“[This] is BBC Culture’s biggest and most international poll yet: 761 different films were voted for by 368 film experts – critics, journalists, festival programmers and academics – who came from 84 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. We asked the same number of women to contribute as men to create a gender-balanced poll.” (Click here to read why the number-one film on the list was chosen.) – BBC
Author: Matthew Westphal
Roger Cardinal, Scholar Who Coined Term ‘Outsider Art’, Dead At 79
“This was not entirely a source of pleasure to the man who, under duress, had invented the term” as a compromise title for his very influential 1972 book. “In a 2009 essay on outsider art and autism, Cardinal noted that the name had been ‘used and abused in a variety of ways, which have often compromised it’.” – The Guardian
Surge In Black Art Is ‘Exhilarating Sea Change’ That Made 2010s ‘Thrilling’: New York Times
Roberta Smith: “What made the 2010s the most thrilling of all the decades I’ve spent in the New York art world was the rising presence of black artists of every ilk, on every front: in museums, commercial galleries, art magazines, private collections and public commissions. During this exhilarating sea change new talent emerged, older talent was newly appreciated and the history of American art was suddenly up for grabs — and in dire need of rewriting.” – The New York Times
UK Conservative Party Plans £120 Million Cultural ‘Festival Of Brexit’
“The Conservative Party confirmed in its manifesto that it plans to move forward with the cultural Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland if it wins the UK general election on 12 December. … But arts professionals have raised concerns about this proposed showcase of Great Britain’s talents, once dubbed ‘the festival of Brexit’ by the [hardline anti-EU] Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.” – The Art Newspaper
Police To Impound Rotterdam Museum Sculptures After Church Says They Were Stolen
“Police have said they plan to seize six religious sculptures that are on display at an art museum in the Belgian town of Leuven. The authorities acted following a complaint by a Belgian church that has long sought to reclaim the fragments of a 16th-century altarpiece, which were stolen at the outbreak of World War I” and ultimately ended up at Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. – Artnet
The American Theatre Was Killing Me: Healing from Racialized Trauma in an Art Workspace
“In the following conversation, theatremaker Lauren E. Turner recounts her courageous healing journey from the depths of sustained racialized trauma working in a New Orleans theatre to the launching of her own theatre company, No Dream Deferred, into its first season this fall. Given the persistence of racialized trauma in white theatre institutions, we interrogate how — and if — people of color feel they have a place within them.” – HowlRound
How Mike Nichols And Elaine May Met (An Oral History)
“[Paul] Sills, who directed the show, came up to him, and said, ‘Mike, I want you to meet the only other person on campus who’s as hostile as you are: Elaine May.’ She looked over Mike’s shoulder at the rave and went, ‘Ha!’ and walked off. It’s the beginning of a romantic comedy.” – Tablet
A Traditional ‘Straight Up’ Thanksgiving
Our Thanksgiving team of William S. Burroughs and Norman O. Mustill has been a longtime happy pairing. It still is. So here they are again, sweetened by Heathcote Williams’s words in a narration-cum-montage by Alan Cox. – Jan Herman
Togo Has Opened Its First Major Contemporary Art Center
“Uniquely for Africa, Palais de Lomé, which is housed in a restored colonial-era palace, was fully financed by the state. … Set on the seafront in the Togolese capital of Lomé, the Palais de Lomé boasts several exhibition spaces, as well as an 11-hectare botanical park.” – The Art Newspaper
Dorothy Seiberling, Editor Who Explained Avant-Garde Art To The Public, Dead At 97
“As Life magazine’s art editor, Ms. Seiberling helped shape public opinion about the 20th century’s foremost avant-gardist artists” — most notably, Georgia O’Keeffe and the Abstract Expressionists — “encouraging open-minded consideration of their importance.” – The New York Times