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Cannupa Hanska Luger's new sculpture confronts the history of North American bison
NEW YORK, NY.- Public Art Fund debuted Attrition, a site-speciﬁc sculptural installation by interdisciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger. Situated in City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan, Luger’s 10-foot-long steel bison skeleton lies within a bed of grasses native to this region, highlighting the profound interdependence between animals, humans, and the land. Placed on the pathway to City Hall, Attrition symbolically engages with New York City’s heart of policy-making, bringing to light the history of the bison’s survival. Luger, an enrolled member of the Three Aﬃliated Tribes of Fort Berthold from the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota cultures, is a descendant of buffalo people. In his artistic practice, he presents new ways of seeing our humanity while foregrounding an Indigenous worldview. For Luger, the bison is a symbol ... More

The American who built a supersized Japanese aerie from abandoned parts
KAMAKURA.- In the hills above Kamakura, the ancient samurai capital of Japan, Brian Heywood is overseeing 12 workmen as they put the finishing touches on his new home. Framed by blossoming yamazakura cherry trees, the sprawling aerie looks west over Sagami Bay, with Mount Fuji in the distance. “I wanted people to be transported to another world when they drive in,” said Heywood, 57, on a recent afternoon. The property, covering just over an acre in this seaside town about 30 miles south of Tokyo, has been a feat of negotiation and preservation. Shozan, as Heywood calls it, is a curious fusion of three centuries-old wooden houses, a decommissioned 150-year-old Buddhist temple and other cultural treasures — all meticulously disassembled, moved here from their original sites, and reconstructed over a five-year period. Their aesthetics ... More

An odd rock in a box gets linked to a shooting star that fell 54 years ago
NEW YORK, NY.- Tens of thousands of meteorites have been found on Earth, but a vast majority remain shrouded in mystery. These rocks come from space, of course, but pinning down their exact origins, in the solar system or even beyond, is difficult without knowing their flight paths. But now, researchers believe they have connected a meteorite discovered in the Austrian Alps decades ago with bright flashes of light from a space rock hurtling through our planet’s atmosphere. It’s rare to link a meteorite with its parent “fireball,” and these results demonstrate the usefulness of combing old data sets, the research team suggests. Their findings were published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science in May. In 1976, Josef Pfefferle, a forest ranger, was clearing the remnants of an avalanche near the Austrian village of Ischgl when ... More

Bob Eckstein has the perfect museum for you
NEW YORK, NY.- “When they first go to museums, the first two things people want to know is, where’s the gift shop, and where’s the bathroom?” said writer and illustrator Bob Eckstein, 61, whose new book, “Footnotes From the Most Fascinating Museums,” is an illustrated field guide to North America’s cultural and historical repositories. He envisions families using it as their “summer vacation bucket list” to discover the riches available at institutions as various as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hollywood Cars Museum in Las Vegas (home of a General Lee from “The Dukes of Hazzard”) and the Wenham Museum in Massachusetts, where the collection includes 1,000 dolls and more than 600 mechanical toys dating to 1780. A born New Yorker who lives not far from the Met Cloisters in upper Manhattan, Eckstein ... More

Mabe Fratti, a spark in Mexico City's experimental music scene
NEW YORK, NY.- Ten years ago, cellist and experimental composer Mabe Fratti came across a strange painting by Paul Klee. “Angelus Novus” depicts an angel, wings splayed, eyes wide open, who looks as though he is about to flutter away from whatever he is looking at. “It’s a metaphor for history,” she said, video calling from her friend’s living room couch in Berlin. “The philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote about it: this idea that we’re looking forwards but also always looking back.” The concept would go on to form the basis for “Angel Nuevo,” the first song Fratti wrote on her new album, “Sentir Que No Sabes,” out Friday. “I wanted to talk about what it feels like to know you want to progress but not know where you want to go,” she said of the track, which starts out quietly and builds in an anxious crescendo. Moving forward hasn’t exactly been a problem ... More

Frederick Crews, withering critic of Freud's legacy, dies at 91
NEW YORK, NY.- Frederick Crews, a literary critic and a leading skeptic in the contentious scholarly debate over the achievements and legacy of Sigmund Freud, died Friday in Oakland, California. He was 91. His wife, Elizabeth Crews, confirmed the death Monday. Frederick Crews, a professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, was the author of more than a dozen books. Most recently, he wrote “Freud: The Making of an Illusion,” a deeply researched evisceration of Freud’s reputation and therapeutic insights that drew wide critical attention when it came out in 2017. He was a longtime contributor to The New York Review of Books, where his essays and reviews explored the works of Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Flannery O’Connor, among other authors. He also ... More

Discord at the symphony: Losing a star, San Francisco weighs its future
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- For a night at the symphony, there was a lot of tension in the air. As concertgoers filed in to Davies Symphony Hall this month, they were greeted by players from the San Francisco Symphony passing out bright yellow flyers accusing the management of having “no clear artistic vision.” Then, shortly before the performance began, a shout echoed from one of the balconies, exhorting people to “Act!” It was conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen’s first concert at the hall since March, when he stunned the classical music world by announcing that he would step down as the orchestra’s music director amid a dispute with the management over budget cuts. The evening’s program was just the sort of thing he had promised when he was hired with a mandate to rethink the concert experience: Maurice Ravel’s charming ... More

The Honarkar Foundation for Arts & Culture presents "Joe Goode │ Select Works: 1970s-2000s"
LAGUNA BEACH, CALIF.- Joe Goode is an influential American artist, best known for his contributions to the Pop Art movement of the 1960s. Born on March 27, 1937, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Goode moved to Los Angeles in 1959, where he quickly became an integral part of the burgeoning West Coast art scene. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute, where he developed his distinctive style that combines elements of realism and abstract expressionism. Goode’s early works often featured everyday objects, rendered in a way that challenged conventional notions of perception and reality. His “Milk Bottle” series, for example, juxtaposed photorealistic depictions of milk bottles against minimalist backgrounds, highlighting the ordinary while inviting deeper contemplation. Another notable series, the “Torn Cloud” paintings, ... More

Jinny Yu debuts new abstract paintings in first AGO solo exhibition
TORONTO.- On view now at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Jinny Yu: at once marks a luminous return to colour by acclaimed artist Jinny Yu. Featuring new abstract paintings and works on paper made over the past two years, the exhibition is Yu’s first solo exhibition at the AGO. A celebrated artist and educator who divides her time between Berlin and Ottawa, Yu describes her work as a reflection of “tensions between the sense of belonging…and sense of non- and/or un-belonging.” Born in Seoul, Korea, Yu’s large-scale abstract paintings have brought her international renown and her site-specific installation Don’t They Ever Stop Migrating? was exhibited during the 2015 Venice Biennale. at once marks the first museum presentation of works from Yu’s new series, Inextricably Ours (2021- ongoing) and features nine oil paintings ... More

Review: A 10th life for those jellicle 'Cats,' now in drag
NEW YORK, NY.- A DJ pawing through a carton of old LPs — Natalie Cole, Angela Bofill — comes upon a curiosity: the original cast album of “Cats.” When he opens the gatefold, glittery spangles fly everywhere. That’s how “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” begins, and it’s basically what the Perelman Performing Arts Center’s drag remake of the Broadway behemoth does to the drab original. It sets the joy free. Whether upper- or lowercase, cats never previously offered me much pleasure. The underlying T.S. Eliot poems, ad-libbed for his godchildren, are agreeable piffle, hardly up there with “Prufrock” as fodder for the ages. The musical, instead of honoring the material’s delicacy, stomped all over it, leaving heavy mud prints. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, and especially the rigged-up story and original staging by Trevor Nunn, tried so hard to make ... More

Spatializing Reproductive Justice on view at the Center for Architecture
NEW YORK, NY.- The Center for Architecture is presenting Spatializing Reproductive Justice. Curated by Lori A. Brown, FAIA, Lindsay Harkema, Bryony Roberts, and FLUFFFF Studio, this exhibition features student research and work by contemporary design practices addressing the spatial, legal, and social logistics of reproductive healthcare access in the United States after the repeal of Roe v. Wade. In the US, reproductive rights have always been restricted by race, gender, sexuality, and class inequalities; particularly for Black, brown, and Indigenous women, trans men, and non-binary individuals, adolescents, immigrants, people with disabilities, and those who live with low or insecure income. Systemic racism as well as the political influence of religious groups has long shaped reproductive healthcare access in the US. This exhibition ... More