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Are we in a new golden age for the movie soundtrack?
NEW YORK, NY.- After watching “I Saw the TV Glow,” the new film from director Jane Schoenbrun, I felt a sensation I hadn’t felt in a while: I need this soundtrack. The genre-defying movie is a surreal story about two high schoolers in the 1990s who become obsessed with a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”-like show called “The Pink Opaque.” It’s a rich film that draws on horror, ’90s television and Schoenbrun’s experience coming out as transgender. But it also boasts some incredible tunes, like a hypnotic cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” by the artist yeule and performances from King Woman, Sloppy Jane and Phoebe Bridgers, who appear on-screen as musicians at a club the characters visit. The full soundtrack has more to love: The swelling emotion of Caroline Polachek’s “Starburned and Unkissed” and ... More

'The Camera Never Lies: Challenging images through The Incite Project' opens at The Sainsbury Centre
NORWICH.- Joining the Sainsbury Centre’s 6-month long investigation into What is Truth? is an exhibition re-evaluating the most iconic images of the past 100 years. The Camera Never Lies: Challenging images through The Incite Project explores the impact and influence photography has had on shaping – and in some cases distorting the narrative of major global events. Featuring more than 100 works by legendary photographers including Don McCullin (b.1935), Stuart Franklin (b.1956), Robert Capa (1913-1954) and Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), as well as modern practitioners, this extensive exhibition charts a global century of iconic documentation and manipulation. Sometimes seen as superior to text, photographs are now a mainstay of how the media and the public consume events such as war, famine, and celebrity. But ... More

The James Museum welcomes Lise Dube-Scherr as new Deputy Director for Art & Education
ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.- The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art announced the appointment of Lise Dube-Scherr as its Deputy Director for Art & Education, starting on May 20, 2024. With an extensive background in art and historic house museum management, Dube-Scherr brings over 20 years of expertise to her new role at the museum. She will lead efforts to elevate the museum’s exhibitions and educational programming, enriching the visitor experience and developing programming that cements The James Museum as a cultural and community hub in Tampa Bay and the Southeast. Dube-Scherr’s arrival completes The James Museum’s senior leadership team, joining Deputy Director for Development & Communications Debbie Sokolov and Deputy Director for Finance & Operations Jeremy Gray. Together, they will advance ... More

Fondazione Merz announces finalists for the Mario Merz Prize, 5th Edition
TURIN.- Fondazione Merz announced the five artist finalists for the Mario Merz Prize, 5th Edition’s Art category, and the three composers shortlisted for the Music Category. Elena Bellantoni (Italy), Mohamed Bourouissa (France/Algeria), Anna Franceschini (Italy), Voluspa Jarpa (Chile), Agnes Questionmark (Italy) are the artists selected by this year’s jury composed of Beatrice Merz (President, Fondazione Merz); Claudia Gioia (Independent Curator), and Samuel Gross (Special Project Manager Musée d’Art e d’Histoire, Geneva). In late spring 2025 Fondazione Merz will present a group exhibition of the shortlisted artists in Turin. The winner will be commissioned to produce a new site-specific solo exhibition at the Foundation in 2026. In the Music Category, the three shortlisted composers are: Arturo Corrales (El Salvador), Natalia ... More

A shock of red for a royal portrait
NEW YORK, NY.- Royal portraits, as a rule, tend to be fairly staid, predictable affairs. Full of symbolism, sure, but generally symbolism of the traditional, establishment kind: symbols of state, of office, of pomp and lineage. Which is why the new official portrait of King Charles III by Jonathan Yeo, the first since the king’s coronation, has created such a controversy. A larger-than-life (7.5 feet by 5.5 feet) canvas, the portrait shows the king standing in his Welsh Guards uniform, hands on the hilt of his sword, a half-smile on his face, with a butterfly hovering just over his right shoulder. His entire body is bathed in a sea of crimson, so his face appears to be floating. Although the butterfly was apparently the key piece of semiology — meant, Yeo told the BBC, to represent Charles’ metamorphosis from prince to sovereign and his long-standing ... More

NOMA unveils new installation by artist Thomas J Price in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden
NEW YORK, NY.- The New Orleans Museum of Art has installed a new outdoor sculpture by artist Thomas J Price in the museum’s Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden. Price’s sculpture, titled Time Unfolding, 2023, is a nine-foot-tall statue of a woman looking down at her cell phone, seemingly paused in contemplation. The work is part of a series depicting everyday fictional subjects at a monumental scale—combining traditional sculpting and digital technology to question how society projects ideas and expectations through public space. “Through his work, Price has ignited important public conversations about space, monuments, and personhood,” said Susan M. Taylor, The Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of NOMA. “Price asks viewers to reconsider what a monument is—and what they can be—and how monuments can reimagine and reflect everyday lives.” ... More

Guild Hall launches first Virtual Reality exhibit featuring Indigenous Shinnecock language
EAST HAMPTON, NY.- Guild Hall announced today the final phase of the First Literature Project, developed over a 2-year period by Guild Hall Community Artists-in-Residence Wunetu Wequai Tarrant and Christian Scheider. The First Literature Project is being presented in Guild Hall’s Marks Family Gallery South from May 18 through July 15, 2024, featuring the first VR media produced in the Shinnecock Language. First Literature Project (FLP) proposes to support Native nations in their efforts to maintain and further their languages, narratives, and oral traditions, making them available to both their tribal communities and surrounding areas. By utilizing FLP’s new immersive storytelling platform in Virtual Reality (VR), advanced 3D technology is repurposed to recreate an important tradition— sitting face-to-face with a storyteller. ... More

The man who made Roulette into New York's music lab
NEW YORK, NY.- Saturated in sunlight on a recent afternoon, the spacious Tribeca loft that once housed Roulette somehow feels smaller than it looms in memory. For nearly 25 years, an array of established and emerging composers, improvisers, electronic producers and choreographers held court in the long, tall main room. Visitors had to pass through a kitchen: a reminder that the loft was also the home of Jim Staley, the trombonist and composer who was a founder of Roulette. Unlike many similar experimental arts venues now lost to time, Roulette has thrived and grown, now occupying a 14,000-square-foot space in downtown Brooklyn. But Staley, 73, who still lives in the Tribeca loft, has decided that the time has come to step away. When this season ends in June, he will give up his role as artistic director. It’s another evolution for a vital institution ... More

1891 Netherlands 25 cents brings record $1.13 million at Heritage Auctions-Europe
DALLAS, TX.- Wilhelmina, who was Queen of the Netherlands from 1890-1948, is now royalty of the numismatic realm. An 1891 Netherlands 25 Cents, or kwartje, sold for €1.045.000 ($1,130,376) at HA-Europe Monday, becoming the most expensive Dutch coin ever sold. Heritage Auctions Europe-Cooperatief is an affiliate of Heritage Auctions, the world's leading auctioneer of coins and currency. The previous record for the most ever paid for a Dutch coin was €700.000 ($757,190) paid in 2021 for an 8-fold gold rosenobel; the best result for a Netherlands Kingdom (1806-present) was the €200.000 paid last year for an 1867 gold double ducat. "This coin was the cover piece for our catalog, but we expected a hammer price between €300.000 and €400.000," says Jacco Scheper, Managing Director of HA-Europe. "Nobody expected this world record." ... More

After a season of protest, PEN America's literary gala goes forward
NEW YORK, NY.- PEN America’s annual gala, held under the giant blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, typically draws writers and deep-pocketed supporters to toast the group’s mission of defending free expression at home and abroad. But as this year’s event approached, many in the literary community were wondering if the show would go on at all. For months, PEN America has been roiled by internal and external criticism of its response to the war in the Gaza Strip. Last month, the group canceled its literary awards ceremony and then its annual World Voices Festival, after dozens of writers withdrew to protest what they said was a failure to adequately speak out about the dire threats to Palestinian writers and culture posed by Israel’s military campaign. The gala, which was expected to raise roughly $2 ... More