Also: “Uncle Vanya” and “Staff Meal” reviewed, superstar pianists at Carnegie Hall, and more.
A new wave of shops has made its mark across the country—and shaken New York’s bagel scene out of complacency.
Mashed-potato nightmares! Kafka in the Oval Office! And other things going through the mind of the nap-happy ex-president in court.
By Barry Blitt
The Week In Art Podcast (May 3, 2024): After years of decreasing public funding, the lingering effects of the Covid pandemic and enduring questions around the ethics of corporate sponsorship, UK museums are facing unprecedented financial pressures.
Some commentators are suggesting that the time has come to abandon the policy of free admission to museums that is viewed by many as key to the cultural fabric of the UK. Among those arguing for charging is the critic and broadcaster Ben Lewis, who joins Ben Luke to discuss the issue.
This week, the British Museum opened the exhibition Michelangelo: the Last Decades. It focuses on the period after 1534, when Michelangelo left his native Florence for Rome, never to return, and embarked on many of his most ambitious projects. We take a tour of the show with its curator, Sarah Vowles.
And this episode’s Work of the Week is Maria Blanchard’s Girl at Her First Communion (1914). The painting features in a new exhibition at the Museo Picasso in Málaga. Its curator, José Lebrero Stals, tells us more about this underappreciated Spanish artist, who was at the heart of the Parisian avant garde in the 1910s and 20s.
Michelangelo: the Last Decades, British Museum, until 28 July.
Country Life Magazine (April 30, 2024): The latest issue features…
For Constable, the countryside was a lover, for Samuel Palmer, it offered an escape from the real world and for Paul Nash it held an inescapable lure. Michael Prodger examines the effect of British landscapes on art
The ceramicist chooses an evocation of her childhood
We should embrace Mary Poppins-esque common sense, believes Carla Carlisle
Kate Green salutes the 10th Duke of Beaufort on the eve of the Badminton Horse Trials that set British riders on their gallop to three-day-eventing victory
Don’t cast those jumpers out just yet, advises Lia Leendertz
Get ready for the warmer weather with Amelia Thorpe’s pick of outdoor furniture
Kathryn Bradley-Hole finds that formality is leavened by verve and personality in the gardens of Dalemain at Penrith, Cumbria, where the blue poppies bloom
Melanie Johnson gathers bunches of fresh watercress
Unmistakeable in scent, versatile in use, wild garlic is a forager’s dream, but don’t let dairy cows graze it, warns Ian Morton
Hetty Lintell takes her time choosing the latest wonderful watches unveiled in Geneva
Also: Kamasi Washington, “The Outsiders” reviewed, Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival, and more.
Four Twenty Five, a luxe new dining room from the mega-restaurateur Jean-Georges Vongerichten, takes square aim at the expense-account crowd.
The most striking aspect of the former President’s hush-money trial so far has been that, for the first time in a decade, Trump is struggling to command attention.
Country Life Magazine (April 24, 2024): The latest issue features…
As the National Gallery counts down to its 200th anniversary, Carla Passino delves into the fascinating stories behind 10 paintings in the collection
The chairman of the National Gallery board of trustees picks an exquisite, skilful work that resonates with deeper meaning
In the second of two articles, John Goodall investigates the 20th-century evolution of Stansted Park in West Sussex
Hetty Lintell reveals the secret to staying fresh faced and fashion artist David Downton shares a few of his favourite things
Octavia Pollock hails the talented Stevenson clan, who saved countless lives at sea thanks to their prolific lighthouse building
Giles Kime on how decorative frames can give a room an extra edge and Arabella Youens on the creation of a family kitchen
Time has not been kind to way-side crosses, once beacons of the British landscape. Lucien de Guise follows a trail of destruction
Amelia Thorpe selects the best structures for growing climbers
Melanie Johnson gets creative with fresh, cooling spearmint
Lakeland fells form a dramatic backdrop to the captivating Arts-and-Crafts garden at High Moss in Cumbria, finds Non Morris
Crushing one is said to absolve you of all your sins, but the Devil’s coach horse beetle is also the gardener’s friend, says Ian Morton
A booming bittern and a colossal crane make it a memorable return to the Norfolk Broads for John Lewis-Stempel
It may be named after the Virgin Mary, but, warns Ian Morton, there is a hint of the profane about lady’s mantle
John Wright reveals how the pretty, but unpalatable ground ivy found its true calling as an ingredient in the brewing of ale
@nplusonemag (April 23, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Passage’ – Fast fashion nation. Six months of genocide in Gaza. Human_Fallback_2: 2 Human 2 Fallback. Martin Amis, re-reassessed. Border stories by Nicholas Hamburger and Paul Soto.
A genocide in images
OCTOBER 7 MARKED the beginning of a new economy of war imagery. At first there was a video of a bulldozer plowing through the border fence between Israel and Gaza—an astonishing image, captured in a familiar way. Then things turned horribly surreal. The events of that day were beamed to the world in real time via body-cam, dashcam, cell phone, drone. A Hamas fighter wearing a GoPro stalked the highway with his automatic rifle jutting up from the bottom of the frame, first-person-shooter style. A dashboard camera showed a car zooming forward as a bullet pierced its windshield and the car began to drift, veering left, until it crashed into the rear end of a parked Toyota; you knew exactly when the person behind the wheel could no longer drive, was probably dead.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (April 20, 2024): The latest issue features….
In “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt says we’re failing children — and takes a firm stand against tech.
By Tracy Dennis-Tiwary
THE ANXIOUS GENERATION: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt
Inside the book conservation lab at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
By Molly Young
Not every workplace features a guillotine. At a book conservation lab tucked beneath the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the office guillotine might as well be a water cooler or a file cabinet for all that it fazes the staff. “We have a lot of violent equipment,” said Mindell Dubansky, who heads the Sherman Fairchild Center for Book Conservation.
In “Muse of Fire,” Michael Korda depicts the lives and passions of the soldier poets whose verse provided a view into the carnage of World War I.
The Week In Art Podcast (April 19, 2024): We are back in Venice for the latest edition of the biggest biennial in the world of art. The 60th Venice Biennale comprises an international exhibition featuring more than 300 artists, dozens of national pavilions in the Giardini—the gardens at the eastern end of the city—and the Arsenale—the historic shipyards of the Venetian Republic—and host of official collateral exhibitions and other shows and interventions across Venice.
The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, editor-at-large Jane Morris and host Ben Luke review the international exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere/Stranieri Ovunque, curated by the Brazilian artistic director, Adriano Pedrosa. We talk to artists and curators behind five national pavilions—Jeffrey Gibson in the US pavilion, John Akomfrah in the British pavilion, Romuald Hazoumè in the Benin pavilion, Gustavo Caboco Wapichana, the curator of the Hãhãwpuá or Brazilian pavilion, and Valeria Montii Colque in the Chilean pavilion—about their presentations.
And we like to end our Venice specials by responding to an example of the historic work that made la Serenissima one of the world’s great centres for art. So for this episode’s Work of the Week, Ben Luke gained exclusive access to one of the most significant paintings in Venetian history: the Assunta or Assumption of the Virgin made between 1516 and 1518 by Titian. Since the last Biennale in 2022, the Assunta has been unveiled after a four-year conservation project, funded by the charity Save Venice. We spoke to the man who restored this incomparable masterpiece, Giulio Bono, right beneath Titian’s painting.
Boomers Daily 