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THE NATIONAL By Noura Al Kaabi An attendee looks at art on display at the Al Burda Festival at Warehouse 421 in Abu Dhabi. Leslie Pableo for The National The role of art in promoting a culture cannot be underestimated. Art has the power to engage and inspire younger generations by giving them a deeper connection to their identity. Through this medium, proponents of Islamic art not only forge new pathways but also strengthen the future position of Islamic culture. There are talented and inspiring individuals in Muslim communities around the world, who are achieving great things with faith-inspired work. Determining what informs their spiritual, creative and artistic journeys can lend an answer to the oft-asked question: what does Islamic art mean today? [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Mark Brown A detail from Rembrandt’s rapidly painted Study of the Head and Clasped Hands of a Young Man as Christ in Prayer. Photograph: Sotheby’s London/PA Two fingerprints almost certainly belonging to Rembrandt have been discovered on a small painting portraying Jesus, which is to be auctioned in London next month ( Dec. 5 ). The artwork, called Study of the Head and Clasped Hands of a Young Man as Christ in Prayer , a rapidly painted oil sketch on an oak panel, is coming to the market for the first time in 60 years and is estimated to fetch about £6m. George Gordon, the co-chair of Sotheby’s old master paintings department, said it was not possible to 100% confirm the fingerprints belonged to Rembrandt because no comparable examples had ever been found. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Hilarie M. Sheets Stephanie Ingrassia with her dogs, Olive and Max, in front of Barbara Kruger’s nine-part 1985 work “We Will No Longer Be Seen and Not Heard,” and below it, a shoe sculpture, “Handwarmers” (2018), by Ann Agee. “For the first time in 28 years, I’ve had three months without a school and sports schedule to deal with,” Stephanie Ingrassia, vice-chairwoman of the board at the Brooklyn Museum, said recently in an interview at her home. Their glass-faced duplex, while plenty spacious by New York standards, is a substantial downsize with far less wall space for their contemporary art collection, which numbers in the hundreds of pieces. But the radically different architectural space of their condo has offered an invigorating opportunity to re-envision the mix in Brooklyn, which now includes paintings by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Nicole Eisenman , videos by William Kentridge and Marilyn Minter , a figurative sculpture by Sanford...

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch Mounted ruler (16th century), Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston In the Edo language, the verb sa-e-y-ama means ‘to remember’, but its literal translation is ‘to cast a motif in bronze’. At the court of Benin, art in bronze perpetuates memory; traditionally, the first commissions of every Benin king are sculptures in bronze and ivory for his father’s memorial altar. Since 2007, the Benin Dialogue Group, a consortium composed of the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments, delegates of the Oba (king) of Benin, and curators of African art at European museums, has been debating the future of Benin art held in Europe. It has recently determined that European institutions will loan important pieces on a rotating basis to Nigeria for a permanent display, at a museum purpose-built to display the art of Benin that will open in 2021. [ More ]

DAILY HERALD By Sarah Harris Eliza Croft's "Am I Not A Celestial Being?" Of all the shows at the S pringville Museum of Ar t, museum director Rita Wright’s favorite is the “Annual Spiritual and Religious Art of Utah” juried exhibition that goes up each fall. “I get so excited every year,” Wright said. This show has a real depth and elegance and kind of a deeply authentic aspect to it as far as people representing their own spirituality.” This year’s “ 33rd Annual Spiritual and Religious Art of Utah ” exhibition, currently on display through Jan. 16, 2019, is unique for its diversity in the spiritual and religious traditions the show represents, according to Wright. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Kehinde Wiley Plate Set, 2014 Porcelain 10.75 x 10.75 in (27.31 x 27.31 cm) Unnumbered Courtesy of an anonymous donor Stamped Estimate $560 A new work by Kehinde Wiley is now available on Paddle8 as a part of a benefit auction in support of NURTUREart. Bidding ends Thursday, November 29th at 5pm EST. Set of six porcelain coupe plates, all 10.75 inches in diameter. Each plate features a different artwork, and shows a stamped signature on the verso. Plates are individually boxed. The back of each plate has easy holes for hanging, and they are microwave and dishwasher safe. Plate Set: Featuring details from: Mrs. Graham (2012), oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches Mary Little, Later Lady Carr (2012), oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches Dacia Carter II (2012), oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches Matar Mbaye II (2008), oil on canvas, 26 x 22 inches Idrissa Ndiaye (2008), oil on linen, 26 x 22 inches Mame Ngagne (2008), oil on canvas, 26 x 22 inches. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Warren Strugatch Lyn and E.T. Williams in their Manhattan home between two works by Claude Lawrence: left, “Yard — An Ode to Charlie Parker” and “At the Hop.”CreditCreditDaniel Dorsa for The New York Times E. T. Williams Jr. and his wife, Lyn, began collecting art as newlyweds living in Baltimore in the mid-60s. “We had a couple of friends who were artists and we bought works from them,” said Ms. Williams, who studied art and briefly hoped to be a sculptor. As their collection grew, the Williamses, too, took part in art circles. They began to invite students and fledgling collectors as well as established curators and museum directors for casual exhibitions at home, which continue today. “We moved from prints into original works” as he switched to real estate finance, which gave the couple “more cash on hand,” Mr. Williams said. [ More ]

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Susan Moore Installation view of ‘Luigi Valadier: Splendor in Eighteenth-Century Rome’ at the Frick Collection, New York, 2018. Pictured are the statues of the six saints from the High Altar of the Cathedral of Santa Maria la Nuova, Monreale, from c. 1773. Photo: Michael Bodycomb It was inevitable, perhaps, that the Frick Collection in New York should follow its acclaimed show in 2016 on the virtuoso bronze chaser-gilder Pierre Gouthière with an exhibition devoted to his Roman counterpart and almost exact contemporary Luigi Valadier (1726–85). The key difference between the two is that while the Frenchman produced a limited number of pieces of superlative quality, predominantly for the French court, Valadier vaunted variety, masterminding the production on an almost industrial scale of a wide range of luxury goods that he supplied to the Church, the Roman aristocracy and Grand Tourists alike. At their most ambitious, his inventive, even whimsical designs are a...

CHURCH TIME By Paul Handley "Christ in the house with Martha and Mary" by Johannes Vermeer (1654-56) A £2-million online project has been launched this week in the hope of presenting the Bible afresh to a visual generation. The Visual Commentary on the Bible, which went live on Tuesday, matches three works of art with passages of scripture. At present, there are 50 completed triptychs — the organisers call them exhibitions — and another 50 await copyright permissions. During the course of the seven-year project, it is planned to raise the number of exhibitions to 1500. The site —  thevcs.org  — has been built by Cogapp and is free to use. [ More ]

ARTNET NEWS By Javier Pes, November 21, 2018 Simeon Solomon, Night looking upon Sleep her beloved child II (1895). Courtesy of Sotheby's. Nicholas Serota, the chairman of Arts Council England and a former director of the Tate, was among an illustrious panel of advisors who collectively resigned from the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum yesterday. The exodus was in protest of a decision to sell works from the collection of the museum, which was founded a century ago by Jewish artists in London’s East End, in order to fund a radical change in direction from its Anglo-Jewish roots. Serota and ten other advisors have criticized the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum’s decision to sell works at Sotheby’s in London yesterday and this morning. This is not the first time the Ben Uri Museum has been at the center of a row over selling off works of art. [ More ]

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Digby Warde-Aldam Christ You Know It Ain’t Easy (2003), Sarah Lucas. Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London; © Sarah Lucas Sarah Lucas has never been one to leave an audience indifferent. Back in the 1990s, she earned a reputation as the gobbiest of her contemporaries, an artist who out-swore, out-smoked and out-grossed even her pal Damien Hirst. Nevertheless, even erstwhile YBAs can become respectable if they last long enough. The great surprise is that Lucas, now the subject of a show at the New Museum in New York, acquits herself rather a lot more convincingly than many of her supposedly more cerebral contemporaries. The greatest surprise here is quite how fresh Lucas’s approach to making art seems. At times, you can get the impression that she represents the missing art-historical link between Louise Bourgeois and a younger generation of artists, including Laure Prouvost, Pauline Curnier Jardin and Michael Dean. [ More ]

THE ATLANTIC By Jonathon Merritt A man walks inside an empty church in the Ninth Ward area in New Orleans Many of our nation’s churches can no longer afford to maintain their structures—6,000 to 10,000 churches die each year in America—and that number will likely grow. Though more than 70 percent of our citizens still claim to be Christian, congregational participation is less central to many Americans’ faith than it once was. Most denominations are declining as a share of the overall population, and donations to congregations have been falling for decades. Meanwhile, religiously unaffiliated Americans, nicknamed the “nones,” are growing as a share of the U.S. population. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Maggie Meiners, Freedom from Want. © Maggie Meiners. Courtesy of the artist. How many misfits didn't have a home for Thanksgiving this year? Did you welcome them? Photographer Maggie Meiners reimagines being a misfit in America today, and much of it is inspired by a 2010 visit to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was there while facing Rockwell's Freedom from Want (1943), that she questioned what today's ideal American family looks like? In " Revisiting Rockwell ," she explores themes from Black Lives Matter to gay dads. That makes Maggie Meiners's Freedom from Want , our art of the week.

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Giovanni Russonello Mahershala Ali, right, portraying the virtuoso pianist Donald Shirley in “Green Book.”CreditCreditPatti Perret/Universal Pictures, Participant, DreamWorks One of the moments in “Green Book” that reveals the most about Donald Shirley — a dandified, erudite piano virtuoso whose career was impeded by racial discrimination — doesn’t have anything to do with music, or much to do with race. This movie, to be released on Nov. 21, tells the unlikely but basically true story of the friendship between Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a working-class Italian-American from the Bronx who was hired to chauffeur the New York musician on a 1962 tour of the Jim Crow South. “Green Book” is not a biopic, but throughout the film, Tony wrestles with the question of who exactly Shirley is. A hint of an answer emerges in that moment: an artist of extravagant gifts, quiet bitterness and, when given the means to express it, generous...

THE NEW YORK TIMES Photographs and Text by Malin Fezehai Bride Meyrav Yehud, 24, has the final accessories of her henna outfit adjusted. Groom Or Dochan, 25, wears a triangular necklace, symbolizing the three life principles: the Torah, work, and doing good deeds. At a recent henna celebration at the Yemeni Heritage Center in Rosh Ha’Ayin, Israel, the bride had three ensemble changes, each representing a city or region in Yemen. Although both the bride and groom were raised in Israel, honoring their Yemeni heritage was something important to them. “I am Yemenite on both sides, and it’s a celebration of my wedding,” the bride, Meyrav Yehud, 24, said. “These are my roots.” The henna ceremony, a pre-wedding event which has been a tradition in Asian, North African and Middle Eastern cultures, where women paint designs, or in this case place dye onto the skin of the bride and her guests, was held about a week before the wedding. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Ernest Disney-Britton Maggie Meiners asked her friends, a gay, married couple, to pose for her recreation of Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want.” “I want to expand dialogue,” she said.CreditMaggie Meiners/Anne Loucks Gallery Seventy-five years after the 1943 release of Norman Rockwell’s four images — Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Want, Freedom From Fear, artists are still doing updates of the American idea. In 2012, black artist Hank Willis Thoma s enlisted photographer Emily Shur to shoot several images that reimagined Mr. Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want.” That’s what led Maggie Meiners , an artist from suburban Chicago, to create a series of her own. Ms. Meiners, recreated the photograph with two married, gay friends serving their guests. On this Thanksgiving 2018, we are grateful for images of a more accurate, complete picture of the American idea. [ link ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Ted Loos Billy and Jennifer Frist with Doug Aitken’s “RIOT” (2011).CreditCreditEric Ryan Anderson for The New York Times NASHVILLE — It would be easier to list the famous photographers that Billy and Jennifer Frist don’t collect. Lining the walls of their hilltop home, once featured in Architectural Digest , are images by dozens of the greatest practitioners of the genre ( Diane Arbus, William Eggleston, Berenice Abbott, Sally Mann ). Even though they own more than a thousand photographs that range widely in era, subject and style, the Frists don’t emphasize numbers, in either scope or value. The Frists’ own mini-museum at home is loosely organized by genre. “So we have high-fashion upstairs, and we have the Southern things downstairs,” Ms. Frist said[ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore ‘I’m always looking over my shoulders, I’m always concerned,’ Cave says, of race-related gun violence in America – a theme of his latest work, Until. Photograph: Carly Earl for the Guardian Peering through the vast glass windows at Nick Cave’s latest installation in Sydney feels festive: like staring at an elaborate Christmas display in a posh London department store. Yet get closer and you notice that guns are imprinted on to some of the 16,000 wind spinners. There are also bullets. And on the walls the images of lawn jockeys, the racially charged statues that Americans once put in their yards as hitching posts, are grinning grotesquely. Until is Cave’s most ambitious work to date, and the largest work to ever be installed in Carriageworks . It may look like an old-fashioned sweet shop or an enchanted forest, but its commentary is much darker: Cave is protesting gun crime and, in particular, the black victims of police violence. [ More...

THE GUARDIAN By Hannah Clugston The Miraculous Journey by artist Damien Hirst outside the Sidra Medical and Research Center in Doha. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images It doesn’t help that the most iconic pregnant woman is the Virgin Mary, and we very rarely get a glimpse of her with a rounded belly. Usually she is glistening atop an alter with a golden halo, arms encasing her newly birthed son of God.It’s with open arms that I welcome Damien Hirst’s The Miraculous Journey, 14 bronze sculptures that depict in vivid detail the gestation period, ending with a newborn. The structures, which range from five to 11 metres in height, document the fertilisation of an egg, a twin pregnancy, a breech birth and foetus. There are no hiding hands and blank faces here, the wonder of the creation of life is on display for all to see. Hirst told Doha News it is “the first naked sculpture in the Middle East … it’s very brave”. [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Alexandra Villareal Mohamed Hafez at the Brooklyn Museum. Photograph: Kolin N Mendez In Mohamad Hafez’s sculptures, every detail brings a part of Syria to life. A doll-sized porcelain plate represents how people would send food to their neighbors. Syrian and Jewish fabric fragments on a clothes line embody the region’s diversity. And the decorations on a building mimic Greek and Roman symbols all over old city streets. At the Brooklyn Museum , Hafez paces near his work, studying visitors’ reactions. He shoots videos on his phone, or reads descriptions about Syria, Then and Now. But he tries not to reveal his identity. “I feel it’s my duty to be doing this work,” Hafez said. “It’s not a privilege. It’s not a luxury. It’s a duty.” [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Brooks Barnes The documentary “Amazing Grace,” with Aretha Franklin’s 1972 performance of the song, will have its world premiere Nov. 12 in New York at the festival Doc NYC.CreditCreditDaniel Lefevre/INA, via Getty Images LOS ANGELES — One of Hollywood’s holy grails, “Amazing Grace,” capturing what is considered to be Aretha Franklin’s most transcendent gospel performance, is headed to theaters 46 years after it was filmed. “Her fans need to see this film, which is so pure and so joyous,” Sabrina Owens, Ms. Franklin’s niece and the executor of the Franklin estate, said in an interview. “And the world needs to see it. Our country, it’s in such a state right now.” She declined to comment on terms of the deal. Freed from legal entanglements — Ms. Franklin, who died in August, sued repeatedly over the years to block its release — “Amazing Grace” will have its world premiere next Monday, Nov. 12, in New York at Doc NYC, a festival dedicated to nonfiction cinema. ...

THE GUARDIAN By Claire Armistead From the rubble … Rakowitz’s fourth plinth work, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, is unveiled this week. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Michael Rakowitz used 10,000 tin cans to rescue a treasure destroyed by Isis. The Iraqi-American, who once made a work out of Saddam Hussein’s dinner plates, explains why he likes causing trouble. The 14ft-long statue is both a one-off statement and part of an ambitious long-term project by Michael Rakowitz, a 44-year-old Iraqi-American who has become one of the world’s most political – and powerful – artist-provocateurs. The idea was born as Rakowitz watched flickering green images of surgical strikes on Baghdad by the coalition – the invisible enemy – shortly after which the looting began. Until that moment, the suffering of the Iraqi people had been objectified, he explains. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Parrish Art Museum acquires three large-scale paintings by David Salle including "After Michelangelo, The Creation" (2005–2006) This week, when Ernest read Jericho Brown’s “ New Testament ” (2014) and we saw Terrance Chisholm’s play “ Hooded Or Being Black for Dummies ” (2015), we found biblical insights in two meditations on racism. Bible stories from "Genesis" to "Revelations" have also been soulfully reimagined by painters like  Caravaggio  and  Andy Warhol . Conversely, David Salle's well crafted retelling at the Parrish Art Museum is an appropriation without such soulful insights. Sadly however, David Salle's "After Michelangelo, The Creation"  is still our art of the week.

ARTDAILY Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903) "Reclining Tahitian Women," 1894 Oil on canvas, 23 5/8 x 19 1/4 in. (60 x 49 cm) Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, 1832 Photograph by Ole Haupt © Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco will open Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey , debuting at the de Young museum on November 17. The first exhibition at FAMSF dedicated to the work of Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) will explore two themes central to his career: the relationships that shaped his life and work, and his quest to understand spirituality, both his own and that of other cultures he encountered. Through an exceptional partnership with the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, more than sixty Gauguin works will be on view—ranging from oil paintings and works on paper to wood carvings and ceramics—alongside art of the Pacific Islands from the FAMSF collection. [ More ]

ARTDAILY Vasudhara, Goddess of Wealth and Abundance, 1100s, Nepal, copper, gold, gem stones. Detroit Institute of Arts. DETROIT, MICH.- On Sunday, Nov. 4, the Detroit Institute of Arts debuted newly expanded galleries dedicated to Asian art in the Robert and Katherine Jacobs Asian Wing, highlighting objects and themes that represent diverse art forms, cultural practices, and systems of belief. Works span thousands of years up to the present day in galleries of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Indian and Southeast Asian art, as well as a gallery for Buddhist art across Asia. In addition to historical masterpieces, such as a graceful bronze sculpture of the Hindu goddess Parvati from southern India (13th century) and Chinese artist Wen Zhengming’s hanging scroll that pairs painting and calligraphy, “The First Prose Poem on the Red Cliff” (1588), the galleries also feature works of modern and contemporary art. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Ted Loos Terrence McNally (seated) and his husband, Tom Kirdahy, in their living room in front of two Jane Freilicher paintings: “Still Life in Greenwich Village” (1977), center, and “The Black and White Set” (1990-91), upper right. Having a documentary made about you can prompt reflection, and “Every Act of Life” is having that effect on its subject, the four-time Tony-winning playwright and librettist Terrence McNally , who just turned 80. “Every Act of Life” was released digitally [recently], after making the festival rounds. “It brings up conflicting emotions,” Mr. McNally added, that are “sometimes funny, sometimes painful.” But there is no conflict in Mr. McNally’s art-collecting principles, which are as clearheaded and articulately stated as the words he gives his characters in plays like “Master Class” and “Love! Valour! Compassion!” “I like cityscapes in the city, and country landscapes in the country,” Mr. McNally said. He and M...

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Raphael Cormack Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents ‘There are two figures in society whose words are less important than their deeds: the politician and the artist. An Arab painter who sits holding forth about art instead of actually painting is much like the Arab politician who stands on a podium lecturing us about our future history as we lie in our beds.’ It is a truism to say that if artists could express their meaning fully in words they would not need to make art, but it seems impossible to stop them trying or to stop people wanting them to do so. This, the eighth volume in MoMA’s series of ‘primary documents’ on modern art (which also includes books on China, Japan and Eastern Europe), is a vast repository of translated writing and new essays by artists and also academics, accompanied by 49 colour illustrations. It spans the period from 1882 to 1987 and countries from Morocco to Sudan, Yemen to Iraq. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Gal Beckerman Michela Buttignol When a gunman slaughtered 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue on a Shabbat morning last month, American Jews were left with a jumble of intense emotions: horror and fear, certainly, but also an old embattled feeling, centuries in the making. For one thing, the violence of Pittsburgh is far from the everyday reality of American Jews. Once the candlelight vigils are over, where is the solid ground for the future of American Jewish identity? It won’t come from being victims — it shouldn’t — and cultural and ethnic identity, the bagels and lox version, is disappearing fast. From where then? As a handful of new books make abundantly clear, there really is only one source left: the religion — Judaism itself, and its unique capacity for adaptation. [ More ]

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Izabella Scott Cassandra (2009), Nalini Malani. Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. Photo: Antonio Maniscalco In Christa Wolf’s novel Cassandra (1983) the fall of Troy is retold from the perspective of Priam’s daughter. The figure of Cassandra appears in almost every room of ‘The Rebellion of the Dead’ (the second part of a retrospective organised by the Centre Pompidou and Castello di Rivoli) – set into paintings, video works and installations. The exhibition opens with a piece called The Tables Have Turned (2008), which consists of 32 Mylar cylinders, painted from the reverse side with sea creatures, limbs, letters, skulls, Old Testament figures and Hindu gods. (There is also a voiceover in which an actor reads from a stage version of Wolf’s novel.) Thanks to spotlights, the ink and acrylic figures cast shadows up the walls that combine to form mutant silhouettes. [ More ]

A LPHA OMEGA ARTS "Harem Revisted, #32" (2012) SINGAPORE---For the first time at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, a specially curated selection of images by internationally acclaimed Moroccan artist Lalla Essaydi will be on view. This exhibition brings together three of Essaydi’s most powerful photographic series: Les Femmes du Maroc , Harem and Harem Revisited . Lalla Essaydi was born and raised in Morocco and educated in the West before moving to Saudi Arabia for several years. The United States-based artist explores issues of gender, cross-cultural identity and the prevalent myths of Orientalism. This exhibition comprises more than 20 large-scale color photographs, including several of Essaydi’s iconic multi-panel works .

THE NEW YORK TIMES By David Ebershoff From left: Rhys Kosakowski, formerly of Houston Ballet; Jose Sebastian, in the corps de ballet at ABT; Taylor Stanley, a principal at New York City Ballet; Tyler Maloney, in the corps de ballet at ABT; Patrick Yocum, a principal at Boston Ballet; Calvin Royal III, a soloist at ABT. Bon Duke Every dancer I spoke with has a story of how their art touched someone in unexpected ways, just as the ballerino from Winnipeg gave me something I could carry far into my future. Art is nothing if it does not connect, and these dancers are connecting with people who might previously have thought ballet could not, or would not, speak for them. Whiteside tells me about a letter he received from a woman who thinks her young son is gay. The boy loves to dance, the mother writes, and wants to be like Whiteside when he grows up. His classmates make fun of him for loving ballet, but the mother is proud of her son for staying resolute; seeing Whiteside become succ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Doreen Carvajal The French Culture Minister Franck Riester, center, visits the Louvre Abu Dhabi on Nov. 9. The museum, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, is celebrating the first anniversary of its official opening to the public on Nov. 11. A year since its opening, the Louvre Abu Dhabi drew more than a million visitors to its dome-shaped museum that features borrowed treasures by Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent van Gogh from the collections of French institutions. Those visitors were dominated by foreign tourists, with more than 60 percent from other countries — topped by India, along with Germany, China, England, the United States and France, according to the new museum. The crowd figures are still small in comparison to the flagship Louvre in Paris, which is lending its brand through a 30-year government accord between the United Arab Emirates and France. [ More ]

ARTDAILY Michael Wolgemut (German, 1434/37 – 1519) and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff (ca. 1460 - ca. 1494), The Creation of Eve, woodcuts, hand-colored, 18¾ x 12¼ in., in Dr. Hartmann Schedel (German, 1440 - 1514), The Nuremberg Chronicle (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493). The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, Bequest of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, 1971.110. GLENS FALLS, NY.- The Hyde Collection has a vast collection of first edition and rare books lining the walls of the library in the historic home of Museum founders Louis and Charlotte Hyde. Mr. Hyde, a lawyer, loved reading and sought refuge among his hundreds of carefully collected books — law texts, encyclopedias, novels, and more. But among the most precious of the collection is one not exhibited on the shelves in Hyde House, but safely stored in the Museum’s vault. The Nuremberg Chronicle, a history of the world that dates to the late-fifteenth century, is being exhibited in Making History: The Nuremberg and Augsburg Chronicles, wh...

ARTFIX DAILY Works by Chun Kwang Young, Anila Quayyum Agha, and Kamolpan Chotvichai. Sundaram Tagore Chelsea  presents The Art of Paper , an exhibition (Nov. 15 to Dec. 15, 2018) exploring the potential of this often overlooked medium. Each of the featured artists employs an entirely unique approach, demonstrating a diverse range of techniques and subject matter. Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha , showing at the gallery for the first time, presents wall-mounted laser-cut encaustic paper works embellished with embroidery and beads. Agha’s work will also be on view alongside other internationally recognized artists, including El Anatsui, Kerry James Marshall and Carrie Mae Weems, in Parking on Pavement, presented at The School, Jack Shainman’s upstate exhibition space in Kinderhook, New York, Nov. 17 to March 2, 2019. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Holland Cotter Detail of Andy Warhol's “Camouflage Last Supper,” 1986. Mr. Paradox, who never left, is back. Although, technically, “Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again” at the Whitney Museum of American Art is the artist’s first full American retrospective in 31 years,. At the same time, his ever-presence has made him, like wallpaper, like atmosphere, only half-noticed. He’s there, but do we care? We can’t not. He’s the most important American artist of the second half of the 20th century. And, strange as it seems for an artist so absorbed in worldly matters, images of spiritual transcendence were a staple of his work too, from the “Marilyn” paintings onward. And Ms. De Salvo has given his retrospective a celestial conclusion. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Hilarie M. Sheets “Sometimes I Get Emotion From the Game,” by Purvis Young, is among the acquisitions by the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, one of five institutions getting works from Souls Grown Deep. In a strategic effort to reshape the narrative of American art, the Souls Grown Deep Foundation will help five museums acquire paintings, sculptures and works on paper by self-taught African-American artists of the South. These acquisitions bring to 12 the number of museums that have received more than 300 works from the Atlanta-based nonprofit, through gifts and purchase. “There is an awakening of interest in African-American art from museums trying to be inclusive and diverse,” said Maxwell Anderson, president of Souls Grown Deep, who announced the transfer of 51 objects by 30 black self-taught artists to the Brooklyn Museum, the Morgan Library & Museum, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Scott Reyburn A 15th-century gilded bronze Buddhist sculpture, which sold at Christie’s on Tuesday for about $2.5 million. Unusually, the figure retained its original sealed base, concealing a scroll and other objects, which were revealed in an X-ray. LONDON — Perceptions of the art market can often be shaped by the huge prices paid for work by the West’s most famous painters and sculptors. But there is another culture that can also inspire spectacular sales. Last month, at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, a Chinese 18th-century Imperial porcelain “poppy” bowl sold for $21.6 million. At the same auction, an elaborately decorated “fish” vase, also thought to be of Imperial provenance from the Qianlong era, raised $19 million. Buoyed by a surging economy, Chinese dealers and collectors have since the mid 2000s been bidding formidable sums for the finest artworks from their country’s past. But in recent years, as China’s economic growth has slowed, the market for its an...

THE NEW YORK TIMES  By Scott Reyburn A rediscovered two-sided drawing by Leonardo da Vinci that the Paris auction house Tajan will be offering for public sale on June 19, 2019. Courtesy Tajan The Paris auction house Tajan will offer a rediscovered drawing by Leonardo da Vinci at public sale on June 19, for the first time, testing the market for a work by the Renaissance master after the extraordinary sale of “Salvator Mundi” last year. The sale will come almost 500 years after da Vinci died, in May 1519, at Amboise, France. The double-sided artwork was rediscovered in March 2016 in a private French collection by Thaddée Prate, an old master specialist at Tajan. One side features a vigorous pen and ink drawing of Saint Sebastian tied to a tree, the other inscribed scientific studies of candle light, also in pen and ink. [ More ]

ARTDAILY David Salle, After Michelangelo, The Creation, 2005–2006. WATER MILL, NY.- The Parrish Art Museum has acquired three monumental works by David Salle based on the Sistine Chapel paintings by Michelangelo, titled After Michelangelo, The Creation; After Michelangelo, The Flood; and After Michelangelo, The Last Judgment. Never-before seen in the United States, the paintings will be unveiled as part of the Museum’s new permanent collection exhibition Every Picture Tells a Story, on view November 11, 2018 through October 3, 2019. [ More ]

ARTDAILY Master of the Gubbio Cross, Double-Sided Processional Cross, ca. 1310. Tempera on panel. Yale University Art Gallery, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, b.a. 1896. NEW HAVEN, CONN.- Sights and Sounds of Ancient Ritual considers the ways in which these rituals appealed to the senses through objects that would have drawn worshippers into closer proximity to divine forces. The exhibition brings together more than 80 works from the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Babylonian Collection at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History that span three millennia—from approximately 1500 B.C.E. to 1500 C.E.— and represent diverse traditions, including those of ancient Greece and Rome, Western Europe, Egypt, West Africa, the Near East, China, and Mesoamerica. [ More ]

ARTDAILY José Clemente Orozco, La Conquista, circa 1942. Estimate $600/800,000. Courtesy Sotheby's. NEW YORK, NY.- On the heels of their strong results in May 2018 for works by Latin American artists, Sotheby’s shared highlights of our November offerings of Latin American Art, which will be presented across the marquee fall auctions of Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary Art from 12-15 November in New York. A superlative group of Modern masterworks by Mexican artists are on offer this season, led by paintings from Rufino Tamayo, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco, along with outstanding works by Fernando Botero and kinetic artists Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez. [ More ]

HYPERALLERGIC By Thomas Micchelli Caravaggio, “The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist” (1607–1608), oil on canvas, 361 x 520 cm, Saint John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta (image credit: Caravaggio [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) VALETTA, Malta — A street fight broke out in the Roman night of May 28th, 1606; weapons were drawn, and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s sword sliced through the thigh of a young pimp named Ranuccio Tomassoni, severing the artery. Caravaggio ran off with a grievous head wound, and Tomassoni bled to death. There is good reason to conclude that Caravaggio was a special brand of sociopath, or else a merciless truth teller with one foot in the dark side, but his madness did not flourish in a vacuum. Caravaggio’s eye was as cold as the world he lived in, where fate is indifferent to virtue and innocence is routinely sacrificed on the altar of greed, lust, and raw power. It’s what makes him our own. [ More ]

ARTNET NEWS By Henri Neuendorf Robert Indiana's The Great American Love (Love Wall). Photo: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images. Robert Indiana’s estate is selling two works from the late artist’s collection to fund its ongoing litigation. The works, by Ed Ruscha and Ellsworth Kelly, could fetch a combined sum of more than $4 million when they hit the auction block at Christie’s post-war and contemporary day sale on November 16. The executor of Indiana’s estate, James W. Brannan, a lawyer in Maine, said the estate urgently needs money to cover mounting legal fees so it can continue to defend itself against a lawsuit filed in a Manhattan court. “Litigation is expensive, especially in New York,” Brannan said. The Ruscha work, Ruby, is estimated at $2 million-3 million, while Kelly’s Orange Blue is expected to fetch $900,000-1.2 million. [ More ]

HYPERALLERGIC By Daniel Larkin Melissa Stern “New Boyfriend” (2017) (image courtesy Garvey | Simon) New York-based artist Melissa Stern is a connoisseur of visual puns. So many of her mixed-media works in Strange Girls , now on view at Garvey/Simon, deftly play on their titles, offering a refreshing mix of humor and feminist critique. By entitling the show Strange Girls , the artist intimates how many women feel alienated and estranged in their own skins. A visual culture inundating women with unachievable ideals of beauty doesn’t help. Nor do many men calling themselves feminists in word but seldom sticking to their values in deed. It’s easy to feel depressed. It’s harder, but healing, to laugh. Melissa Stern’s gritty satire makes this bullshit stink a little bit less. [ More ]

THE LEXINGTON HERALD By Ken Ham Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky While speaking at our sold-out conference in Ireland, I was sent a Herald-Leader article about the Ark Encounter, our themed attraction in Williamstown. The piece suggested the Ark was struggling with attendance and revenue as it was entering its third year. I just had to rub my eyes. You see, attendance for year two (it concluded July 7) actually eclipsed year one. New attractions almost always see a drop in numbers after the excitement of the first year or two wears off. Now, if the Ark is supposedly struggling, how could we build a new $20 million multi-purpose center, seating 2,500 people (opening in a few months), and greatly expand our zoo? [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Gregory Huebner's "Ritual 14" at the Arts Council of Indianapolis through the end of November Gregory Huebner is a shaman of abstraction, and his Rituals Series is on view at the Arts Council of Indianapolis this month. Rituals bind us, such as our 2018 ritual of celebrating the 80th birthday of Ernest’s mom on the 7th day of each month this year. This week, we even think that resulted in a “kind-of” bonding between her and our miniature schnauzer, Kasey. She’s not much of a dog person, but when she visited, she gave in to his wagging tail and began playing fetch with him. She told us, “He believes I want to love him, and he waits patiently for me to believe it too.” That makes Gregory Huebner's   " Rituals 14 " our art of the week.

THE NEW YORK TIMES By A.O. Scott Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe in the new trailer for #BoyErased, featuring the new original song “Revelation” by Troye Sivan & Jónsi. In theaters this November. Written for the screen and directed by Joel Edgerton, based on Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith and Family by Garrard Conley. Jared Eamons, an Arkansas college student who is an avid runner and an aspiring writer, is also gay. Or rather, he is in the midst of figuring that out about himself — what it means, how he might act on it — when his panicked parents enroll him in a conversion therapy program designed to change, or at least suppress, his sexuality. The film’s sensitivity, though it is an ethical strength, is also a dramatic limitation. “ Boy Erased ” uses Jared’s story — which includes a high school attempt at heterosexual romance, a horrifying campus sexual assault and a chaste night spent in the bed of another man — primarily as a window into the issues ...