Disney-Britton

DAILY SABAH LONDON, UK---Some of the most eye-dazzling treasures from the Ottoman era will open for visitors at the world-famous British Museum in October. In a major re-display, The Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World will exhibit "world-class Islamic collection", which will include very fine Turkish arts from the Ottoman era as well as from a vast Islamic geography. "The new gallery will be a comprehensive presentation of the Islamic world through art and material culture," the British Museum said in a press release to promote the new display. The Albukhary Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Malaysia with an international presence. [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Maev Kennedy This portrait of the Archangel Gabriel could be Leonardo da Vinci's first ever painting, Italian scholars claim A small square tile with the profile image of a beautiful angel has been claimed not only as the earliest surviving work by Leonardo da Vinci, but as his own self-portrait as the Archangel Gabriel. If genuine the tile has survived miraculously unbroken for more than 500 years, since the 18-year-old artist made it in 1471. The claim – dismissed out of hand by the world renowned Leonardo expert Martin Kemp – is certain to spark academic debate. Scarcely a year passes without the claimed discovery of a previously overlooked work by Leonardo, and argument still rages over the authenticity of the heavily restored Salvator Mundi which became the most expensive painting in the world when it sold for more than $450m (£340m), at a Christie’s auction in New York last winter. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Janelle Zar Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels, a director of Jack Shainman Gallery.Sean Donnola IN 1966, TWO BROTHERS, Alonzo and Dale Davis, set out from Los Angeles on a road trip across the United States, seeking out other artists of color like them. They meant for the trip “to broaden our limited art history experience,” Alonzo says, since African-American artists had been conspicuously absent from his curriculum at Pepperdine University, or Dale’s at the University of Southern California. “That was a groundbreaking time,” Jenkins-Johnson says, “to have three black-owned galleries in one fair.” Her first instinct was to pull out her camera. “I said, ‘We gotta have a photo to mark this occasion.’” Janelle Zara is a freelance journalist specializing in art, design and architecture. @janellezara [ More ]

ARTFORUM Multaka guide leads a group tour in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Photo: Milena Schlösser. BERLIN, Germany---Alwaleed Bin Talal, the billionaire investor, philanthropist, and member of the Saudi royal family, has donated $10 million to the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin, which is housed within the Pergamon Museum, in order to support its exhibitions and educational programming. Gifted through his Riyadh-based charitable foundation, Alwaleed Philanthropies, the monies, which will be distributed over the next ten years, will also fund a permanent display of Islamic art to be installed at the Pergamon Museum following a major renovation project, which will be completed in 2026, as well as the institution’s Multaka program, which trains refugees to be museum guides. “We are happy to have found a partner with Alwaleed Philanthropies,” said Stefan Weber, director of the Museum of Islamic Art. [ More ]

ATLANTA JEWISH TIMES By Breanna West Hanna Dettman draws her inspiration from her Jewish religion to paint Jewish-themed art-work which include themes such as Torah and Shabbat. Image is detail of "Shalom Celebrate Peace Green/Pink" ATLANTA---An intense spiritual connection with G-d was what Hanna Dettman said inspired her to paint Jewish-themed artwork. It was not an audible voice, said the 61-year-old artist, but an overwhelming feeling that “G-d was pushing me gently towards this. I was very thrilled.” Dettman’s line includes 12 paintings with themes of Shabbat and Torah. Her work lies within the realm of the abstract, paintings “inspired by things that are more emotional, not quite technical.” Dettman sells her artwork on Redbubble, an e-commerce site that produces her paintings on t-shirts, tote bags, iPhone cases, pillows, clocks, mugs, greeting cards, and notebooks. She will soon expand her Jewish line to incorporate Rosh Hashana paintings, but always through th...

BBC NEWS A self portrait by artist Chushool Mahaldar titled Struggling Smile An art exhibition bringing together Hindu artists - who had to flee Indian-administered Kashmir - with their Muslim counterparts has struck an emotional chord with locals, reports Sameer Yasir. Avtar Krishan Raina, a Kashmiri Hindu or Pandit, has returned to the home he fled for the first time since he left in 1990 in order to participate in a unique exhibition that has brought artists and sculptors from his community together with Muslim artists. Mr Raina is one of an estimated 200,000 people in his community who were forced to leave the state in the early 1990s under threat from Muslim militants who had initiated a violent insurgency against Indian rule in the region. One day, he says, he came home to find that separatist militants had stuck a poster outside his home. It demanded that he poison his dog, which barked whenever they were around. [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Nadja Sayej Randy H Goodman – Friday Prayer. Photograph: Randy H Goodman In a country where the law considers homosexuality, drug-related offenses and “insulting the prophet” crimes punishable by the death penalty, freedom of expression in Iran is limited for journalists, activists and artists. However, Iranian art is not all dark and archaic. Two art exhibitions – one in Los Angeles, the other in New York – have recently opened; one which dispels the misconceptions around Iranian culture, stereotypes and taboos, while the other offers a window into the lives of Iranian women. Both offer insight into how Iran has changed from the past to the present, and perhaps what the future might hold. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently opened In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art, a group exhibition featuring 125 works of art by 50 Iranian artists. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently opened In the Fields of Empty...

THE NEW YORK TIMES  By Hilarie M. Sheets Claudia Gould in her office, surrounded by works by Nan Goldin, Robert Rauschenberg, Maira Kalman, Kiki Smith, Sheila Hicks, Lisa Yuskavage, Lawrence Weiner, Mel Bochner and many others. Credit:2018 Lawrence Weiner Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; All Rights Reserved, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York; 2018 The LeWitt Estate Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; All Rights Reserved, Louise Bourgeois/Licensed by VAGA, New York; Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times “I am not a collector,” Claudia Gould, director of the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, said adamantly, sitting in her corner office overlooking Fifth Avenue and Central Park. An entire wall — hung densely, floor to ceiling, with works she’s accumulated by Louise Bourgeois, Shirin Neshat and Sol LeWitt, among many others — might suggest otherwise. “This is my work,” said Ms. Gould, who typically acquires pieces directly from artists she knows and has...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL By Lee Lawrence The Birth of Krishna’ (before 1560) The San Diego Museum of Art; Edwin Binney 3rd Collection. Series Title: The Ancient Text of the Lord Suite Name: Bhagavata Purana Creation Date: before 1560 Display Dimensions: 7 17/32 in. x 10 7/16 in. (19.1 cm x 26.5 cm) Credit Line: Edwin Binney 3rd Collection Accession Number: 1990.585 SAN DIEGO, CA---Back in 1990, the San Diego Museum of Art received more than 1,400 works representing just about every school, region and style of South Asian painting. Bequeathed by Edward Binney 3rd, heir to the Crayola fortune, it is one of the best collections of its kind outside India. Currently, a selection of some 90 works from the late 16th through 19th centuries takes in everything from rambunctious battles against enemies human and demonic to quiet, tender love scenes. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Zoë Lescaze Felipe Baeza's "Untitled (so much darkness, so much brownness)," 2016. Credit: Portrait by René Fragoso. Artwork courtesy of the artist. Art doesn’t just reflect the world — it engages with it. Some 10 million to 15 million undocumented immigrants currently live in the United States, and their presence is the subject of fierce debate. So for the second installment of our series T Agitprop, we asked 13 contemporary artists — Alfredo Jaar, Raúl de Nieves and Hayv Kahraman among them — to submit works, many of them new and being published for the first time, in response to the subject of immigration. Here are their pieces and written statements. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES  By “Pteridophilia” by the Chinese artist Zheng Bo, emerges from the foliage at the botanical garden. Credit: Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times PALERMO, Sicily — Political art and world politics seldom dovetail in real time, but as the twelfth edition of the Manifesta contemporary art biennial approached, its host city of Palermo found itself walking its talk. Titled “A Planetary Garden: Cultivating Coexistence,” the exhibition, which opened June 16, takes migration as one of its themes. And days before the international art crowd descended on the Sicilian capital, Italy’s new interior minister, Matteo Salvini, closed the country’s ports to rescue boats — including the Aquarius, a ship looking to dock in Italy with 629 migrants aboard. Resisting the national announcement, Palermo’s mayor, Leoluca Orlando, offered to open the local port to the vessel, but the Italian Coast Guard declined to escort it in and the migrants were rerouted to Spain. [ More ]

THE PRESS HERALD By Daniel Kany The center panel on the east wall, by Ashley Bryan, depicts the Parable of the Sower. Photos by Daniel Kany SKOWHEGAN, ME---The South Solon Meeting House is a handsome Gothic Revival Structure, straight-lined, spacious and simple. It was built as a non-sectarian place of worship in 1842. After a few decades of being shuttered, it was restored in 1939. In 1980, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It is also, without a doubt, one of the most interesting art spots in America. While it still features its original box pews, pulpit and choir gallery, the Meeting House is now best known for its unique frescoed interior, painted in the 1950s by artists associated with and overseen by the nation’s leading artist residency: The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Elton John "Where Love Is Illegal" project by Robin Hammond These days, our busy, digital lives leave us obsessed with what’s in front of us, and often ill equipped to reflect on what is larger than us. H.I.V. and AIDS advocacy forces us to think big: to consider the progress we have made — as a movement, and as a society — in a very short time. My organization, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, asked the photographer Robin Hammond to take his camera to countries like Kenya and Ghana, where homosexuality is illegal, and to Mozambique, where it is widely condemned, as part of his " Where Love Is Illegal ” project. These brave people living their lives openly and honestly are pioneering a future without stigma. All of us should follow their lead. [ More ]

NONPROFIT QUARTERLY By Eileen Cunniffee “Oakland City Of Dreams, Oakland Graffiti Art Dream.” Photo by A Syn. Last week, a report titled Mapping Small Arts and Culture Organizations of Color in Oakland was published by the Akonadi Foundation and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation , two San Francisco Bay Area funders with different—but overlapping—commitments to the region. The report was commissioned by the two foundations and compiled by Creative Equity Research Partners. A total of 138 organizations serving people of color in Oakland with budgets of $250,000 or less are included in the research. In addition to documenting the impact of these grassroots groups (hint: it’s not just about the arts), the report highlights challenges faced by smaller cultural organizations and offers four overarching recommendations for policymakers and funders to consider. [ More ]

BLOUIN | ARTINFO Marina Tabassum's "Prayer Hall, Bait ur Rouf Mosque Dhaka, Bangladesh" (2012). Photo: Sandro di Carlo Darsa © MTA/Sandro di Carlo Darsa LONDON, UK---The Victoria and Albert Museum is hosting a special display of works by the eight finalists of the Jameel Prize’s 2018 edition. The Jameel Prize 5 showcase will exhibit exceptional artworks of these contemporary artists, encompassing diverse mediums of art, such as fashion, multi-media installation, and painting. The exhibition opens on June 28, 2018. The Jameel Prize, at Victoria and Albert Museum, is an international award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition. The V&A is one of the world’s great collectors of Islamic art from the Middle East. The museum began its collection back in the 1850s, and now, boasts of a splendid acquisition, displayed in the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Ted Loos Charlotte Wagner with an Alice Neel painting, “Carmen (Man With Guitar),” at her home in Cambridge, Mass. Credit: Tony Luong for The New York Times CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In less than 10 years, Charlotte Wagner has turned herself into an art collector to be reckoned with. Having the means certainly helps (her husband, Herbert S. Wagner III, is a financier) but what Ms. Wagner has in abundance is focus. “We collect artists who are socially concerned,” said Ms. Wagner, 50, who is a trustee at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and is chairwoman of its education committee. “They’re from diverse backgrounds and raise our consciousness about issues confronting society,” she said. The social justice theme is also the driving force behind the Wagner Foundation, which she runs. She and her husband established the foundation, based in Boston, to further social justice goals in areas from education to health to community development. ...

NORTH AMERICA The ancient Buddhist site of the Mogao Grottoes, in the desert of western China SAN FRANCISCO, June 23 (Xinhua) -- A Stanford University professor's art project based on the ancient city of Dunhuang in northwest China is expected to promote the understanding of the Asian country in the contemporary age. Xie Xiaoze, the Paul L. & Phyllis Wattis Professor of Art at Stanford University, presented his work-in-progress to the public Thursday night at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. The project, called "the amber of history," is inspired by the artist's 25 days of artist residency in the summer of 2017 at the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, a historic site of Buddhist art on the ancient Silk Road. Mogao Grottoes are hundreds of cave temples carved more than 1,000 years ago in Dunhuang. The caves, decorated with Buddhist murals and sculptures, are a World Heritage site. [ More ]

ARTDAILY Bill Viola, Fire Woman. IBIZA, Spain---New York art collector Lio Malca is presenting two large-scale installations by Bill Viola at La Nave Salinas. The exhibition space, inaugurated in 2015, specializes in international contemporary art and is adjacent to the Ses Salines Natural Park, on the island of Ibiza. Two of the artist's most acclaimed works, " Fire Woman " and " Tristan's Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall) ,"  can be enjoyed this summer on the Balearic Island. The exhibition will be on view until September 30th at La Nave Salinas. "Art is, for me, the process of trying to wake up the soul. Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remains asleep." [ More ]

APOLLO MAGAZINE The Buddhist deity Guhyasamaja (c. 1400–1500), China. Asian Art Museum, San Francisco SAN FRANCISO, CA---‘We want to make you look at art differently,’ says Qamar Adamjee, a curator at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. As she points out, visitors to the museum – which holds what is arguably the finest collection of Asian art outside Asia – do not always looks as closely at objects as they might: ‘Visitors think all Buddha images look the same,’ she says. ‘Seen one seen them all!’ Such an attitude prompted Adamjee and her fellow curators, Jeffrey Durham and Karin G. Oen, to devise ‘Divine Bodies: Sacred Imagery in Asian Art’ (until 29 July), an exhibition about the representation and meaning of divinity.  [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Ted Loos Mark Seliger, at home in the West Village, with an array of photographs by the likes of Irving Penn, Arnold Newman and Edward Steichen. Credit: Ike Edeani for The New York Times That a photographer collects work in his own medium is perhaps not surprising. But Mark Seliger’s West Village compound — a building of some 12,000 square feet that comprises a studio, offices and his home — has an unexpectedly deep array of 20th- and 21st-century images by the likes of Irving Penn, Arnold Newman, Edward Steichen, Paul Caponigro, William Wegman and Diane Arbus. “I never really feel as if I actively go out and collect,” said Mr. Seliger, 59, who had just that moment finished a photo shoot of Drew Barrymore. “I buy photography that I will never think about selling. I like living with the inspiration.” [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Confiscated bibles in “El Sueño Americano (The American Dream)” by Tom Kiefer We are in a Samaritan moment when artists are naming the brokenness and transforming it into beauty. One such artist is Arizona-based Tom Kiefer . He is a fine art photographer and graphic designer who retrieved the confiscated belongings of South American migrants that our Custom’s officials tossed into the trash. Kiefer then organized and photographed them. Combining his twin skills as graphic designer and photographer, Kiefer has created a snapshot of our American struggle with immigration to symbolize our collective responsibility. That's why Tom Kiefer's “El Sueño Americano (The American Dream)” is our art of the week .

HI FRUCTOSE 2018 Alpha Omega Prize Finalist:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XQ5S8WL Ramon Maiden's "Resurrection" Based in Barcelona, artist Ramon Maiden embellishes pin up girls and religious figures with some serious ink. Using ball point pen, the self-designated “Dandy Delinquent” adds a mix of tribal patterns and old-school Americana to his subjects otherwise revered for their innocence. Tattoos are typically viewed as expressions of individual character. Maiden however, usurps the agency of the body markings, laying his own projections quite literally into the skin of his blonde beauties and holy virgins. On the thighs and breasts of his sex icons, Maiden draws Christian crosses and hands in prayer positions, while the flesh of Baby Jesus is adorned with snakes and skulls. The chosen imagery therefore complicates notions of the sacred and profane. [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Skye Sherwin Photograph: Arthur Evans/Courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles, CA DITCHLING, UK---The Catholic sister and art teacher Corita Kent was influenced by Warhol but flourished with her own spiritual and political screenprints. Bread of life … “Enriched bread” is a phrase culled from a wrapper for Wonder Bread, and at first glance this silkscreen seems of a piece with other pop art of the 1960s. Like the Warhol soup cans that inspired Kent, it replicates the bold graphics and catchy language of advertising. What Sister Corita Kent did with this language is a long way from Warhol’s fascination with surface. In her hands, a spiritual and political dimension was wrung from banal slogans. Corita Kent: Get With the Action, Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft , to October 14, 2018 . [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Benjamin West (British, 1738–1820) "Noah Sacrificing after the Deluge" (circa 1800). Oil on canvash. 72 in. (182.9 cm); w. 138 in. (350.5 cm). Purchased with funds provided by the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, 80.131 SAN ANTONIO, TX---In addition to the exhibition, "Spain: 500 Years of Spanish Painting from the Museums of Madrid" which opens this weekend, the San Antonio Museum of Art also has an impressive permanent collection of European painting, sculpture and decorative arts collection from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. Additionally, there is The Ferguson collection of Wedgwood is of unique importance, as well as a small but significant group of paintings by Puvis de Chavanne and William Adolphe Bouguereau. The San Antonio Museum of Art received accreditation from the American Association of Museums on November 6, 2000. The institution now has a staff of nearly 100. The mission of the San Antonio Museum of Art is t...

ARTDAILY Exhibition presents a dramatic survey of five hundred years of Spanish painting (L-R) Katie Luber, Erika Prosper Nirenberg, Ron Nirenberg, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain, Pedro Morenes, Tracy Wolff, and Richard Duke Buchan III, pose at the San Antonio Museum of Antonio to attend the inauguration of the "Masterpieces of Spanish Painting from Madrid on June 18, 2018 in San Antonio, Texas. SUZANNE CORDEIRO / AFP. SAN ANTONIO, TX.- El Greco. Velazquez. Goya. Sorolla. Picasso. These are just some of the Spanish masters whose paintings are included in Spain: 500 Years of Spanish Painting from the Museums of Madrid. This summer, the San Antonio Museum of Art will present a dramatic survey of five hundred years of Spanish painting, stretching from the union of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in the late fifteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century. Organized in celebration of the Tricentennial of the city of San Antonio, the exhibition will convey the...

ARTDAILY Mimi Lauter, Untitled (Devotional Flower Landscape), 2018. Soft pastel, oil pastel on paper, 87 7/8 x 73 3/8 x 2 inches framed. © Mimi Lauter, Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo. LOS ANGELES, CA- Blum & Poe announced the representation of Los Angeles-based artist Mimi Lauter . Her first solo exhibition with the gallery is on view in Los Angeles until June 23. Lauter works primarily with pastel on paper, from intimately scaled notebook-sized work to twenty-four part installations transforming entire gallery spaces into secular chapels. A saturated, bold palette and intricately carved rich textures comprise her works that harken simultaneously to cave paintings, Byzantine mosaics, medieval tapestries, Redon, and the murals of Diego Rivera. The work hovers between abstraction and representation, carrying narratives drawn from subconscious memory, literature, sociopolitical surroundings, the history of painting, and classical mythology....

ARTDAILY Jan van Eyck - The Ghent Altarpiece - Adoration of the Lamb (detail) GHENT (AFP).- A painstaking restoration of the "Mystic Lamb", a 15th-century Flemish masterpiece by the Van Eyck brothers , was unveiled on Tuesday, revealing a "much more expressive and intense" version of the central image of the giant altarpiece. Restorers from Belgium's Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage began working on the altarpiece in 2012, but in recent months focused on removing the overpainting from the central part of the work which includes the head of the lamb. And the results were unveiled at St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent on Tuesday, with the restorers highlighting a number of surprising discoveries about the altarpiece, which is one of the world's most stolen artworks. [ More ]

ARTDAILY Léopold Flameng after Eugène Delacroix, St. Sébastien secouru , ca. 1870s. Etching. Fairfield University Art Museum, Gift of James Reed, 2017. (2017.35.668) FAIRFIELD, CONN.- The Fairfield University Art Museum in Fairfield, Connecticut, announces the major gift of the James M. Reed Print Collection. Assembled over several decades by artist, collector and master printer James Reed, the collection, which will be given in its entirety, consists of over 1,500 prints spanning the 16ththrough the early 21stcenturies. The great strength of the Reed collection is 19th-century French etching and lithography. Géricault, Delacroix, Daumier, Manet, Redon, and Fantin-Latour are among the major artists of the period represented. Over 30 old master prints dating from the 16th-18thcenturies are also included. [ More ]

BLACK ART IN AMERICA by Shantay Robinson The Long Journey Home by Mason Archie Black male artists have been recognized by Western art as early as the 19th century with art of landscapes and portraits that was non-denominational. But they have had to overcome great barriers to do that. Robert S. Duncanson was the first internationally known African American painter who found allies in abolitionists. Today a number of black male artists are making artworks that contend with contemporary culture’s vices in an effort to highlight the ills of the world. Mason Archie is a self-taught artist. But from his mastery of technique, one would think he’s studied with some of the greats. Walter Lobyn is a DJ, so he recognizes the sacred quality of vinyl records and the ritual of listening to an album. With the scarcity of vinyl records today, Lobyn memorializes them in his art. [ More]

ARTDAILY Detail of Christ of St John of the Cross by Dali. GLASGOW.- One of Scotland’s favourite paintings, Christ of St John of the Cross by Salvador Dalí , has returned to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow. The seminal artwork is now back on show, hanging in its bespoke gallery on the first floor of the museum. The painting had been on loan to the Royal Academy of Arts in London for their exhibition Dalí/Duchamp, before it travelled to The Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, Florida as part of the exhibition tour. Painted in 1951 and purchased by the City of Glasgow in 1952, Christ of St John of the Cross continues to be one of the real draws for the million-plus people who visit Kelvingrove Museum each year. Before its recent travels, the painting hadn’t been on loan since 2010, when it was exhibited at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, USA. [ More ]

THE NEW YORKER By By Peter C. Baker | March 12, 2017 The CPB considers rosaries to be potentially lethal, non-essential personal property, and agents dispose of them during intake Tom Kiefer was a Customs and Border Protection janitor for almost four years before he took a good look inside the trash. Every day at work—at the C.B.P. processing center in Ajo, Arizona, less than fifty miles from the border with Mexico—he would throw away bags full of items confiscated from undocumented migrants apprehended in the desert. One day in 2007, he was rummaging through these bags looking for packaged food, which he’d received permission to donate to a local pantry. In the process, he also noticed toothbrushes, rosaries, pocket Bibles: a vibrant, startling testament to the lives of those who had been detained or deported. Together they make up “El Sueño Americano” (“The American Dream”) , an ongoing project that, thanks to its unconventional perspective on U.S. migrant policies, has launch...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS From "Ponte City" monographs by Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse. Image courtesy of Artporn Magazine Ponte City dominates the Johannesburg, South Africa skyline. This unavoidable 54-storey apartment building on the Berea ridge has become an icon of the city it towers over. The building has had a chequered history, and Mikhael Subotzky’s film, video and photography, this artist explores the relationship between social storytelling and the formal contingencies of image making. Subotzky’s third monograph, "Ponte City (Steidl, 2014)" is the product of a six-year collaboration with the British artist Patrick Waterhouse. Perceptions of Ponte have always been extreme, its joys and ills exaggerated equally. It has been hailed as the next big thing in urban living and derided as a suicide centre and a rubbish dump.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton "God is in the House" by Mikaela Castledine, winner of the Mandorla Art Award. There are few major prizes for contemporary religious art, but we think the biggest is the Mandorla Art Award in Australia. This week, our art of the week is the 2018 winner of the $25,000 award– “God is in the House” by Mikaela Castledine . The theme for this year’s bi-annual competition is “A new heaven and a new earth” taken from Rev. 21:1-2 . The Australian artist created a “sacred city” of ready-made glass objects and ceramic towers. It also has turrets topped with crochet domes. We modeled our far more modest award, Alpha Omega Prize  after this award, and we invite you to sign-up today to vote this Fall for the 2018 winner . 

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Ernest Disney-Britton "Jesus Segnet die Kinder" (2015) by Fabian Bürgy Fabian Bürgy is a swiss based Sculptor. There is a both a quiet and unsettling quality to the work of Swiss based conceptual  and multimedia artist, Fabian Bürgy , which is quite beautiful. We discovered his this week in the online  Artporn Magazine . His body of work consists of sculpture, installation, and digital imaging. As you can see from his "Jesus Blesses the Children," his work is provocative in both subject matter and by the means it was created. While this theme is a common theme of artists such as Lucas Cranach the Younger , James Wills , and James Tisso to name only a few. creates minimalistic works which are inspired by a wide range of mundane objects and appearances, all subjected to what could be described as a "slightly violent and disturbing process of transformation, misplacement and dysfunction of things". 
 


MOSAIC By Diane Hall "Expectation" (1935-1936) by Richard Oelze. Oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York  New YORK CITY---Simply by virtue of its focus on German-Austrian art from 1890 to 1940, the walls of New York’s Neue Galerie , founded by the philanthropist Ronald Lauder, can unnerve a visitor with their uneasy mix of visions of beauty and images of radical disruption. The museum’s most recent show, Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930s, which closed on May 28 after a three-month run, made the discomfort of that juxtaposition all the more explicit. The predominant feeling throughout Before the Fall was of watching a nightmare unfold through the window of an artist’s studio. Perhaps the prime example was the landscape Expectation , painted in 1935-36 by the surrealist Richard Oelze (1900-1980). [ More ]

THE WASHINGTON TIMES By Gabe LaMonica The Museum of the Bible has received nearly 603,000 visitors since it opened its doors last November. “Crowd control was the biggest challenge right off the bat,” said Cary Summers, the president of the museum. Thousands of people have come from far and wide — sometimes two by two — to visit the red-brick, ark-shaped building in Southwest. The Museum of the Bible, on the 400 block of 4th Street SW, has received nearly 603,000 visitors (about 100,000 a month) since its 2-ton, 40-foot-tall bronze doors opened in November. Those visitor figures place the Museum of the Bible among some of the most popular repositories in the city: The Smithsonian Institution’s newest attraction — the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in September 2016 — has received more than 842,000 visitors this year, and the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center has had more than 648,000 so far in 2018. [ More ]

TRYCICLE By Lakshmi Gandhi Bushi sculpt a figure in the documentary "Carving the Divine." To view a statue carved by the Būshi—a community of Japanese sculptors who create intricate wooden replicas of Buddhas and bodhisattvas—is to view a style of sculpture that has been virtually unchanged for nearly 1,400 years. In Yujiro Seki’s new documentary " Carving the Divine ," viewers get an inside look at how the Būshi have passed on their meticulous carving techniques from generation to generation. The film introduces us to Master Koun Seki , who has devoted his life to his craft while also running a school for apprentices and other emerging artists. Watching Master Seki interact with his pupils, viewers quickly learn that the craft requires immense dedication. Tricycle spoke with Yujiro Seki about this ancient art form and its preservation. [ More ]

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE Since 1934, Religion News Service has shed light on the most meaningful issues of the day. As the only nonprofit news agency devoted to unbiased, nonsectarian coverage of religion, spirituality, ethics and culture, our reporting aims to educate, inform and cultivate understanding among people of different faiths and traditions around the world. Through donations large and small, your support ensures that our award-winning team of journalists can keep bringing you objective reporting and insightful commentary for months and years to come. We have faith in you, our subscribers and readers. By supporting our June 2018 fundraising campaign with a gift today, you can show your faith in us. [ DONATE ]

THE AUSTRALIAN By Victoria Laurie God is in the House by Mikaela Castledine, winner of the Mandorla Art Award. The theme of “a new heaven and a new earth” for this year’s Mandorla Art Award resonated so strongly with Perth artist Mikaela Castledine that she decided to enter for the first time. And she won. Her unusual work, God is in the House, was awarded the $25,000 acquisitive prize at Perth’s Turner Galleries in front of a crowd that included Anglican and Catholic bishops. The Mandorla Art Award for religious art is a biennial event that invites work interpreting Christian themes and texts. Castledine made a miniature “sacred city” assembled on mirror glass. Created out of ready-made glass objects and ceramic towers, it has turrets topped with exquisitely fine crochet domes. [ More ]

THE INDIAN EXPRESS By Pallavi Chattopadhyay The idea of “looking into someone’s soul” ensured that the painting session was not a dominant process of creation and allowed her to share an equal relationship with the protagonists in her work. (Vicky Luthra) Long before Scottish artist Olivia Fraser gave Indian miniatures a contemporary twist by using the lotus flower, and hands and feet as central motifs, she would frequently paint people on the streets — labourers toiling away and folk musicians during performances in Rajasthan — using western watercolour techniques. She’d wait for them to catch her stare. Although the Delhi-based artist does not paint people anymore, she continues to paint eyes. The result rests in London’s Grosvenor Gallery as part of her exhibition ‘The Lotus Within’, where large eyes stare at the viewer in Darshan II, with the iris shaped in the form of Fraser’s favourite subject, the lotus. [ More ]

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD By John McDonald Blake Prize 2018 winner Tina Havelock Stevens in front of her six-minute video Giant Rock. SYDNEY, AU---It's been seven years since I last wrote about the Blake Prize , which seemed to have reached a point where it couldn't get any worse. The good news is that it hasn't gotten worse: it's just as bad as it was seven years ago. When it was founded in 1951 the Blake Prize was intended to revitalise religious art – another genre felt to be threatened by the relentless progress of Modernism. How clean-cut those days appear from a contemporary perspective! There was a simple opposition of communism v capitalism, while Christianity was enshrined as the in-house religion of the western world. Nowadays our communities are a complex tangle of religious and political ideas. The top prize of $35,000 went to Tina Havelock Stevens for a six-minute video entitled Giant Rock. It's depressing to think that of all the entries in the ...

HYPERALLERGIC By Sarah Rose Sharp Detail view from PULSE Nightclub: 49 Elegies by John Gutoskey (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic) YPSILANTI, Mich. — Elegies often come in the form of poetry, and are a time-honored form of lamentation, used as a method of mourning the dead. It makes intuitive sense, then, that print artist John Gutoskey seized upon this idea to create “visual elegies,” in the form of 49 unique monoprints, as a way of processing the Pulse nightclub shooting, an attack by a murderous gunman on a gay club in Orlando, Florida, that claimed the lives of 49 victims and wounded 53 others. The exhibition is also replete with Catholic imagery — a nod to Gutoskey’s personal religious background — and Buddhist motifs, among the more abstract or pagan symbolism. [ More ]

THE HINDU By Peerzada Ashiq Golden verses: Rare Quranic manuscripts on display at the exhibition. | Photo Credit: PTI A major Ramzan exhibition has been held in Srinagar this year after three-and-a-half decades, with some rare objects including a Jammu-based Hindu trader’s private collection of rare Korans on display. Suresh Obrol moved the family treasure, written on cloth and paper, and including calligraphy works of Koranic verses on vellum or animal skin, across 300 km to Srinagar. “My great grandfather Lala Reki Ram ji was a collector and acquired two rare Korans, one written on a one-by-five foot piece of cloth, and another on a 4.5-by-5.5 ft paper sheet a century ago. He also got 40 calligraphy works on Koranic verses. It’s for the first time that we put the artefacts on display, for Ramzan,” Mr. Obrol said. [ More ]

QRIUS By Prachi Mahima Amplessi (Embrace) (1950) by M.F. Husain. Credit: Flickr Commons It has been seven years since Maqbool Fida Husain , the revolutionary painter who brought about a new era in modern Indian art, died. Born on September 17, 1915 in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, to a Sulaymani Bohra family. A man of revolutionary ideas, Hussain’s aesthetics were inspired by the new freedom from the shackles of English dominance after two complete centuries. The theme of his paintings was diverse, ranging from Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, to the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and even British rule. Among the most interesting aspects of his work was the theme of womanhood that he explored in a many of his paintings in the form of depicting Hindu goddesses or the traditional Indian woman. [ More ]

OUPBLOG By Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade Saint Jerome in His Study 1451 by Antonio da Fabriano II. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons . Catholics and Protestants have different Bibles today because of the disputes of the sixteenth century, when the opposing sides each claimed that the early church supported their own views. The bottom line is: they were both right. Here we come to Jerome and Augustine, the greatest biblical scholar and the greatest theologian, respectively, in the early Latin church. These two churchmen composed lists of Old Testament books within a few years of each other, during the last decade of the fourth century. As for the deuterocanonical books, Augustine did not even mention the issue within his discussion of the canon; he quietly listed all these books in their respective sections of the Bible. Jerome, the primary translator of the Latin Vulgate, took the opposite path. [ More ]

ABC NEWS By Georgie Burgess Many in the Christian community have taken offence to the installation at Hobart's waterfront. HOBART, AU---Christians fear the organisers of Dark Mofo are inviting dark forces to Hobart by displaying inverted crosses around the city. As part of the city's annual winter festival, several large red crosses, known as the Cross of Saint Peter, have been erected in prominent positions around the waterfront. Inverted crosses are also used as a symbol of the anti-Christ and many in the Christian community have expressed offence at the 20-metre-high art installations. Other Christian leaders have called for calm, while many residents have taken delight in photographing the bright crosses. The Dark Mofo festival is renowned for turning heads and creating controversy and last year involved a bloody sacrificial ritual using a bull. [ More ]

BREITBART NEWS By Simon Kent Unlike the Austrian burqa ban, which prohibits all facial coverings including Halloween costumes, the Danish ban will have a limited number of exceptions including those using scarves to protect their faces from cold and people dressed up in costume. In a 75-30 vote with 74 absentees on Thursday, Danish lawmakers approved the law. The Danish government says it is not aimed at any religions and does not ban headscarves, turbans or the traditional Jewish skull cap, AP reports . Denmark now follows in the footsteps of several other European countries which have also banned the full-face veil, fully or partially, including France, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Belgium, Germany, and parts of Switzerland. During the weeks-long parliamentary procedure of the bill, the government removed a provision allowing prison sentences as potential punishment for breaking the new law. Financial penalties will instead be enforced against those who infringe on the new legisl...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton “Nativity with St. Francis and St Lawrence” (c. 1609) by Caravaggio in the Oratory of San Lorenzo, in Palermo, Italy His religious paintings inspired the Baroque movement, and this week  Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio  (1571-1610) made it into The New York Times , twice. First, a mobster revealed that Caravaggio's "Nativity," which was stolen from a church in 1969, had been hidden in Switzerland. Second, in honor of Gay Pride Month, the film viewing service  Fandor announced  it is including the 1986 biopic “ Caravaggio ,” in this month's "30 LGBTQ+ Films in 30 Days." Historians tell us the artist enjoyed life as an outcast, and had affairs with both men and women. We think Caravaggio would have enjoyed being this week's newsmaker.