Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper May 4, 2023: Featuring the coronation in the UK. As Charles III is crowned at Westminster Abbey this weekend, Anna Somers Cocks, founder of The Art Newspaper and a former assistant keeper of metalwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, tells us about the objects involved in the coronation and the monarchical history they convey.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this week opens Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, the latest in the hugely successful Costume Institute exhibitions. The German designer, who died in 2019, was also the inspiration for this year’s Met Gala, the museum’s star-studded fundraiser.

We talk to Stephanie Sporn, a fashion historian and arts and culture writer, about the exhibition, the gala and the controversy around Lagerfeld’s offensive comments about a range of issues. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Good Housekeeping III (1985/2023) by the British artist Marlene Smith. She was part of the Blk Art Group, a collective of young Black British artists active in the late 1970s and 1980s, which is the subject of The more things change…, an exhibition at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery in the UK.

Smith has re-created the work, first made in 1985, for the show, and tells us more about its making, its context, and the history of the Blk Art Group. Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 16 July.The more things change…, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK, until 9 July.

Travel Films: ‘Winter In The Scottish Highlands’

Kirk Watson Filmmaker (May 4, 2023) – ‘Winter in the Scottish highlands’ is a drone showreel from the past winter seasons around Scotland filming.

The Scottish Highlands are a mountainous region encompassing northwest Scotland. Loch Ness is at the centre, overlooked by the ruins of medieval Urquhart Castle and known for mythical monster “Nessie”. Northeast, near the city of Inverness, dolphins swim in the Moray Firth. Southwest, in the Western Highlands, trails wind up Ben Nevis, the U.K.’s highest peak, and red deer roam Glencoe valley with its waterfalls.

360° Travel: A Tour Of The Old City Of Jerusalem

AirPano VR (May 5, 2023) – Surrounded by ancient walls, the Old City of Jerusalem is home to holy sites such as the Western Wall, Dome of the Rock Islamic shrine, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which dates to the 4th century.

Shops and markets selling prayer shawls, rosaries, and ceramics fill busy alleys, while food stalls serve falafel, pita, and fresh-squeezed juice. In a medieval citadel, the Tower of David museum chronicles the city’s history. 

June 2023 Cover: National Geographic Traveller UK

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National Geographic Traveller Magazine (June 2023). The latest issue features Canada’s greatest outdoor adventures, summer guides to Oslo and Lisbon, the quetzals and rivers of Costa Rica, and explores the Silk Road route of Central Asia.

Breaking bread: dining with sheep farmers in the Faroe Islands

Óli and Brim the dog, on the coast close to Velbastaður.
Óli and Brim the dog, on the coast close to Velbastaður.

​On their farm in the Faroe Islands, where the sheep roam the hillsides and the chickens put themselves to bed, Óli and Anna Rubeksen dish up a feast of local ingredients ranging from rhubarb to lamb hearts.

Also inside this issue:

Oman: A rich history and striking landscapes, from the Arabian coast to the Hajar Mountains.
Costa Rica: Explore Central America’s wildest corners, where quetzals hide and rivers lead to jungle lodges.
Laos: In a corner of this Southeast Asian country, life is shaped by the flow of the Mekong River.
Lisbon: Tram rides, street art and al fresco meals: Portugal’s lively capital is best explored outdoors.
Oslo: Summer is the perfect time to discover Norway’s flourishing premier city.
Bosnia & Herzegovina: Discover this Balkan country’s turbulent history, wild nature and surprising food scene.
Barbados: Inventive food and drinks projects are redefining the Caribbean island’s culinary landscape.
Paris: The French capital beckons with accommodation options to suit every pocket.

Plus, it’s the anniversary of Vienna’s World Fair; new exhibitions in London; a taste of Corfu; archaeology and Indiana Jones in SyracuseManila’s design-led hotels; family trips to the UK seaside; sand, sherry and Spanish history in Cádiz; a Cornish escape to Falmouth; great reads on British nature; and packing essentials.

News: Germany’s Scholz Visits Kenya, Coronation Of Charles III, NATO In Asia

The Globalist, May 5, 2023: As Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, heads to Kenya, we check in with journalists in Nairobi and Berlin, Chatham House’s Quentin Peel outlines how King Charles III’s coronation will be covered outside the UK, and Nato plans to open its first office in Asia.

Plus: Monocle Radio’s Andrew Mueller offers an irreverent round-up of the week’s news.

Front Page: The New York Times – Friday, May 5, 2023

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Justice Dept. Intensifying Efforts to Determine if Trump Hid Documents

Justice Department prosecutors have intensified their investigation of former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified material.
CREDITSOPHIE PARK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Prosecutors investigating the former president’s handling of classified material have issued a wave of new subpoenas and obtained the confidential cooperation of a witness who worked at Mar-a-Lago.

A Subway Killing Stuns, and Divides, New Yorkers

Mayor Eric Adams has asked for patience as law enforcement officials investigate the death of Jordan Neely at the hands of another subway rider. Other Democratic leaders have criticized his response as too tame, calling the death a “murder” and a “lynching.”
CREDITHIROKO MASUIKE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

After a homeless man was killed on the subway, New Yorkers and elected officials are mourning his death and debating how the city should address mental health and public safety.

Smaller Banks Are Scrambling as Share Prices Plunge

Investors are not convinced that regional banks including PacWest and Western Alliance can remain viable. Some are actively betting on their demise.

Earthquake-Proof, Not Corruption-Proof: Turkey’s Needless Deaths

Turkish families got wealthy off a construction system rife with patronage. A Times investigation reveals just how fatally shaky that system was.

Research Preview: Science Magazine – May 5, 2023

Current Issue Cover

Science Magazine – May 5, 2023 issue: The immune system protects us from cancer and infection using a powerful armamentarium that is kept in check by an array of regulatory processes. When they fail, the immune system can start attacking the host in a process known as autoimmunity. This special issue highlights recent advances in our understanding of autoimmune diseases and the regulation of immune tolerance. See the special section beginning on page 468.

When a delicate balancing act goes wrong

Antibodies that target self-antigens are an important component of certain autoimmune diseases and are sometimes used as a clinical marker for these syndromes. ILLUSTRATION: STEPHAN SCHMITZ/FOLIOART

A cardinal feature of the immune system is its ability to distinguish self from nonself. Although many early immunologists thought that its powerful defenses could rarely, if ever, be turned against the host, pioneering research on autoimmune diseases beginning in the early 1900s has documented a different reality. More than 80 different autoimmune disorders have now been described that may affect up to 5% of the population.

Russia tensions keep Arctic research on ice

Collaboration stifled as many scientists look to establish fieldwork elsewhere

Twist of fate

A physician-scientist has probed Parkinson’s disease for more than 30 years. Now, he has it

The New York Review Of Books – May 25, 2023

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The New York Review of Books – May 25, 2023 issue: Michael Hofmann on Goethe’s last years, Jerome Groopman on the business of biotech, Joan Acocella on Balanchine, Jed S. Rakoff on William O. Douglas’s environmentalism, Adam Hochschild on 1619 and 1776, Willa Glickman on grassroots labor unions, Brenda Wineapple on Susanna Moore, Ian Johnson on art looters, Jenny Uglow on Samuel Pepys and the wreck of the HMS Gloucester, Nicholas Guyatt on financing the Civil War, Elaine Blair on how we talk about sexual assault, poems by Eugene Ostashevsky, D. Nurske, and Ama Codjoe, and much more.

Bewitched by Goethe

In Johann Eckermann, Goethe found an amanuensis made in heaven.

Conversations with Goethe: In the Last Years of His Life by Johann Peter Eckermann, translated from the German by Allan Blunden, with an introduction and notes by Ritchie Robertson

A strange time to publish—strange time to publish anything—a translation of Eckermann’s  Conversations with Goethe (or should that be Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann?), in six hundred static, major-key pages that can easily feel like twice as many. The big man, himself by now somewhat fallen on hard times, recorded by the little acolyte.

Saving Lives and Making a Killing

A new book reveals the split personality of the biotech industry: an altruistic enterprise that creates breakthrough treatments for patients in need, and a bare-knuckle business that seeks to generate astronomic profits and stop competitors from developing better treatments.

For Blood and Money: Billionaires, Biotech, and the Quest for a Blockbuster Drug by Nathan Vardi

A research scientist for Pharmacyclics working in a lab, Sunnyvale, California

A research scientist for Pharmacyclics, Sunnyvale, California, 2013. In For Blood and Money, Nathan Vardi writes that when Pharmacyclics—which developed ibrutinib, a treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia—was bought by the pharmaceutical giant AbbVie in 2015 for $21 billion, ‘the deal…set the new high-water mark for success in the biotechnology industry.’

Previews: The Economist Magazine – May 6, 2023

Much of the Earth remains unexplored | The Economist

The Economist – May 6, 2023 issue:

Governments are living in a fiscal fantasyland

The world over, they are failing to confront the dire state of their finances

If Turkey sacks its strongman, democrats everywhere should take heart

After 20 years of increasingly autocratic rule, Recep Tayyip Erdogan risks eviction by voters

Time to engage (very carefully) with the Taliban

Isolating the mullahs is not working. The West needs a more constructive approach

Profiles: ‘Two Lochs’ – UK’s Smallest Radio Station In The Scottish Highlands

Monocle Films (May 4, 2023) – Located in the north-western corner of the Scottish Highlands, Gairloch is a coastal village of about 700 people that known for its mountains, sea loch and rugged landscape.

Monocle paid a visit to Two Lochs, reportedly Britain’s smallest commercial radio station, which is nestled on Gairloch’s shores, run by a handful of volunteers and has built a loyal fan-base of global listeners.