Disney-Britton

THE ART NEWSPAPER By Gareth Harris eL Seed, Traces, Douz, Tunisia courtesy eL Seed The French-Tunisian street artist eL Seed will unveil new works, and his latest twist on depicting Arabic script, in his first UK solo show due to launch at Lazinc Gallery in Mayfair next month (Tabula Rasa, 25 January-9 March). Paris-born, Dubai-based eL Seed, whose practice centres on transforming the Arabic language, is known for his elaborate calligraphic compositions emblazoned across streets and public spaces in New York, Paris and Cairo. In his latest works—a series of new paintings— eL Seed further adapts Arabic calligraphy, presenting curved and looped forms, tearing the surface calligraphy “to reveal phrases and imagery below, which materialise slowly and differently with each viewing”, says the artist on Instagram. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Ernest Disney-Britton Greg Disney-Britton holding his Christmas Day "Soul Gift" - a holy candle for Saint Blanche Devereaux of the Golden Girls. Art of the religious imagination can soothe and it can bite. It can also make you laugh, providing joy and happiness in a year when they often seemed in short supply. All of those qualities shine through in this year's selection of our favorite photographs capturing our 2018 journey. We gathered the best pictures featuring works of art: Tom Torluemke's "Wedding Bells" at our 10th wedding anniversary; Makoto Fujimura's "Art of the Gospel" as part of Ernest's mom's 80th birthday celebration; and Judith's beheading General Holoferenes by Kehinde Wiley in Charlotte, NC. We can't wait to see what comes in 2019!

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Gregory Disney-Britton, co-creator of the Alpha & Omega Project for Contemporary Religious Art, at home with, from left, Quincy Owens + Luke Crowley's “Prime IV” (purchased 2018) and Tony Melendez’s “Capricorn Greeting the Celtic Moon” (purchased 2014).  Near the end of 2018’s  Advent Fast , a gin loving friend asked, “When is that shit over?” We prayed for him. In Matthew 10:17-22, Jesus said, “You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.” We began 2018 with a promise to fast, pray, and praise by collecting art created in His name, but we fell short. We did however have long talks with  Quincy Owens   about his art of the religious imagination. Creating spirit-filled work despite distractions is why “Prime IV" by Owens & Crawley is our acquisition of the year.

THE ART NEWSPAPER By Anna Brady Company paid $75m for a painting described as a Michelangelo pietà Courtesy of Millennium Fine Art Many would argue that the construction business is more lucrative than investing in art. But in a bizarre example of the boom in fractional ownership of works of art, the new US owner of a Chinese building materials company has eschewed brickmaking in favour of art. It has bought a $75m Michelangelo painting by issuing shares and, earlier this month, suspended trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange until it has changed its name to Millennium Fine Art. The unusual move comes under the company’s new executive chairman Daniel McKinney, who did not answer the question of why he has bought a Chinese construction business in order to start a US-based art investment business. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Hilarie M. Sheets Sarah Arison, chairwoman of the National YoungArts Foundation, at home with, from left, John Baldessari’s “Big Catch” (2016) and Deborah Roberts’s “The Rope-a-Dope” (2017). Winnie Au for The New York Times At Emory University, Sarah Arison, a pre-med student, took a sharp turn and became a double major in business and French with a minor in art history. She also joined the board of the National YoungArts Foundation based in Miami, where she grew up. Ms. Arison changed course after a serendipitous conversation with a student’s mother about how YoungArts had changed her son’s life. The couple’s homes in New York and Aspen display some 60 works by artists she discovered through these organizations. Many are either by alumni of YoungArts , including Hernan Bas , Nicole Eisenman and Lee Pivnik , or master teachers the foundation enlisted as mentors to aspiring artists. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Holland Cotter Metal votives in various shapes, from Italy, 1930-50. Rudolf Kriss collection, Asbach Monastery, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich.CreditCreditBayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich; Walter Haberland Walk into the big art-packed churches of Rome and Mexico City and you can spot the most valuable image instantly. It’s not the great painting or sculpture described in the Blue Guide. As often as not, it’s the smallish Madonna over there in the corner with a bank of candles burning in front of her and the handwritten notes, photographs and silver medals attached to her cloak. These add-on items are by no means peripheral to her image. They constitute an art genre of their own — an art of please-and-thank-you — and one that is the subject of a marvelous show called “ Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place ” at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in Manhattan. Votive objects — also called ex-votos, from the Latin word for vow — are common to...

ARTSY By Julia Wolkoff Gerard David The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, ca. 1512–1515 Oil on wood 20 × 17 in; 50.8 × 43.2 cm The meanings of red and blue as they apply to gender have their origins, as Orenstein proposed, in Christian theology. Take a close look at religious art from the past 700 years. Notice anything consistent? Mary is almost always decked out in blue, while Jesus typically wears red. Marian blue, as the shade has become known, became the Madonna’s official color with the rise of Mariology and the cult of the Virgin. Depictions of Jesus later in life, as an adult, almost always show him dressed in bright red, or vermilion, a color with many complex meanings. In Christianity, it can represent sin, hellfire, or the Devil. But it can also connote martyrdom, or the blood of Christ. [ More ]

SALAAM GATEWAY Marina Tabassum, Prayer Hall, Bait ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2012. Photo: Sandro di Carlo Darsa. © MTA/Sandro di Carlo Darsa DUBAI - The Jameel Prize exhibition will visit Dubai for the first time in April 2019, Antonia Carver, director of Art Jameel told Salaam Gateway. The exhibition will take place at the new Jameel Arts Centre, which opened its doors on November 11. Jameel Prize is an international award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition. First awarded in 2009, it is held every two years and is worth 25,000 British pounds. Two joint winners were announced in the fifth edition of the prize in June this year. Iraq-born artist Medhi Moutashar and Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum showed their artwork along with eight finalists in a special exhibition at the V&A from June 28 to November 25. [ More ]

HYPERALLERGIC By Sharmistha Ray F. N. Souza, “Mithuna” (“Lovers”) (1949), oil on board At the dawn of a new Indian nation in 1947, a country awoke from its long colonial slumber to confront the challenges of Independence. The departure of the British and the ensuing bloodbath of Partition witnessed the formation of two nations built along religious fault lines, India and Pakistan. This new India necessitated a new art that broke free of the reins of the British Raj and spoke in the grand rhetoric of the newly formed Republic. A current show The Progressive Revolution: Modern Art for a New India at the Asia Society Museum provides a compelling narrative for the parallel constructions of the Indian nation, the trauma of Partition and the formation of its artistic identity. [ More ]

JEWISH WEEK By Sandee Brawarsky Images from Yona Verwer’s mixed-media work “Echoes,” colored kippot. YU Museum Artist Yona Verwer has created a triptych that’s old and new, in all ways. Titled “Echoes,” the theme is anti-Semitism, past and present, in her native Netherlands. She partners with Polish-born artist Katarzyna Kozera — both are now New Yorkers — and musicologist Dan Schwartz, to create a series of three linked paintings, on view at the Yeshiva University Museum. “If you wear a kipa now, you can expect to be yelled at and to have things thrown at you,” Verwer, co-founder of the Jewish Art Salon, tells The Jewish Week. She explains that these bright kippot are “nothing that the Dutch would ever wear, but a symbol that Jews are alive.” The exhibition, on view in the Education Showcase on the main floor of the Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th St., runs through Jan. 16. [ More ]

THE ART NEWSPAPER A 19th-century Thai treatise on the treatment of tumours Courtesy of the British Library The British Library has the largest collection of Southeast Asian manuscripts in the world. This book is a selection of illuminated manuscripts mainly from Thailand and Burma. Sacred scriptures, literary works and histories, texts on medicine (here, a 19th-century Thai treatise on the treatment of tumours), law, cosmology and fortune-telling are finely illustrated. The text explains the various categories of writing according to salient points of Buddhist thought and each caption carefully explains the illumination's subject and its relation to its text. Appendices explain technical terms and outline various theological concepts, such as the symbolic meaning of Buddha's footprint. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Warren Strugatch Benjamin Bradley, a collector whose obsession is Christmas, and his dog, Ebenezer, in the antique-filled apartment he shares with his partner, Bruce Wayne. Behind him is an abstract expressionist painting by Priscilla Heine, flanked by framed English military seals. Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times In the early ’90s, Mr. Bradley came to New York to complete his bachelor’s degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology. After classes, he haunted the city’s flea markets, auctions and antique shops, enhancing the collection he’d started in Indiana. Today Mr. Bradley collects mainly over the internet, focusing on German imports made between 1850 and 1920: Santa-themed jars and candy dishes; nodders (windup bobbleheads); Dresden ornaments (highly fragile paper composites hand-assembled by local artisans); and more. This year three Christmas trees are laden with the ornaments. Mr. Bradley’s collection, by his estimate, exceed...

EVANGELICALS FOR SOCIAL ACTION By Makoto Fujimura “Grace Foretold” by Makoto Fujimura / www.makotofujimura.com Church people forget that the Bible is full of strange, artsy folks. Ezekiel believed God asked him to do performance art—eating a scroll and cooking with human dung. King David danced naked in the streets. Then you have this pregnant teen who gave birth to a King in a food trough, a King who was greeted by the garbage collectors of the time. Right. When I read the Bible as an artist, however, this all makes sense. Artists do all sorts of strange things to communicate—they create language to describe the indescribable. A journey with Jesus is more like being an artist than working a predictable nine-to-five job. It’s unpredictable, risky, and often strange. It’s an adventure for which you need faith. [ More ]

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Ross Burns Palmyra, cella of the Bel Temple — seen from the east The National Museum of Damascus, which reopened in October six years after civil war forced its closure, is one of the world’s great collections of archaeological and historical treasures. The visitor to the museum is greeted by an entrance that could hardly convey a more overwhelming message about Syria’s past. Rescued from the ravages of time among the ruins of the eighth-century Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi in the Syrian desert, the gateway is an extraordinary blend of the range of cultures that came together in the early Islamic period. Like the restored National Museum in Beirut, which became a flagship for the country’s recovery after 15 years of civil conflict, the Damascus museum is being presented as an assertion of the value of honouring history as a regenerative tool. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Ross Douthat A visitor prays in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the nation's largest Catholic church, in Washington, D.C. Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock At Mass this Christmas Eve, many Catholics who have spent a year reading headlines about abusive priests, indifferent bishops, predatory cardinals and Vatican corruption will sit and hear the long roll of Jesus’s ancestors with which the Gospel of Matthew begins. The more you know about Genesis or Chronicles or Kings, the more remarkable it is that Matthew announced the birth of the son of God by linking him to a pack of egregious sinners. Then he offers examples of just how squalid things got among those long-dead Israelites. If you find it strangely compelling, then you’re close to the case for remaining Catholic at a time when the corruption of the church is driving a number of very public defections from the faith. It is the season’s promise, and in the long run...

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Fatema Ahmed, Editor Vertigo Sea (still; 2015), John Akomfrah. Courtesy Lisson Gallery; © Smoking Dogs Films The lone black figure in the landscape has become a recurring element in Akomfrah’s films – perhaps the most striking of them all is the red-coated tricorn hat wearing figure who appears for a moment in Vertigo Sea (2015), a work that touches on migration, whaling, and the oceans, and which was shown at the Venice Biennale. Mimesis: African Soldier is certainly trying to dispel some of the post-imperial nostalgia that Akomfrah has been dramatising and analysing throughout his career, a nostalgia that he clearly feels informed the result in the UK referendum on EU membership in 2016. For all the visual and thematic ambition of his works and the acclaim (including the Artes Mundi prize in 2017), Akomfrah is self-deprecating in the way that only someone who has more avenues to explore can be. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By Ernest Disney-Britton Abus, Thando Hopa, Sanele Xaba, Justin Dingwall, Albinism, Albino, White, Africa, South Africa Those living with albinism in South Africa and nearby countries have been subjected to extreme prejudice and acts of violence, but what if they could experience a life of joy? Through his series, Justin Dingwall dispels the negative myths and taboos associated with albinism in South African culture. On a larger scale, he hopes to challenge idealized notions of beauty and celebrate the value of variance. His images, like the waiting of Advent is not about commercialism or being fashionable. It's about prompting a discussion about what we consider to be beautiful. In this series, profiled on Alpha Omega Arts this year, we've been able to explore images that resonate with joy. [ Artist ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Detail: David LaChapelle's "Nativity" (2012) Templon The wait is over. Olivia was born on Tuesday (Dec. 18, 2018). She is our grand-niece, and we want to be her favorite uncles. Teddy bear time? At work, after 3-years of preparation, we launched  IndyArtsEducation.org . Moreover, in NYC, photographer, David LaChapelle is ending a commercial phase of his career and beginning anew with his religious works such as "Nativity." Advent is about waiting for a brand new beginning, and honoring that wait is essential for Christians. That's why David LaChapelle's "Nativity" is this week's art of the week .

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Hevajra (central detail); China; Ming dynasty, Yongle Period, ca. 1417–1423; silk embroidery; 81 x 131 cm; Pritzker Collection Religion has influenced and empowered countless political leaders throughout history, and Tibetan Buddhism is no exception. The Rubin Museum's “Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism” is the first exhibition of its kind to explore Tibetan Buddhism’s dynamic political role in the empires of Asia from the 7th to the early 20th century. The exhibition places Himalayan art in a larger global context and sheds light on a little-known aspect of Tibetan Buddhism related to power, one that may run counter to popular perceptions yet is critical to understanding its importance on the world stage. Tibetan Buddhism offered a divine means to power and legitimacy to rule, with images serving as a means of political propagation and embodiments of power.

THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR By Domenica Bongiovanni Caption: In this 2016 file photo, children in Ms. Morgan Besser's art class at George S. Buck, IPS 94 Elementary School work on a cardinal art project. A new online tool will connect Central Indiana teachers with arts education opportunities. Art generally isn't among the classes that students file in the boring category. But just in case it was, that for sure won't happen now. The Arts Council of Indianapolis has launched an online directory for Central Indiana schools that gives teachers access to more than 100 arts-centered classes and workshops. Think jazz drumming, bookbinding, African dance and pantomime techniques for nonverbal storytelling. IndyArtsEd.org houses the directory, which officially launched Dec. 13, that connects Central Indiana teachers with arts education opportunities from dozens of organizations, including the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Dance Kaleidoscope. [ More ]

ATLANTA CONSTITUITION-JOURNAL By Felicia Feaster Jiha Moon draws from her own Korean heritage, and from folk and religious art around the world in her solo show at Alan Avery Art Company, featuring the work “Where Serpents Change Their Skin.”  Atlanta-based, South Korean-born artist Jiha Moon’s paintings look like contained explosions, the world blown to smithereens. They are explosions of culture; wild, mutating, roiling, head-butting blends of East and West, pop culture and ancient art, craft and crap, the commercial and the eternal, frightening and cute. Herself a hybrid of Korea and America, Moon has taken full advantage of the strange circumstance of straddling multiple worlds in “Where Serpents Change Their Skin,” her clever, culturally omnivorous solo show at Alan Avery Art Company . Part of Moon’s point is the essential mashup nature of all culture, not simply those she has directly experienced, and in “Where Serpents Change Their Skin,” she makes a fascinating, pers...

CHRIST & POP CULTURE By Kaitlyn Schiess "We don’t get political,” a friend recently told me about his church. It’s a sentiment many church leaders would appreciate: the implication that the church focuses on the truly important, spiritual things, instead of getting caught up in the quagmire of political debate. Regardless of the many arguments that could be made about the necessarily political character of the church or the need for churches to engage cultural issues, there’s one uncomfortable fact that trumps them all: our worship is political. Whether we intend for it to be or not, the songs we sing, the words we repeat, the prayers we pray, the rhythm and rituals of our corporate identity shape our political identity. The real question is not whether our churches are political, but whether we’re aware of it. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Palko Karasz The Jewish cemetery in Herrlisheim, north of Strasbourg, France, on Friday. The incident comes on the same week as a deadly attack at a Christmas market in Strasbourg. Credit Vincent Kessler/Reuters French officials paid their respects Friday at a Jewish cemetery near Strasbourg, where 37 tombstones and a monument to Holocaust victims had been defaced with swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti in the same week that a deadly attack that shook the nation. “When a place of recollection is desecrated, it’s the entire Republic that is sullied,” Christophe Castaner, France’s interior minister, wrote on Twitter after visiting the cemetery in Herrlisheim. “Everything is being done to identify and detain the authors of this desecration.” On Friday, local religious and government officials gathered at the ceremony in Herrlisheim. [ More ]

THE FRISKY Now, Islamic Canvas Art is usually a handwritten quote of Qur’an, done by the best calligraphy masters out there. Islamic calligraphy is indeed an artistic practice mixing Arabic, Ottoman, and Persian designs, based on the same alphabet. There are multiple types of arts, and each and every has its own purpose. Whether it is a humanism picture that should have a deep and moral meaning or it is a Pop-Art figure, all are beautiful and have their target audience. And among one of the most popular types of arts out there, especially out in the Middle East is the Islamic Canvas Art. There are multiple websites to buy Islamic Canvas Art at, and Best Buy Art is one of the best out there. With tons of hard-working calligraphy artists selling their well-done work that will fit your wall just right it is hard to pick. It shows all the strength of Islamic Canvas Art and the impact the calligraphy has on the Muslim society in general. [ More ]

THE APOLLO MAGAZINE Detail of “Radha and Krishna walking at night,”  ca. 1775–80 Pahari painting in the 17th and 18th centuries, the focus of this exhibition, presented the Hindu gods in a variety of novel ways, providing royal patrons in the Punjab with new contexts in which to frame their relationship to divinity.  Find out more about ‘Seeing the Divine’ from the Met’s website . This picture comes from the series, which once comprised some 70 paintings, believed to be the earliest example of pahari painting – literally, ‘painting from the Punjab Hills’. The exhibition argues that such paintings provided the patrons who commissioned them with a new means of visualising their relationship with divinity, as the gods were presented variously as naughty children, compassionate lovers, and powerful protectors. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Hilarie M. Sheets Monique and Ronald Ollie in front of Ed Clark’s “Untitled” (1975). Credit: Sam Gilliam/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times When Ronald Ollie was an engineering student at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in the early 1970s, he would take dates to the St. Louis Art Museum. Today, Mr. Ollie, a retired mechanical engineer, and his wife, Monique, who has a doctorate in biomedical engineering, talked about their collection in their Newark apartment, which has a spectacular view of Manhattan and walls covered with abstract work by black artists. The collecting compulsion was a pre-existing condition when Mr. Ollie met his future wife in 2003 at the National Black Fine Art Show . “I have picked out a few pieces, but mine are in the back,” Ms. Ollie, who is a project manager at Johnson & Johnson, said good-naturedly. [ More ]

ARTSY By Elyssa Goodman David LaChapelle Nativity, 2012 Templon Though David LaChapelle became known for his splashy, high-concept images of celebrities—from musician Elton John atop a leopard-print piano to supermodel Naomi Campbell in the buff, pouring milk on herself—an undercurrent of religious and art historical references have always run through his imagery. LaChapelle’s most recent monographs, 2017’s Lost + Found(Part I) and Good News (Part II) —which he has said are quite possibly his final volumes—particularly feature these themes. Here, we explore the iconography of LaChapelle’s work throughout the years; some of the works are currently on view at Galerie Templon in Paris and Staley-Wise Gallery in New York. [ More ]

STELLENBOSCH VISIO Abus, Thando Hopa, Sanele Xaba, Justin Dingwall, Albinism, Albino, White, Africa, South Africa Justin Dingwall’s interest lies in the unique and the different; “to me diversity is what makes humanity interesting and beautiful”. Recurring motifs of butterflies, snakes and water suggest notions of rebirth, metamorphosis, fluidity and flux; reflecting Dingwall’s desire to inspire a change in perception and indicate that beauty is not a fixed ideal but rather one that is ever shifting and changeable. The conception of beauty as it exists in Albus is one that is ambiguous, subjective and diverse. For more information or for the full catalogue of artworks please contact the gallery on gallery@cavalliestate.com or call them at 021 851 3218 or 082 5607672. [ Artist ] [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton "Visitation" (1529) by Jacopo Carlucci Pontormo Who did you visit with this week and why? In this painting, Pontormo (1494 – 1557) depicts the visitation of the Virgin Mary on her pregnant and aged cousin Elisabeth. Many artists have depicted this moment, but this time, we witness it through Pontormo's Mannerist style. Back home, this week, we visited friends and family at Pastor Vivian's house, the Artsgarden , The Cabaret , on the phone, and on Twitter too. Yes, it's a holiday tradition, but it can also relieve tension. That’s why Pontormo’s “ Visitation ” at the Morgan Library in New York City is our art of the week .

THE NEW YORK TIMES Show Us Your Walls By Ted Loos Alice Kandell, surrounded by her collection of 17th- to 19th-century Buddhist art. Credit Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times The story of how Alice S. Kandell discovered Tibetan Buddhist art sounds like the plot of a fanciful movie. These days, her Upper East Side apartment features around 250 objects, largely from Tibet. Many are bronzes depicting the Buddha and other deities. The collection includes household objects like teacups, too, and the bulk of the trove was made between the 17th and 19th centuries, what she called the high-water mark of Tibetan art. Most stunning is a dedicated shrine room that is richly layered with at least 100 pieces, including a ceremonial dagger, prayer beads and multiple bronzes, arranged as they might have been in a noble family’s home. [ More ]

RELIGION NEWS SERVICE By Jana Riess The “Once Upon A Deadpool” film poster. Image courtesy of Fox I have a confession to make: I walked out of the first Deadpool movie partway through in 2016, making it the only Marvel-universe movie I haven’t seen (often more times than I care to admit to you). But now a whole slew of Mormons are protesting Deadpool, not because of the movies themselves but because of a poster advertising Once Upon a Deadpool , which hit theaters yesterday for the holiday season. “Change the Deadpool poster to not mock the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day [sic] Saints,” says the headline. So it’s a painting by a non-Mormon that is associated in Mormon minds—but not necessarily the minds of the rest of the world—with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I [ More ]

RUTLAND HERALD By Carl Daher Delnero “Visitation”(1529) by Pontormo; oil on panel, 6’6”x5’1” is in the United States for the first time ever. In the year 787 the Roman Catholic Church, in the Second Council of Nicaea, laid down rules for depiction in sacred art. The objective was to teach the Christian faith to the illiterate masses through visual art. The church’s directions for depiction of the “Visitation” were clear: Mary should always be on the right of Elizabeth, and taller than her cousin. Halos over their heads were required. In this towering painting, Jacopo Carlucci Pontormo broke with traditional Catholic art canon and the High Renaissance style showing a deeply personal version of the miraculous encounter. Pontormo’s “Visitation” is at the Morgan Library in New York City through Jan. 6, then moves to The Getty in Los Angeles Feb. 5-April 28. [ More ]

BERKSHIRE EAGLE By Clarence Fant Artist Wendy Rabinowitz worked in mixed media, such as metals, fabric, paper, papyrus and silk. PITTSFIELD — For Judaica textile artist Wendy A. Rabinowitz , her work represented peace, healing, the earth and women's issues. "We can meet on common ground through our art," she told The Eagle in 2006. "When darkness appears, just watch for the light." Rabinowitz, who died in a traffic accident Tuesday at 72, grew up on Chicago's south side, where she liked to watch the sun rise over nearby Lake Michigan. Her father, Sam Rabens, was an accountant who had changed the family name; her mother was Geraldine Bielsker, a homemaker. For more than 30 years, Rabinowitz worked at her Living Threads Judaica studio at the East New Lenox Road home she shared with her husband, Jeffrey Borak, arts and entertainment editor of The Eagle. [ More ]

THE HINDU By Vaishna Roy In her 50 years of work, Baroda-based artist Nilima Sheikh has created layered works that reject the framed canvas and extend the ambit of viewing — not just physically, as when she creates a 38 ft. scroll, for example, but also in how she expands and questions concepts of authorship, mediums and histories. In the middle of setting up her show in Kochi for the Biennale, the artist took time off for a telephone interview. [ More ]

THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRUBUNE By Alicia Eler Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967), Cain and Abel, 5/8/26; wood engraving, Overall: 11 3/16 x 8 1/8 in. (28.4 x 20.6 cm); Purchased with funds from the Margret L. Wendt Foundation, 1980 The 75-minute drive from the Twin Cities to St. Peter, Minn., is enough time to mentally slow down. Tall glass-and-steel buildings are replaced by hearty pine trees and rolling meadows. Speedy cyclists aren’t weaving through traffic. Instead, a furry deer might land its hooves on the highway. This is the mind-set I drifted into on my journey to Gustavus Adolphus College to see “Oh My Heavens: Charles E. Burchfield,” a collection of 50 paintings and drawings by the early-20th-century painter and visionary artist on display at the Hillstrom Museum of Art . Whether or not you decide to think of Charles Burchfield as a religious artist, there is an undeniable spiritual presence in this show. [ More ]

NUVO WEEKLY By Dan Grossman The Arts Council's Ernest Disney-Britton At noon on Dec. 13, Ernest Disney-Britton, director of grant services at the Arts Council of Indianapolis, stepped up to the podium at the Artsgarden to announce the launch of the IndyArtsEd.org website. The announcement took place as a prologue to the Mistletoe Festival, an orchestral performance by Center for Inquiry Schools. “Beginning today, central Indiana teachers and parents are going to have 24/7 access to an online directory that offers hundreds of arts education offerings for your kids,” said Disney-Britton. “So when a teacher is doing their lessons at 11 p.m. at night because they can’t do it during the school day, they’ll be able to go online, and access programs from 25+ organizations beginning right now.” [ More ]

WFYI By Carter Barrett The Arts Council of Indianapolis launched a new website to provide teachers and parents with a directory of arts programming in central Indiana. The Arts Council director of education partnerships Ernest Disney-Britton says there’s often a communication barrier between teachers and arts organizations. "What we needed was some sort of Angie’s List for arts education," Disney-Britton says "Where teachers could evaluate the programs of the arts organizations and other teachers could see what those evaluations were." The new website filters programs by categories including artistic discipline, ages served and subject. As of Friday, there are around 100 programs listed. [ More ]

APOLLO By Christopher Baker Ample evidence of Tintoretto’s imaginative skills and work ethic are provided in the splendid exhibition devoted to his drawings at the Morgan Library in New York (which travels to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in the spring). It forms part of the widespread celebrations of Tintoretto’s achievement, commemorating his birth, which include the major paintings exhibition in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, and the show focusing on the artist’s portraiture in the Lehman wing at the Met. ‘Drawing in Tintoretto’s Venice’ is at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, until 6 January 2019. [ More ]

THE ART NEWSPAPER By Danna Lorch Manal Ataya, the director-general of the Sharjah Museums Authority It is no secret that the art ecosystem in the Gulf is dominated by women. Much more than figureheads, there are female royal patrons, experienced expatriates and homegrown professionals leading cornerstone institutions including Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, 21,39 Jeddah Arts, Qatar Museums and Sharjah Art Foundation. Western observers often delight in pondering why so many women are at the forefront of this scene, a relative newcomer to the global art world. To the women themselves, gender is almost a non-issue. The Art Newspaper spoke to three female directors who are shaping the future of museums in the Gulf about their efforts to build creative communities, embrace inclusivity in the workplace and reveal the relevance—beyond the beauty—of Islamic art. [ More ]

APOLLO By Matthew Holman Detail of Camouflage Last Supper (1986), Andy Warhol. It is often repeated that to see one Warhol is to see them all. And, in turning reproducibility into an art form, isn’t that half Warhol’s point? Yet at the Whitney’s spectacular survey of his work, ‘Andy Warhol – From A to B and Back Again’, nothing feels further from the truth. This exhibition of some 350 works opens with the headliners, a room dedicated to the silk-screened images that have made Warhol an instantly recognisable Pop superstar: the Brillo pads, Campbell soup cans, and Coca-Cola bottles. But the central achievement of this exhibition is how it frames Warhol before and after his 1960s heyday and demonstrates the complexities of his oeuvre ­– settling the question of whether we have exhausted ways of seeing his work. [ More ]

ALETEIA By . M. Traverso Donatello’s crucifix inside Padua’s Saint Mary of the Servants Church (15th century) The start of the Renaissance in the 14th century marks a shift in art production compared with the late medieval period. A renewed interest in classicism, an attention to nature and a more individualistic vision of man. One of the most important revolutions in religious art is the deep emphasis on Jesus’ “humanitas” (Latin for “humanity”). Sculptors were interested in evoking empathy towards the human represented on the crucifix rather than reverence for the divine. By taking a look at three crucifixes by Florentine sculptor Donatello, crafted in the 15th century, we can see how the concept of “humanitas” started to play out in early Renaissance religious art. [ More ]

DESIGN DABA By Justin Dingwall Abus, Thando Hopa, Sanele Xaba, Justin Dingwall, Albinism, Albino, White, Africa, South Africa I love all of my images in the series because they are all so different. I use specific elements to foreground the symbolic meaning behind each work. Water is an element I uses to reflect society’s perceptions. Water suggests self-reflection and it is often used in literature as a symbol of change. The snake that I used in my newer works connotes transformation - as in the shedding of old skin to make way for new and also, as in medical discourse, to represent healing. Another symbol of nature used in this series is the butterfly. By using butterflies my aims was to influence the viewer’s vision to be transformed, allowing them to view albinism in a new light - as something unique and beautiful. In the process of transformation, butterflies go through a major metamorphosis changing to such an extreme they are unrecognizable at the end of the transforma...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Devan Shimoyama is creating new spiritual narratives for queer black men Tears cover the background as collages of crystals, a backdrop for a lone figure searching for safety in a world hostile to black, queer bodies. Devan Shimoyama  is a shamanistic figure searching and teaching with a composition inspired by the canon of Caravaggio. His interest in spirituality is also reflected in his fascination with science fiction authors like Octavia Butler. This week, we read reports on his exhibits in both Miami and Pittsburgh. That makes "Devan Shimoyama: Cry, Baby" at The Andy Warhol Museum , our art of the week.

WEBWIRE Peter Paul Rubens, The Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1610. Oil on panel, 142 x 183 x 1.9 cm. The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. © 2018 Art Gallery of Ontario Famous at a young age, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) remains one of the most renowned painters in Western art history. Featuring over 30 large-scale paintings – including several never before shown in North America – and about 20 works on paper, Early Rubens is an ambitious and revealing exhibition of works the Flemish painter produced between 1609 to 1621. This period, when Antwerp experienced a pause in a violent war, aligns with Rubens’s return to Antwerp and his rise to prominence on the world stage. Opening at the AGO on Oct. 12, 2019, Early Rubens is organized in partnership with the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco (FAMSF) and is curated by Dr. Sasha Suda, the AGO’s Curator of European Art, and Dr. Kirk Nickel, Assistant Curator of European Painting, FAMSF. The exhibition runs in Toronto to...

THE HINDU By S. Anandan Artist Subodh Gupta’s work which will be up for auction. The art world is launching a figurative Noah’s Ark, a live art auction titled ‘Art Rises for Kerala’ (ARK), to save Kerala society, which is picking up the pieces after a devastating flood. Steered by the Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF) in partnership with the art auction house Saffronart, the auction featuring about 40 works by renowned artists will be held at Grand Hyatt in Kochi on January 18, during the course of the forthcoming edition of the Kochi Muziris Biennale (KMB) – a 108-day-long contemporary art jamboree getting under way on December 12. “The goal is to raise anywhere between ₹5 crore and ₹10 crore,” says Mr. Krishnamachari. [ More ]

THE TELEGRAPH By Zhang Dandan Lodrui Palsang, a master thangka painter, is one of the few recognised thangka inheritors in Tibet CREDIT: DAQIONG/CHINA DAILY Thangka paintings, originating more than 1,300 years ago, were traditionally kept unframed and rolled up when not on display. In the early days, these painted scrolls became very popular with travelling monks because of their portability and flourished especially in the 14th and 15th centuries, according to Lodrui Palsang, an inheritor of the Tibetan thangka. Lodrui Palsang is a third-generation inheritor of the art. His grandfather was a famed thangka painter and mask craftsman, who painted and restored plenty of the frescoes for local Tibetan temples. Currently, Lodrui Palsang earns his living by painting murals for rebuilt and expanded temples with no need for extra subsidies from the government. He also teaches apprentices and to date the 35-year-old has taught more than 30 to create thangka. [ More ]

ARTSPACE By Loney Abrams WESAAM AL-BADRY Valentino #X, 2018 Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York and San Francisco Booth D22 $3,000.00 - $10,000.00 MIAMI--- Untitled Art, Miami Beach opened to VIPs yesterday at Ocean Drive and 12th Street in South Beach, Miami. Here are six stand-out works from the fair. Currently based in San Francisco, Wesaam Al-Badry was born in Nasiriyah, Iraq in 1984. “As a young man growing up in middle America, Al-Badry fiercely felt the disconnect between his experiences in Iraq and the refugee camps and his new American reality,” says the gallery. But now, the relationship between Western ideals and traditional Muslim culture forms the bases of his work. Staging portraits featuring women wearing these custom luxury niqabs, the artist displays Western consumerism’s influence on Muslim culture, revealing the tension between Occidental and Arab-Islamic ideologies. [ More ]

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW. LA By Michael Wright Jay Stuckey, Baptism (2018). Oil on canvas, 44 x 60 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Anat Egbi. After the sardonic humor of Anat Ebgi’s  "Worshipping Sticks and Stones" registers, the show’s deeper interests begin to emerge: violence toward the body and the rituals that negotiate it. The artists of this group show approach these themes with various levels of seriousness and diverse subject matter, a fact that complicates the exhibition as a whole. In oil paintings and plush totems, Jay Stuckey’s figures baptize and assault one another with the same gleeful faces, creating intentional dissonance between the cartoonish surface and serious archetypes of human behavior. “ Worshipping Sticks and Stones ” runs from November 3–December 8, 2018 at Anat Ebgi (2660 S. La Cienega Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90034). [ More ]

YORK DISPATCH By Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press Photo by Antonio Calanni of decommissioned church in 2017 where members now play tennis inside the former sanctuary ROME — The Vatican and bishops from Europe and beyond have developed proposed guidelines for the sale or reuse of Catholic churches to help ensure that they retain their cultural heritage and serve the good of the community, not commerce. With some churches being turned into discos, gelaterias or demolished outright, the guidelines suggest that if the church cannot be given to another Christian community, it should be reused for cultural or societal aims. Those would include being used as a museum, a library or conference hall, a food bank for the poor or charity center. [ More ]