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Works by Canadian artist Elizabeth Magill now on view at Annely Juda Fine Art
LONDON.- Annely Juda Fine Art is now hosting the gallerys first exhibition of recent paintings by London-based Irish artist Elizabeth Magill (b. 1959). Magills paintings are enigmatic and evocative psychological takes on the traditional landscape genre. The title of the exhibition By This River is in homage to Brian Enos song of the same title, with each painting named after a line from the song. Rich with fragmented forms and kaleidoscopic patterning, the images are formed by Magills imagination, memories and photographs. The term inscape has been used to describe Magills works - landscapes not conceived by direct observation but imbued with a sense of self and reflection. Though they have a cinematic beauty, her paintings are eerie and foreboding: trees or telephone wires conceal the view, birds flock in the night sky, silhouetted human figures against backdrops of hills, roc ... More

Crow Museum of Asian Art names Natalia Di Pietrantonio, PH.D. as museum's new curator
DALLAS, TX.- After a national search, the Crow Museum of Asian Art of The University of Texas at Dallas has named Natalia Di Pietrantonio, Ph.D., as the Museums new curator. Di Pietrantonio joins the Crow Museum from the Seattle Art Museum, where she served as inaugural curator of South Asian art, caring for their South Asian, Southeast Asian and Islamic art collections, while also serving as an affiliate art history faculty member at the University of Washington. Known for her creative and progressive leadership, Di Pietrantonio has garnered acclaim as an interdisciplinary art historian with expertise in global contemporary and historical Asian and Islamicate art. Di Pietrantonio arrives at a pivotal point as the Crow ... More

Andrew Lloyd Webber, darling of the avant-garde?
NEW YORK, NY.- The closing of The Phantom of the Opera this past spring left a chandelier-sized hole in New York. And as of this summer, for the first time in 44 years, there is no Andrew Lloyd Webber musical running on Broadway. But now comes an unexpected new chapter in the career of one of musical theaters most successful, if not always appreciated, composers: Several adventurous contemporary directors are declaring they love his work and want to put their stamp on it. Ivo van Hove, a Belgian director known for his profuse use of video and viscous fluids, is tackling Jesus Christ Superstar in Amsterdam, while Jamie Lloyd, the British auteur with a penchant for Pinter and an aversion to scenery, is sharpening Sunset Boulevard in London. Meanwhile, in the United States, Sammi Cannold is putting a feminist stamp on Evita, ... More

Review: 'Purlie Victorious' throws a comic funeral for racism
NEW YORK, NY.- Two years before he made his I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. attended the 100th performance of Purlie Victorious at the Cort Theater on Broadway. He knew the playwright, Ossie Davis, and his wife, Ruby Dee, from their work in the civil rights movement. Now the couple were starring in Davis raucous comedy about a stem-winding Black preacher from Georgia. It would not have been lost on the stem-winding King, likewise from Georgia, that he and Purlie Victorious had something in common. They were, after all, in the same fight against racism in the plays case by laughing it to death. And yet, did it die? If it did, why are we still laughing? The Purlie Victorious that opened Wednesday at the Music Box unaccountably its first Broadway revival is every bit as scathingly ... More

Own a piece of 'Tron,' the movie that changed the movies forever
DALLAS, TX.- The moment Tron begins, it's literally off to the races. Just one minute into the 1982 film that transformed cinema, the audience is dropped into a sequence unlike any other in moving-picture history: A videogame player in "the real world" drops a quarter into a machine, grabs a joystick, then begins steering one beam of light against another illuminated on the screen. The camera pushes in, and suddenly, we're inside the game as two Light Cycles roar along a stark, colorful digital grid, each trying not to crash into the other or the light trails left in their wake. It's climax as introduction and a warning, too: Strap in and hang on. Tron, written and directed by Steven Lisberger with the assistance of hundreds of fellow revolutionaries, didn't hide his intention to dazzle and delight. Watching the movie about "programs" using digital frisbees ... More

Keith Haring's iconic take on Andy Warhol leads Heritage's Prints & Multiples event
DALLAS, TX.- As a rising art star, Keith Haring was always open about his reverence for Andy Warhol. The two hit it off once Haring hit the commercial scene in New York Haring spent time at the Factory and the two often traded work, and Warhol made it clear in his famous diaries that he genuinely liked Haring and his work. While the two shared a philosophy on Pop Art's profound resonance and the power of mass media to create the conditions that could make "art for everyone," in Haring's eyes Warhol was more of an icon than a mere mortal. In 1986, after opening his Pop Shop downtown, solidifying his powerful graphical sensibility, his gift for recognizable motif-making and his bold use of color, Haring created a portfolio many consider to be from an artist at the very top of his game, and he did it to honor his hero. Andy Mouse is a set of four screenprints ... More

Treasure trove of vintage James Dean photos from 1957 documentary lead Heritage's October Photographs event
DALLAS, TX.- When the 24-year-old James Dean died in a car crash on September 30, 1955, an up-and-coming director named Robert Altman was in the middle of making a documentary about the young movie star. Altman, along with the documentary's co-director and producer, his friend George W. George, were as stunned as the rest of the world by the tragedy, with the added shock that Dean's death ground their project to halt mid-production. Following Dean's meteoric rise via his starring role in East of Eden (the much-anticipated Rebel Without a Cause and Gianthad yet to be released), the world was hungry for this filmic profile and Altman and George had Dean's full participation. Now their subject was gone. George's ... More

America's Black cemeteries and three women trying to save them
WASHINGTON, DC.- The childs headstone is inscribed simply Nannie, marking the grave of a 7-year-old girl who died May 18, 1856. She is buried in one of Washingtons oldest Black cemeteries, in a neglected corner of Georgetown. For years, she has touched visitors who have left toys, dolls and birthday cards at her grave. This year on Juneteenth, the June 19 holiday commemorating Emancipation, 200 people visited the Mount Zion-Female Union Band Society cemeteries to see Nannies grave and others buried there. The crowd was a big one for the long-struggling burial grounds, adjacent to one another and separated by only a battered cyclone fence from the neighboring Oak Hill Cemetery, the premier final address for Washingtons largely white elite. It was amazing that such a large, multiracial group had come, said Lisa Fager, the executive ... More

Pearl Bowser, expert in early Black filmmakers, dies at 92
NEW YORK, NY.- Pearl Bowser, a film historian, curator and collector who was instrumental in preserving and bringing to light the works of Black filmmakers from early in the last century, especially those of Oscar Micheaux, whom one writer described as the Jackie Robinson of American film, died Sept. 14 in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. She was 92. Her daughter Gillian Bowser confirmed the death. Bowser developed an interest in the forgotten works of early Black filmmakers in the 1960s when, while working as a researcher on a colleagues idea for a book about Micheaux, she traveled to California from New York to interview aging actors who had been in movies made by Micheaux decades earlier. She began hunting down and collecting movies by Micheaux and other Black filmmakers from the early decades of the 1900s works ... More

Christie's Hong Kong announces the auction debut for Sanyu's first major nude painting
HONG KONG.- On 28 November, Christies Hong Kong will present the auction debut of Sanyus pioneering masterpiece, Nude on Tapestry the first major nude painting by the artist, as a leading highlight of the 20th/21st Century Art Evening Sale. Painted almost a century ago in Paris and residing in private hands to this day, the sale will mark the first time the painting has appeared in Asia. An exceptionally rare work and one of Sanyus earliest and finest reclining nudes of this composition, Nude on Tapestry has an outstanding provenance and comes directly from the prestigious Dreyfus Collection. As the auction market leader for Sanyu masterpieces, this sale continues Christies track record of presenting the artists most iconic and celebrated themes. Fresh-to-Market with Preeminent Provenance: Currently sitting in the Dreyfus ... More

Phillips announces two October selling exhibitions in New York at 432 Park Avenue
NEW YORK, NY.- PhillipsX will present two concurrent selling exhibitions in the month of October, Nature, Myth, Identity: The Saar Assemblages and Written In The Sky: Works by Ed Ruscha. Each of these shows will be on view at 432 Park Avenue from 4 13 October. The Saar collection comes to Phillips in conjunction with Trotta-Bono Contemporary and features works by Betye, Lezley, and Alison Saar, collected over the course of a few decades by Jan and Dr. Richard Baum. This grouping of artwork reflects a familial narrative and the significant impact the Saars had on one another as well as the art world, particularly in the areas of African American art, feminist art, and assemblage. Alongside this is Written In The Sky: Works by Ed Ruscha featuring a variety of pieces from the artist, including the large scale masterpiece Alvarado to Doheny. ... More