is proud to announce the tenth consecutive round of the Alpha & Omega Prize for Contemporary Religious Arts recognizing contemporary visual art that promotes religious dialogue in America, for better or for worse. The following 12 finalists are living artists, whose art news stories generated the highest traffic on this blog site that month. This could be a result of one news story or multiple news stories during the same month. The 12 finalists for 2017: Kelvin Burzon , Abdulnasser Gharem , David Hayward , Tom Kiefer , Bernard Maisner , Adi Nes , Shirin Neshat , Raymond Pettibon , Troy Schooneman , Joel Silverstein , Devan Shimoyama , and Mark Wallinger . Voting by subscribers to the e-newsletter begins today .

ARTDAILY Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), St. Agatha Visited in Prison by St. Peter, 1566–67, oil on canvas, 65 1⁄2 × 81 1⁄2 inches, San Pietro Martire, Murano; photo: Ufficio Beni Culturali del Patriarcato di Venezia. NEW YORK, NY.- This fall, The Frick Collection presents a focused exhibition on two important Renaissance paintings by the celebrated artist Paolo Veronese (1528– 1588), St. Jerome in the Wilderness and St. Agatha Visited in Prison by St. Peter. While the paintings are known to scholars, their remote location in a church in Murano, an island in the lagoon of Venice known today for its glassmaking studios and shops, has made them difficult to study. St. Jerome in the Wilderness has been exhibited outside the church only once—in 1939, in the Paolo Veronese exhibition at Ca’ Giustinian, in Venice— while St. Agatha Visited in Prison by St. Peter has not left the church since being installed in the early nineteenth century. Veronese in Murano: Two Venetian Renaissance Masterp...

ARTNET NEWS By Eileen Kinsella, October 23, 2017 Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi. Courtesy of Christie's Images Ltd. 2017. Is it a rift between art and science or just artistic genius at work? In what looks to be the start of Leonardo da Vinci delirium, art experts and scholars (including us) are geeking out over a mystery highlighted by Walter Isaacson in his spectacular new biography, Leonardo da Vinci (Simon & Schuster). The riddle centers on the orb in the left hand of Jesus in the Leonardo da Vinci painting Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World), which Christie’s is planning to offer for $100 million at a New York auction next month. “Leonardo failed to paint the distortion that would occur when looking through a solid clear orb at objects that are not touching the orb,” Isaacson writes in the book. Solid glass or crystal—be it an orb or a lens shape—yields magnified inverted or reverse images. However, as Isaacson points out, Leonardo painted the orb “as if it ...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Ernest Disney-Britton Scott Brooks's "Jesus Crossing the Delaware" (unfinished work) In 1871, George Caleb Bingham painted "Washington Crossing the Delaware." It commemorates General George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River with the Continental Army on the night of December 25–26, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War. Historians report that this first move and surprise attack against the German mercenary forces at Trenton, New Jersey on the morning of December 26, changed the perceptions of American forces. Currently, Baltimore artist Scott Brooks is painting "Jesus Crossing the Delaware." In contrast to Bringham's painting, Brooks figured form an inverted pyramid with Jesus as the lower point between two watchful female figures. It's a work in progress, and we'll report on it more when it's finished. [ Instagram ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Ernest Disney-Britton "The Penitent Thief" at the Crucifixion by Troy Schooneman Australian photographer Troy Schooneman  must be today's master of Renaissance portraits. His portraits of men are luminous with rich, saturated colors that remind you of a Caravaggio painting. In his " Jesus and The Thieves " series of three portraits, he depicts the crucifixion of Jesus Christ with the two unnamed men who were crucified at the same time. Both men mock Jesus, but black male on the left holds out his hand seeking forgiveness while the other turns away. Schooneman also created a related series entitled, " The Betrayal " with four portraits based on the betrayal of Jesus Christ by the Apostle Judas Iscariot. Troy Schooneman covers a wide array of subjects in his portraits but it is his approach to Christianity that possesses a truly timeless quality.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Detail of "The Large Round Pietà" (1400) by Johan Maelwael now at the Rijksmuseum The Rijksmuseum just opened an exhibition featuring the work of  Johan Maelwael (1317-1415), one of the founders of Dutch painting. He painted flags and illuminated manuscripts, but we are interested in his large religious paintings such as "The Large Round Pietà." The painting shows God supporting his son, with the Holy Spirit between them, represented by a dove; the holy trinity are joined by the Virgin Mary and St. John. U.S. museums that have loaned works to the exhibition include the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You can see "Johan Maelwael," the exhibition in Amsterdam, Netherlands through January 2018.

HACKNEY CITIZEN Unified forms: an image taken from Light of Unity. Photo credit: Anita Beikpour Silk doorways, symmetrical patterns and a giant portrait of St Francis of Assisi have all found a home at A-side B-side Gallery in Hackney as part of a week long exhibition that celebrates unity. Artists contributing to the Light of Unity exhibition hail from all over the world – from Hackney to Hong Kong – and though diverse in form, the works have all been created in response to one line: “So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth”. This line is from the writings of Baha’u’llah, the prophet founder of the Baha’i Faith, and this exhibition has been organised by local Baha’is to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth. In August, the Hackney Baha’i community put a call out to artists to participate in the exhibition. [ More ]

THE HOYA AISHA MALHAS FOR THE HOYA WASHINGTON, DC--- Subodh Gupta’s monumental installation “Terminal,” is currently on display at the Sackler Pavilion of the Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery to celebrate the reopenings of the Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art. Featuring 30 gleaming brass towers, the exhibit by the internationally renowned Indian artist also marks the 30th anniversary of the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery. The Sackler Gallery presents artwork from contemporary Asian artists through several exhibitions and public programs. Gupta’s installation reflects the gallery’s goal: “to share the rich diversity of Asian art across time and space.” The exhibition is on display at the Sackler Gallery until June 24, 2018. [ More ]

ARTDAILY Bas-relief of Ten-armed Lokeshvara, about 1216. Northwestern Cambodia, Banteay Chhmar, west wall, reign of Jayavarman VII. Sandstone; 53 blocks, section averaging 275 x 325 x 22 cm. National Museum of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, Ka.2859. © École française d’Extrême-Orient, fonds Cambodge, CAM10921. CLEVELAND---" Beyond Angkor: Cambodian Sculpture from Banteay Chhmar " features an unprecedented loan from the National Museum of Cambodia consisting of a section of the 800-year-old sculpted enclosure wall of the great royal temple at Banteay Chhmar. Intricately carved, the wall depicts a larger-than-life image of the bodhisattva of compassion in the form of the 10-armed Lokeshvara, “Lord of the World,” surrounded by devotees. In 2015 the Cleveland Museum of Art forged a Cultural Cooperation Agreement with the National Museum of Cambodia, following the transfer of a tenth-century Khmer sculpture of the monkey god Hanuman from Cleveland to Cambodia. The agreement allowed f...

THE HOYA AISHA MALHAS/THE HOYA WASHINGTON, DC---Patterned paper lanterns, a vast maze of Asian food stalls and the sounds of traditional Middle Eastern songs greeted visitors of the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery during their grand reopening celebration last weekend. The two-day celebration, “IlluminAsia: A Festival of Asian Art, Food and Cultures,” featured interactive programming throughout the galleries in addition to highlighting a number of new and updated exhibitions in the remodeled space. The Freer Gallery welcomed visitors for the first time since January 2016, when the gallery closed for what was the museum’s second large-scale renovation in its 94-year history. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Warren Strugatch The jewelry designers David and Sybil Yurman in their SoHo apartment. Credit Alex Welsh for The New York Times When the SoHo jewelry-design power couple David and Sybil Yurman bought the adjacent penthouse in their building two years ago, converting much of it into studio space, it gave them the opportunity to stretch out stylishly in their original loft just across the hall. Since then they have been rearranging and adding to their collections of furniture and art. The masks are mostly African in origin or inspiration. Other objects have an Asian aesthetic. A few of Mr. Yurman’s jewelry pieces and small sculptures — he began his career as an apprentice to Jacques Lipchitz — and Ms. Yurman’s paintings are included too. Their favorite pieces enjoy places of honor on a living room cabinet, but arrangements are not firmly fixed. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Joseph Berger A pinkas, or a kind of registry, of the Lomde Shas Society in Lithuania from 1836, one of the documents rescued from the Nazis and soon to be displayed at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Manhattan. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times In one of their odder and more chilling moves, the Nazis occupying Lithuania once collected Yiddish and Hebrew books and documents, hoping to create a reference collection about a people they intended to annihilate. Even stranger, they appointed Jewish intellectuals and poets to select the choicest pearls for study. These workers, assigned to sift through a major Jewish library in Vilna, now Vilnius, ended up hiding thousands of books and papers from the Nazis, smuggling them out under their clothing, and squirreling them away in attics and underground bunkers. But months ago curators at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Manhattan, the successor to the Vilna library, were told that another ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Holland Cotter “Three Standing Saints,” by Andrea Mantegna (1450-55), in “Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings From the Thaw Collection.” Credit Thaw Collection/The Morgan Library & Museum NEW YORK---Item by luminous, brain-zapping item, “ Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings From the Thaw Collection ” at the Morgan Library & Museum has to be one of the paramount group drawing shows of the era. It is also a grand summing-up of a career, an art form and an institution’s holdings. During the past 60 years, the New York art dealer Eugene V. Thaw and his wife, Clare Eddy Thaw, gradually amassed a phenomenal drawing collection, notable not just for visual charisma, but also for chronological breadth, running from the early Renaissance to the near present, with lingering stops en route. The exhibition of some 150 choice items fills both of the Morgan’s large ground-floor galleries, which for the occasion have been divided into cabinet-size nooks sequenced ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Roberta Smith The painter Kehinde Wiley, in 2015, depicts his subjects with flamboyance and historical sweep. Barack and Michelle Obama have chosen him to create Mr. Obama’s official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery. Credit Chad Batka for The New York Times Barack and Michelle Obama don’t like to waste an opportunity, in word or action, to make larger points about contemporary life and culture. In that vein, their choices of artists for their official portraits in the collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery shine a spotlight on the state of American art. In their selection of Kehinde Wiley , for Mr. Obama’s likeness, and Amy Sherald , for Mrs. Obama’s, announced Friday, the Obamas continue to highlight the work of contemporary and modern African-American artists, as they so often did with the artworks they chose to live with in the White House, by Glenn Ligon, Alma Thomas and William H. Johnson, among others.  [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Christina Anderson A reconstructed Viking boat grave from the Gamla Uppsala archaeological site in Sweden is part of a Viking couture exhibition at the Enkopings Museum. Credit Therese Larsson ENKOPING, Sweden — The discovery of Arabic characters that spell “Allah” and “Ali” on Viking funeral costumes in boat graves in Sweden has raised questions about the influence of Islam in Scandinavia. The grave where the costumes were found belonged to a woman dressed in silk burial clothes and was excavated from a field in Gamla Uppsala, north of Stockholm, in the 1970s, but its contents were not cataloged until a few years ago, Annika Larsson, a textile archaeologist at Uppsala University, said on Friday. Among the contents unearthed: a necklace with a figurine; two coins from Baghdad; and the bones of a rooster and a large dog. [ More ]

  ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Detail of "La Grande Pietà ronde" by Johan Maelwael. (Nijmegen, c. 1370 - Dijon, 1415), c. 1400. © 2009 Musée du Louvre / Erich Lessing This autumn the Rijksmuseum pays tribute to Johan Maelwael , the pioneer of early Netherlandish painting. Johan Maelwael received his training in the Duchy of Gelre whose glory days as a painter of powerful dukes at the Burgundian court were over 600 years ago. His most famous work, the large round Pietà (on loan from the Musée du Louvre), is to be the highlight of a new Rijksmuseum collection featuring fifty breathtaking art treasures. The show is organized with the exceptional support of the Musée du Louvre that lends Maelwael’s most famous painting 'La Grande Pietà ronde' that has never left Paris since 1962. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Ted Loos In her book, Tiqui Atencio shares collecting how-tos from 80 top art collectors Auctions are a niche within the niche of the larger art world. It would be easy for many top buyers to stay in a hermetically sealed bubble, interacting only with a handful of similar well-to-do people who travel the globe raising their paddles for great works. But Tiqui Atencio , a Venezuelan-born collector who is based in Monaco, decided to lift the veil on an intimate circle of bidders and buyers in her 2016 book, “Could Have, Would Have, Should Have: Inside the World of the Art Collector” (Art/Books, $35). “I had this urge to find out what made all these people tick,” said Ms. Atencio, who talked on the phone from Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera. [ More ]

APOLLO MAGAZINE Met president condemns US withdrawal from UNESCO | Daniel H. Weiss, President and CEO of The Met, has issued a statement condemning the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from UNESCO by 2018. ‘One of our most important responsibilities as museum leaders is to protect cultural heritage and promote international education’, he writes. ‘President Trump’s decision to withdraw from UNESCO undermines the historic role of the United States as a leader in this effort and weakens our position as a strong advocate for cultural preservation […]’. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS India, Tamil Nadu, Shiva and Uma Seated with Their Son, Skanda (Somaskanda), Vijayanagar period, c. 1400. Robert Allerton Purchase Fund. CHICAGO---Museum educator Lucas Livingston leads you on a lively journey exploring playful and pious representations of Hindu deities Shiva, Parvati, Skanda, and Ganesha. This interactive public tour emphasizes multi-sensory engagement and verbal description for people who are blind or partially sighted and is open to all visitors. Art Institute of Chicago, October 17, 2017, 12:00pm–1:00pm; Meet in Griffin Court; Free with museum admission [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton David Seitz created this projection for Covenant First Presbyterian Church in downtown Cincinnati. Image courtesy of The Cincinnati Enquirer  Cincinnati made a strong case for itself as a city for the future this week by placing its downtown churches, and arts organizations at the center of a light spectacular called "Blink." On Thursday night, they turned on the lights, and thousands responded. We overheard one visitor tell his friend, "I didn't know there were these many people in the whole world." Blink Cincinnati is a new four-day art and light festival that runs through today. There are 70-some light installations, and interactives on the city streets including dazzling large-scale projection mapping and striking murals at places like Covenant First Presbyterian Church , Old St. Mary's Church , and St. Louis Church . If you missed it this week, pray for its resurrection in 2018. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS "Scenes from the Creation, from the Prayer Book of Cardinal Albrecht of Bradenburg about 1525-30, Bruges, Simon Bening. The J. Paul Getty Museum LOS ANGELES—Artists, intellectuals, and pious members of society in Renaissance Europe looked to nature for inspiration and guidance in their contemplation of divine order. The elements of the natural world—including rocks, trees, flowers, waterways, mountains, and even atmosphere—were combined in paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations to create expansive landscapes and vistas, which often formed the settings for secular and religious texts. Sacred Landscapes: Nature in Renaissance Manuscripts , on view October 10, 2017–January 14, 2018, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, explores the genre of landscape painting in works of art created for personal or communal devotion. [ More ]

ARTDAILY Giovanni Bellini, Christ Blessing, about 1500. Tempera and oil on wood panel. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. LOS ANGELES, CA.- One of the most beloved and influential religious painters of the Italian Renaissance, Giovanni Bellini (Venice, about 1435-1516) was also a master in depicting landscape. His paintings of religious scenes often featured evocative natural settings that were as important and affecting as their human subjects. On view October 10, 2017, through January 14, 2018, " Giovanni Bellini: Landscapes of Faith in Renaissance Venice " presents 12 paintings and one drawing that explore the poetic role played by the natural world in the artist’s religious compositions. The exhibition includes several masterpieces that rarely travel, making this an exceptional opportunity to experience the artistic beauty and iconographic complexity of Bellini’s art. [ More ]

CHRISTIE'S Andy Warhol's Sixty Last Suppers , 1986. Synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas. 116 x 393 in (294.6 x 998.2 cm). This work is offered in the Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale on 15 November at Christie's in New York NEW YORK--- Andy Warhol’s Sixty Last Suppers (1986) is an outstanding example from the artist’s great final painting series. Executed near the end of his life, the monumental piece — the largest painting by the American Pop artist ever to come to auction — takes up the themes of religion and loss that were so key to his work. The idea for a group of works based on Leonardo’s Renaissance masterpiece was proposed to Warhol in 1984 by Milan-based gallerist Alexander Iolas. In all, Warhol would make over 100 different renditions of the Last Supper, and in Sixty Last Suppers, Warhol both celebrated Christianity and injected new life into religious art, charging it with contemporary currency. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Gregory Disney-Britton Live music by a violinist plays a central role in "Infinity" by Storefront Theatre of Indianapolis INDIANAPOLIS -- The 2014 play " Infinity " by playwright Hannah Moscovitch  has its final run this weekend in Indianapolis at the IndyFringe Theatre. We highly recommend this play produced by Storefront Theatre of Indianapolis . t's an emotionally raw story that pits two perspectives on time against the other, time is real vs. time is a human construct. It doesn't answer the question but it presents strong arguments for both and includes comparisons to religious ideas as part of that debate. It was written by woman, who according to Wikipedia , was raised as an atheist but with both a Jewish and Christian background. It's a thinking person's play about two lovers, a physicist and a classical composer, and their child prodigy who becomes a mathematician. In the end though, it's a 90-minute journey of l...

HYPERALLERGIC By Allison Meier Milarepa (Central Tibet, 15th-16th century), parcel gilt silver with gilt bronze base (courtesy Rubin Museum of Art) NEW YORK---For The World Is Sound at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan, the entire building is treated as an instrument. An installation on the central spiral staircase called “Le Corps Sonore (Sound Body)” features work by sound artists Éliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami, and Bob Bielecki, and what visitors hear changes as they ascend and descend. “This was the first piece that I selected for the show,” Risha Lee, curator of The World Is Sound , told Hyperallergic. “Its principles guided much of my subsequent thinking, including weaving the exhibition throughout the museum, which highlights the fact that all of these spaces are already resonant.” [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Ted Loos Lisa Immordino Vreeland at home in her art-filled apartment in Manhattan. Above her, from left: Etienne Drian’s sketch for a mural of the decorator Elsie de Wolfe jumping across the Atlantic; a Cindy Sherman photo from her “Untitled (Towelhead)” series; and a Diana Vreeland gouache by Cecil Beaton. Credit Adrienne Grunwald for The New York Times NEW YORK---A famous last name is handy for getting restaurant reservations, but it’s even better if you can use it to create art. In 2011, Lisa Immordino Vreeland made a documentary, “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel,” and wrote a book of the same name about the renowned Vogue editor who was the grandmother of her husband, Alexander Vreeland, a fashion executive. Family ties gave her unusual access to archival material. The aesthetic of [her] collection is very spare,  black-and-white photos and drawings. "I suppose I could use more color. I’ve collected photography over the ye...

THE POST At the mercy of the elements: Earth Martyr, Air Martyr, Fire Martyr and Water Martyr, by Bill Viola ROCHESTER---The Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 500 University Ave., will exhibit its latest acquisition and exhibition in its three-year Media Arts Watch program, “Bill Viola: Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)” on Oct. 11-July 2018. MAG is the only institution, public or private, in the U.S. to own this ambitious installation, which is regarded as one of the artist’s most powerful and significant works to date. Originally commissioned by London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, and unveiled in 2014, “Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)” is composed of four HD, flat-screen monitors, each featuring a single figure who sustains the impact of one of the four classical elements. The four moving images are synchronized and unfold together to create a coherent whole. “Martyrs” is rooted in art historical and religious iconography. [ More ]

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST By Enid Tsui 2018 Alpha Omega Prize Finalist:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XQ5S8WL A still from Bill Viola's "A Quintet of the Astonished" (2000) on view in Guangzhou, China GUANGZHOU---You cannot get a more secular venue than a Soviet-style former canning factory that used to churn out the deliciously pungent Guangdong staple of fried dace and black beans. Yet, oddly, the 1950s industrial cluster in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou is somehow a fitting place to contemplate American artist Bill Viola’s spiritual images. [The] exhibition is not a comprehensive retrospective. But the range of videos – dating from 1977 to 2014 – does make this a major survey of an artist who has so profoundly elevated video to fine art. The duality between death and birth, reality and illusion, and the use of water as a recurring metaphor were all there. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Eve M. Kahn A plaster copy of one of the 18th-century Italian sculptor Antonio Canova’s works will go on public view on Oct. 28 at the Tefaf New York show at the Park Avenue Armory. Credit Nicholas Knight The 18th-century Italian sculptor Antonio Canova made only a few plaster copies of his marble statues, as gifts for friends and patrons. One of the plaster works, which had ended up largely forgotten at a villa near Florence, will go on public view on Oct. 28 at the Tefaf New York show at the Park Avenue Armory. Trinity Fine Art , a Milan gallery, has priced it at $4 million. It represents a wingless angel, about five feet tall, pressing one hand to a brow in a gesture of grief. The original marble version, which has wings, was carved around 1790 as part of a monument to Pope Clement XIII at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Canova cast the plaster copy for his patron Girolamo Zulian, a Venetian ambassador in Rome. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory  &  Ernest Disney-Britton Seito Jones's "The Heartside Community Meal" wins ArtPrize Nine juried Grand Prize. Artist Statement: "The HeARTside Community Meal brings forth these food stories, uniting us in a beautiful, poetic, artful experience across the table that exposes our differences and inequities, illuminates our similarities and connections, and builds bridges of understanding between us." The road to $500,000 in ArtPrize's came down to the final nine on Friday in Grand Rapids,  Michigan , when  Richard Schlatter  and Seitu Jones  walked away with $200,000 each as the 2017 grand prize winners. If you follow this blog each year, you already know that ArtPrize is the world’s most amazing annual public art event and that  Alpha Omega Arts  is there every year seeking out the works that spark religious dialogue. Both of this year's winners fit that bill. ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Ted Loos Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein with a Gutai painting at their home in San Francisco. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times SAN FRANCISCO — Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein have perfected a low-key California attitude about their success that takes years of practice. Married collectors and philanthropists who have reached a happy place — Mr. Silverstein is the co-founder of the advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners — they are enjoying life and don’t particularly feel the need to prove themselves further. At home, even the guest level has a shiny blue John McCracken painting over the bed and a Dan Flavin light piece in the hall, adjacent to a heavy, translucent Roni Horn sculpture that required reinforcing the floor. Upstairs, amid concrete walls and copious light, there are works by Maurizio Cattelan , Kurt Schwitters and Alexander Calder . Their bedroom features a small Pipilotti Rist projection piece. [ M...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Salma Taman, Family Tree, Acrylic on Canvas 2016, 48 x 60 in, commissioned work, sold (ST038) INDIANAPOLIS---Painter  Salma Taman is originally from Egypt but now lives in the United States. She has been painting for many years and her work can be found in private collections from the USA to Egypt, Dubai, and other countries. She has exhibited in several galleries and group shows. Her preferred medium is acrylic on canvas. On Friday, October 13, the  Kuaba Gallery  in Indianapolis will open the exhibition,“Looking Beyond.” The exhibition will feature works by Salma Taman and Frank Emmert and sculptures by Gregory Mutasa . Kuaba Gallery, 1 N. Meridian St. 2nd Floor, Indianapolis, IN 46204 | www.kuaba.com.  [ RSVP ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS “Flint” by Ti-Rock Moore at Fountain Street Church (New Orleans, LA) Why vote in ArtPrize Nine? You help decide which forty artist entries will share in $500,000 in prizes including the $200,000 Public Vote Grand Prize. What's the catch? You have to register to vote in Grand Rapids but then you can vote from anywhere in the world. We are voting from Indianapolis but only after registering last week in Grand Rapids. On behalf of Alpha Omega Arts , we've posted the finalists we think spark new conversations about the religious imagination. They are images that grabbed our spiritual attention, and sparked our own conversations. Round 2 Voting for the ArtPrize Nine Final 40 will run through Thursday, October 5 at 11:59 p.m.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory  &  Ernest Disney-Britton Tom Kiefer’s “El Sueño Americano (The American Dream)” | ArtPrize Nine Top 20 Six New Testaments, pulled from the trash and photographed on a bandana, all once belonged to migrants who came to America filled with hope ( Hebrews 6:19 ). " El Sueño Americano (The American Dream) " by  Tom Kiefer  is one in a collection of 100+ photographs reflecting the humiliating treatment of migrants by U.S. border officials. Kiefer makes us witnesses to the confiscation and disposal of their personal property including rosaries and Bibles. This past week at Artprize (Ending October 8), "El Sueño Americano (The American Dream)" was included in both the Alpha Omega Arts Top 20 and ArtPrize jurors Top 20 . Find out the Public Vote Final 20  today at 1pm.