“I confirm the Musée du Louvre has asked for the loan of the Salvator Mundi for its October exhibition and truly wishes to exhibit the artwork,” a spokeswoman for the institution tells The Art Newspaper. The museum has requested the work’s loan from its owner but “the owner has not given his answer yet,” the Louvre spokeswoman says. – The Art Newspaper
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Fears Of A Crackdown On Artists In Cuba
The government issued a decree that requires artists to obtain government approval before performing or displaying their work, while also regulating the artwork itself. For example, it prohibits audiovisual content that contains “sexist, vulgar and obscene language” or that uses “national symbols” in ways that “contravene current legislation.” Government inspectors can impose fines on offenders and confiscate their property. – The New York Times
Ryan Adams Is The Tip Of An Indie Male Iceberg Of Terrible Behavior ‘Visible From Space’
And every indie music journalist knows it. “Publicists for male indie stars ask for guarantees that allegations and evidence of an artist’s bad behaviour aren’t referred to in interviews, and often receive those guarantees. Managers intimidate women at public events because they don’t like the way they have written about their male charges. Music magazine editors sideline female employees who raise red flags when plans are made to cover well-known creeps. Publications continue to write about men outed as beasts once the heat has died down.” – The Guardian (UK)
If Netflix’s Roma Wins Oscars’ Best Picture, It Will Change The Movie Business Forever
If a film primarily distributed online wins, the debate in Hollywood about what constitutes cinema is over. It would strike a blow to the big multiplex chains, which have refused to show “Roma” because Netflix offered them an exclusive play period of only three weeks; three months is the norm. As far as box office figures, Netflix has said the film has appeared in about 250 theaters in the United States since it was released on Nov. 21, but it refuses to disclose ticket sales. A win by “Roma” could embolden old-line studios like Universal and Warner Bros. to shorten their own theatrical “windows.” – The New York Times
Nan Goldin Wants London’s National Portrait Gallery To Turn Down A One Million Pound Donation From The Sackler Family
The alternative? The artist yanks her “prestigious new exhibition of work.” Goldin said, “What is the museum for? Art is transcendent and that makes it very, very dirty if they take the money; it’s failing the whole idea of a museum as a place to show art.” – The Observer (UK)
An Entire Italian Town Fell Silent In Order To Preserve The Sounds Of Stradivarius
In Cremona, where the mayor doubles as the president of the Antonio Stradivarius Violin Museum Foundation, sound engineers were trying to record every note a Strad could make, and every transition between every note. But a town of 70,000 people can be noisy, so the mayor “asked the people of Cremona to please keep it down, and blocked traffic around the concert hall during recordings.” – NPR
Booker Prizewinner Marlon James On Following Up His Literary Novel With An Epic African Fantasy Trilogy
James, who is originally Jamaican and who lives in Minnesota, says of his African fantasy epic, “I was reading a lot of the original myths and legends. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to write a fantasy novel. I wanted the ability to pick and choose and do what Tolkien did with Scandinavian and British culture. I wanted this pool of ideas and legends and building something out of it.” – The Observer (UK)
The Case Of The Ubiquitous Five-Floor Apartment Block, Or, Why American Cities All Look The Same
The style – “five over one – five stories of apartments over a ground-floor ‘podium’ of parking and/or retail” – is dependent on what’s called stick construction, a method begun in 1830s boomtown Chicago. Builders can find cheap material, and cheap, non-union labor, everywhere. Alert, though: “There’s a reason why stick wasn’t the default for big apartment buildings until recently, and why these buildings are limited in height: Sticks burn.” – Bloomberg Businessweek
Japanese Jazz Journalist Kiyoshi Koyama Has Died At 82
Koyama covered jazz in Japan throughout the 1960s and 1970s, was an avid interviewer of New York jazz musicians in their homes and wherever they played, and then he became a producer of jazz albums. “By the end of his life, Mr. Koyama’s personal archive included close to 30,000 vinyl albums and CDs. He also retained a copy of nearly every issue of Swing Journal, hundreds of books, and cassette tapes of his interviews. He recently donated the archive to New York University.” – The New York Times
The Tate Modern’s Angry Neighbors Entirely Missed The Point Of Cities
Everyone’s looking, in a city like London. Also, “it takes a special kind of confidence to blow millions on a flat with a swanky glass exterior – one that is positioned a stone’s throw from one of London’s most popular tourist attractions – and subsequently try to eradicate all visible human life within a 150ft radius.” – The Guardian (UK)