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☆ Latin American Artists Reinvent Their Histories
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Holland Cotter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The land of the brave and home of the free has always been bearish about borders, about who gets in, who stays out. And it’s always been evident culturally in, for example, the kind of art our museums have brought through the door. The Museum of Modern Art’s long but sporadic pattern of collecting 20th century Latin American art offers a constructive gauge. Art markets went bust. And in the confusion, walls began to come down as the permission-giving shake-up called multiculturalism — pro-diversity, anti-essentialist — arrived.

Persons: essentialist — Organizations: MoMA

☆ What Does it Take to Run a Museum? The Job Description Is Changing.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Robin Pogrebin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

“You have to be an octopus, and the new generation of museum directors will have to be entrepreneurs,” said Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum. “The field is going through seismic change and we need leaders who can stay grounded among the disruption. Climate activists announced plans to protest the Museum of Modern Art’s fund-raiser on Tuesday to draw attention to its board’s ties to to the fossil fuel industry. And museum staffs have not been shy about going public with criticisms of their own institutions. Some institutions worry that it will become more difficult to attract potential leaders who increasingly see director positions less as a way for them to share their aesthetic tastes, and more as a path to no-win managerial headaches.

Persons: ”, Anne Pasternak Organizations: Brooklyn Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Whitney, Climate, Modern

☆ Lego to launch 'Pac-Man' arcade cabinet model
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( Jack Guy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Toy company Lego is about to release a 2,561-piece set celebrating “Pac-Man.”The set is based on a real 1980s arcade game cabinet and comes complete with a light brick to illuminate the coin slot, Lego said on its website. LEGO“Pac-Man” was launched in Tokyo in 1980 and went on to become the most successful arcade game of all time. While the Lego set does not actually function as a gaming system, it is “loaded with retro game details you’ll want to devour,” the company says. The creation of 25-year-old game designer Toru Iwatani, “Pac-Man” pioneered a number of innovations in gameplay and game design. The Pac-Man Arcade set goes on sale for $270 on June 4, as part of Lego’s Icons collection, which is “designed for a challenging yet rewarding building experience,” the company says.

☆ Fierce Competition and Lychee Martinis at an Underground Mahjong Club
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Jason Chen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The idea for an office mahjong league came unexpectedly to Bella Janssens, the director of the architectural design firm Food New York, which has collaborated with Virgil Abloh, Axel Vervoordt and Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art. Though it originated in China in the 19th century, mahjong has long been popular throughout Southeast Asia, Japan and America; it was brought stateside by a Standard Oil company representative returning from Shanghai in the 1920s. Wong, who was born and raised in San Diego, had a typical second-generation immigrant’s relationship to mahjong. (His parents are from Hong Kong.) “I played it once, probably with my grandparents and great-aunts, and my memory was that I won that game,” he says, “and only 30 years later did I realize they were probably just [messing] with me.”

☆ Fact Check-Ukrainian coat of arms predates use of trident symbol by far-right nationalists
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The Ukrainian coat of arms, a trident, is an official symbol of the country and dates back over a thousand years. The blue shield with a gold trident-like symbol is seen on the Military of Defense of Ukraine site and is currently listed as the country’s official coat of arms (here). FAR-RIGHT NATIONALISTS ADOPTED THE SYMBOLFar-right Ukrainian nationalists during the pre-WW2 era “naturally used symbols that were historically associated with Ukraine,” Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Center on Extremism said, including what is now the Ukrainian coat of arms. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), was founded in 1929 to “liberate Ukraine from Soviet rule and create an independent Ukrainian state,” according to Reuters reporting from 2015 (here). While far-right Ukrainian nationalists have used the trident symbol, the symbol is from a millennium earlier, is on Ukraine’s coat of arms, and is not proof Zelenskiy is connected to extremists.

☆ Evelyne Axell was a trailblazer of erotic pop art in the 1960s. Then she died
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Jacqui Palumbo | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —Throughout Evelyne Axell’s short but radical career, the Belgian artist revered the female body in psychedelic hues rendered in gleaming enamel. In 1972, only a handful of years into painting, she died in a car crash and faded into relative obscurity. But such sales for Axell are infrequent, according to Sara Friedlander, Christie’s deputy chairman of post-war and contemporary art. Her stylistic approach — a mix of pop art influences and dreamy surrealist settings — is still underrecognized, according to Morris. “She acts as a historical bridge (between surrealism and pop art),” she said.

☆ Steven Wright, Master of the One-Liner, Tries His Hand at a Novel
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Jason Zinoman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If there’s one living stand-up legend whose jokes are perfect for Twitter, it’s Steven Wright. Not only are they concise (“Lost a buttonhole”) but so meticulously absurd (“I like to reminisce with people I don’t know”) that rapid shifts of context don’t distort their meaning. So it was a surprise that when he started an account in 2011, he didn’t use it to try out punch lines, but to write a novel — very slowly. It almost sounds like a Steven Wright joke. “I wanted to put a funnel on Harold’s head and pour everything I think about being alive” into it, he said.

☆ CNBC Daily Open: In the eye of the storm
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Yeo Boon Ping | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

This report is from today's CNBC Daily Open, our new, international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Indeed, the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) fell by 2%. We might just be in the eye of a storm. Subscribe here to get this report sent directly to your inbox each morning before markets open.

☆ Weird and wonderful trains that break the rules
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Ben Jones | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +14 min

Here’s a selection of unusual railways that break the rules in order to reach the places other trains can’t roll. The single rails carrying the trains are supported by a series of 486 steel portals weighing almost 20,000 tonnes in total. It is the oldest continuously operating pier railway in the world. Six miles of the route are along a rural railway line, with the rest in bus mode. Katoomba Scenic Railway, AustraliaNot far from the wonderful city of Sydney is a railway experience unlike anything else in the world.

☆ ‘The Melt Goes On Forever’ Review: David Hammons Makes, and They Take
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Wesley Morris | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The title of this new documentary about the artist David Hammons is a mouthful: “The Melt Goes On Forever: The Art & Times of David Hammons.” It’s playing at Film Forum, and I don’t envy whoever has to make it fit the marquee. But they should figure that out because the title feels crucial to the aim of this movie, a sly, toasty, piquant consideration of Hammons’s conceptual art, the way it mocks and eludes easy ownership. Which is to say: the way his art is aware of — the way it’s often about — the stakes for Black people navigating the straits of the market. That piece is like a lot of Hammons’s work: tragicomic. It would have been enough to behold the assortment of thrilling footage of Hammons at work, in conversation and, in one contentious encounter, under interrogation by a group of students.

☆ She Wants to Rewrite the Story of Art, Without Men
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Dayna Evans | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Two pale children dressed in black cloaks seem to be seeking guidance from the bull, as well as a phantom spirit. “I like the idea that there’s something happening in secret here,” said Ms. Hessel, hovering her finger near the painting’s faceless dancing apparition. As an expression of Ms. Carrington’s dual upbringing — her rebellious youth in Britain and subsequent escape to Mexico — “these hybridized figures feel like figures from two worlds in a way,” Ms. Hessel said. Ms. Hessel, petite, with long brown hair parted in the middle, carried the U.S. edition of her forthcoming 512-page art history book, “The Story of Art Without Men,” in a white Bao Bao Issey Miyake tote slung over an Axel Arigato trench coat. Though it isn’t especially unusual these days for certain podcast hosts to get recognized in public, it remains less common for an art historian like Ms. Hessel.

☆ How an Architect Gave La Scala a 21st-Century Update
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Sam Lubell | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Over the past two decades, La Scala, completed by the architect Giuseppe Piermarini in 1778, has experienced its most profound changes since after World War II, when it suffered severe damage from Allied bombing raids. Mr. Botta’s first phase of work at La Scala was carried out from 2002 to 2004, and the second, begun in 2019, has just wrapped up. What is the scope of your work at La Scala? But to effectively make it work today, it needed to be much more flexible and capable than what existed in the 1700s. We’ve created a series of elements designed to make the theater function for the 2000s.

☆ Soviet and Russian fashion icon Zaitsev dies - agencies
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Lidia Kelly | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

May 1 (Reuters) - Vyacheslav "Slava" Zaitsev, the couturier behind world-famous Soviet fashion that was often adorned with colourful Russian folkloric motifs, died on Sunday at age 85, Russian news agencies reported. After the show, Zaitsev received offers to open stores in the West, which the Soviet authorities rejected. In 1979, Zaitsev left the All-Union House of Models for a small atelier, which by 1982 he turned into the Slava Zaitsev Moscow Fashion House, becoming the first Soviet designer allowed to label his clothing. Among Zaitsev's Russian clients were music stars, actors, socialites and politicians. The patronage of Raisa Gorbacheva, the wife of the last Soviet Union leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, elevated his international fame in the 1980s.

☆ Tate Modern Finds Its New Director in Norway
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Alex Marshall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Karin Hindsbo, the director of Norway’s recently opened National Museum, was on Friday named the new director of Tate Modern in London, one of the world’s most popular museums. Hindsbo, a Danish-born art historian, will take on the role in September, replacing Frances Morris, who has led Tate Modern since 2016. Last October, Morris announced she was leaving to focus on curatorial projects, and to work on addressing the art world’s climate impacts. The directorship of Tate Modern is one of the European art world’s highest-profile roles, with the museum expected to regularly stage blockbuster exhibitions of contemporary and modern art. Under Morris’s leadership, it’s hosted acclaimed shows including a sold-out Cézanne retrospective, a career-spanning exhibition of the British artist Steve McQueen’s video pieces and an exploration of work by African American artists during the civil rights era.

☆ Georgia O’Keeffe, ‘Modernized’ by MoMA
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Roberta Smith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the spring of 1946 the Museum of Modern Art mounted its first solo exhibition of a female artist: a retrospective devoted to the work of the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe’s success owed much to Stieglitz’s promotion, especially his eroticized reading of her paintings of landscapes and semiabstract flowers as expressions of female sexuality. By 1929, O’Keeffe was quite well-off, thanks to Stieglitz’s efforts. Yet for nearly 80 years after O’Keeffe’s MoMA retrospective, the museum didn’t pay her much attention. Since 1946 its O’Keeffe holdings has risen lackadaisically to 13 works, including five from the artist’s foundation and bequest in the mid-90s.

☆ Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Shaped by the Land
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Jillian Steinhauer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

She and her sister were raised by their father, Arthur, after their mother, who gave birth to Smith as a teenager, left. Arthur was a horse trader, and while attending school, Smith worked with him — and in canneries and on farms — throughout her childhood. In high school, a white adviser told her, “Indians don’t go to college,” so she did college prep. When an art teacher told her she drew better than the men, but that “women cannot be artists,” she got an art education degree. (Her son Neal Ambrose-Smith is also an artist; two of their collaborations are on view at the Whitney.)

☆ 6 Picasso Shows to See This Year
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Gabe Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Pablo Picasso’s 1921 painting “Three Women at the Spring” will be shown at the Museum of Modern Art this fall, in one of several exhibitions at American and European museums marking the 50th anniversary of the artist’s death. Credit... Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via The Museum of Modern Art

☆ Picasso: Love Him or Hate Him?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Deborah Solomon | April | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +14 min

It is not hugely cool to profess a love for Picasso these days. This is what Picasso’s detractors — like Hannah Gadsby, the Australian comedian and Picasso basher, who will help curate a Picasso show at the Brooklyn Museum opening on June 2 — often miss. Picasso, by contrast, brought the weight of lived experience into his work, even when he was tethered to archetypal subjects. “The Mother” (1901), an early painting by Picasso, shows a view of motherhood purged of Renaissance idealization. The conventional view of the painting holds that the women are “dolled-up cocottes,” as John Richardson glibly put it in his biography of Picasso.

☆ Thomas H. Lee, pioneer of leveraged buyouts, is dead at 78
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Chris Isidore | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Thomas H. Lee, a private equity financier who pioneered the use of leveraged buyouts that helped to reshape corporate America, has passed away, according to a notice from his former firm that still bears his name. “We are profoundly saddened by the unexpected passing of our good friend and former partner, Thomas H. Lee,” said THL in a statement. “Tom was an iconic figure in private equity. One of Thomas Lee’s most famous, and lucrative, leveraged buyouts was his purchase of Snapple for $135 million in 1992. Lee left THL in 2006 and started another private equity firm, Lee Equity Partners.

☆ A husband-wife duo turned the $1,700 Snoo into the holy grail of parenting, but some say they run their company like a dysfunctional 'surveillance state'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Kate Taylor | Jake Swearingen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +31 min

Karp and Montée Karp built the hype into a parenting-media empire that put out three books and two instructional films in 10 years. Karp and Montée Karp met at a Hollywood party in the early '90s. Karp and Montée Karp promised her independence and flexibility to accommodate her two young children's day-care schedules and a 90-minute commute. Karp and Montée Karp insisted on being involved in minutiae that most top executives hand off. Karp and Montée Karp turned the Snoo into an award-winning holy grail of parenthood in just a few years.

☆ Nina Montée Karp and Dr. Harvey Karp turned the $1,700 Snoo into the holy grail of parenting. But some say they overhyped the crib's abilities and created a nightmarish corporate culture.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Kate Taylor | Jake Swearingen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +31 min

☆ Luxury-apartment residents who had 'hundreds of thousands' of people peering through their windows each year win court case
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Isobel Van Hagen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Residents at NEO Bankside — a luxury-apartment complex with large glass windows beside the art museum — argued that "hundreds of thousands of spectators each year" are able to peer into their homes. The viewing deck at the Tate Modern galleryoffers 36 degree views of London. On Wednesday, however, Leggatt ruled that the Tate's viewing terrace was a "straightforward case of nuisance" for those who brought the case. Luxury flats are seen from the terrace at the Tate Modern gallery in London in 2020. While the terrace is now "temporarily closed to the public," the case will return to the country's high court to reach a solution between the Tate Modern and residents.

☆ The Art Behind Supply Chains Is Front and Center at a Museum Exhibit
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Liz Young | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Newsletter Sign-up The Logistics Report Top news and in-depth analysis on the world of logistics, from supply chain to transport and technology. “What we wanted to do was to make the invisible visible, to look at the supply chain as a key part of how AI works,” Dr. Crawford said. “The best artists are all geometry and symmetrical work coupled with creativity, and that’s what supply chain is. Some of the artists on display in the MoMA gallery have gone on to create more work centered on supply chains. “When you start to do this research, you see everything differently and the precarity of the supply chain was made so clear to me,” she said.

☆ Inside Ken Griffin's rise to one of Wall Street's most powerful people, and why politics could be next
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Dakin Campbell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +30 min

JB and I are not on speaking terms these days," said Ken Griffin, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, referring to JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois. As Florida rolled back pandemic restrictions more quickly than Chicago, even more Citadel employees migrated south. Ken Griffin's hedge fund has had a run of eye-popping returns since 2020. Others worry that it gives Griffin's hedge fund an unfair advantage. Hundreds of Citadel employees, partners, and families gathered at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando Florida.

People communicate with each other at the Congress Center for the World Economic Forum WEF Annual Meeting 2023 in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 15, 2023. DAVOS, Switzerland – U.S. lawmakers quietly took part in a private ritzy lunch atop the World Economic Forum on Monday featuring dozens of influential business leaders, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Chris Coons, D-Del., Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. and a few members of the House of Representatives, these people explained. Coons, Manchin, Sinema and Kemp are among the U.S.-based officials scheduled to participate in panel sessions at this year's conference. These private events on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum often serve as meet-and-greets between CEOs, billionaires and government officials.

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