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Collection of Baroness Gabriele Langer von Langendorff tops one million at Roland Auctions NY
GLEN COVE, NY.- Roland Auctions NY presented the collection of legendary New York socialite Baroness Gabriele Langer von Langendorff, on May 4th, 2024. The hugely successful auction offered The Baroness’ own personal collection, coming mostly from her two residences at The Pierre Hotel, with the sale topping one million dollars. The Baroness, who the New York Daily News once dubbed “the Jet Set’s Most Controversial Woman”, passed away last summer, after leading a very storied life; having married four time while being a New York high-society mainstay for many decades. She purchased art treasures and jewels, including the fabled 77 carat Lesotho diamond from her long-times friend Harry Winston. The diamond was cut from a much larger stone, with the other portion going to Elizabeth Taylor. Her clothes and jewels were always ... More

Impressed, but not transported, by 'Spirited Away'
NEW YORK, NY.- There’s big, and then there’s “Spirited Away,” a show on a scale that few theater productions attempt. Adapted from the venerated Studio Ghibli film by Hayao Miyazaki, British director John Caird’s stage iteration was first seen in Miyazaki’s native Japan in 2022 and has now traveled to the London Coliseum — the West End’s largest theater — where it runs through Aug. 24. Performed in Japanese, with many of the original cast members along for its British premiere, the production has size, sweep and opulence to spare. Length, too: At just over three hours, the stage version runs nearly an hour longer than the film. I can’t remember a foreign-language production given such a long run on a London stage — which itself speaks to the international cachet of this title. ... More

Artist debuts "Reverie Unbound" in solo exhibit in Santa Fe
SANTA FE, NM.- Abstract artist, Joan Maureen Collins, announced that paintings from her newest series, “Reverie Unbound”, are the subject of a solo exhibit at Globe Fine Art Gallery, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The exhibit runs from May 10 to June 7, 2024. Throughout her twenty-eight year art career, Joan’s observations of the natural world and the inspiration she receives from spending time in nature, have been a driving force behind her creativity. In this new series, Reverie Unbound, Joan steps away from the landscape to create paintings that are deeply personal and inspired by her daydreams. The resulting canvases are deeply layered and yet exhibit a translucent quality. To initiate this new series, the artist sat in quiet meditation to consider the art she had created to date. In doing so she allowed herself to dream. The paintings in Reverie ... More

Roberts Projects opens a survey of paintings from 1998 to 2015 by Eberhard Havekost
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Roberts Projects is presenting a survey of paintings from 1998 to 2015 by the German artist Eberhard Havekost, whose work explored the parallels between systemic ideas of perfection and the modes of ideal image construction. Working from his own collection of photos and video footage, Havekost used a computer to alter the original images: hues became subtly distorted, while forms were imperceptibly stretched and skewed. These modifications became further translated through Havekost’s manual process of painting. The final image wasn’t one of photographic precision, but instead a series of transient moments that capture an abstracted perception. The intentional ‘errors’ make the image appear more natural and visually pleasing, while the attenuated distortion transforms an instance of banality ... More

Interdisciplinary artist presents newly commissioned sculptures at Detroit Institute of Arts
DETROIT, MICH.- The Detroit Institute of Arts is presenting Tiff Massey: 7 Mile + Livernois, featuring new and recent works by interdisciplinary Detroit-based artist Tiff Massey. The artist’s creations reimagine art’s role in the community and offer a vibrant, inclusive view of Detroit, while exploring the relationships between identity, public space, and urban transformation. Massey creates installations, jewelry, public art, and wearable sculptures inspired by adornment that shape a sense of identity and belonging. Trained as a metalsmith, Massey scales up her jewelry to the size of architecture, forming sculptures that can take up entire galleries, celebrating Detroit’s evolving neighborhoods and the history of West African and Black American culture and style. The show’s title – 7 Mile + Livernois – refers to the crossroads at the heart of Detroit’s ... More

Bernard Pivot, host of influential French TV show on books, dies at 89
NEW YORK, NY.- Bernard Pivot, a French television host who made and unmade writers with a weekly book-chat program that drew millions of viewers, died Monday in Neuilly-sur-Seine, outside Paris. He was 89. His death, in a hospital after being diagnosed with cancer, was confirmed by his daughter Cécile Pivot. From 1975 to 1990, France watched Bernard Pivot on Friday evenings to decide what to read next. The country watched him cajole, needle and flatter novelists, memoirists, politicians and actors, and the next day went out to bookstores for tables marked “Apostrophes,” the name of Pivot’s show. In a French universe in which serious writers and intellectuals jostle ferociously for the public’s attention to become superstars, Pivot never competed with his guests. He achieved a kind of el ... More

A waterfront house with the message 'all or nothing at all'
NEW YORK, NY.- Consider the 21 gilded mirrors lining the music room, each more extravagant than the last. Or the Italian monastery table that seats 24, never mind the tapestries, peacock feathers, brass candlesticks and Persian rugs seemingly everywhere. And did we mention entire suites dedicated to Frank Sinatra and Noël Coward? Let others embrace minimalism. Good things come in multiples in the waterfront home that Tom Postilio and Mickey Conlon have created for themselves on 2 1/4 acres on the North Shore of Long Island. Even the house itself, which began life as a single-story Mediterranean-style abode from the 1960s, appears to have adopted the more-is-more mantra, swelling to 10,000 square feet of Spanish Colonial splendor encompassing six bedrooms, five fireplaces, a conservatory, a library and an expansive ... More

Lawns draw scorn, but some see room for compromise
NEW YORK, NY.- The lawn is dead. Long live the lawn. Lately this entrenched symbol of American domestic life — verdant, weed-free and crisply mowed — has come under wider scrutiny as a profligate relic, out of sync with an ecologically conscious era. For many years, environmentalists have deplored conventional turf grass lawns as biodiversity dead zones that require billions of gallons of water every week in the United States, with outdoor irrigation accounting for a third of household water consumption on average nationwide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. To say nothing of the polluting fertilizers and toxic pesticides and all the mowers belching greenhouse gases to keep those lawns lush and manicured. “Lawns seem to draw as much irrational hate as they do love these days,” said Paul Robbins, dean of the Nelson Institute ... More

In Mexico, a house that returns to the well
NEW YORK, NY.- Years of abnormally low rainfall, higher-than-normal temperatures and aging infrastructure have led to a dangerously low water supply for Mexico City. The issue isn’t a new one for the Mexican capital — in 2014, it was ranked as the third most water-stressed of more than 150 of the planet’s largest cities. Now, the metropolis faces a water crisis so severe that local authorities recently began imposing rations. For Javier Sánchez, a low-slung earthen house just west of Mexico City, designed by his architectural firm JSa, reflects an obvious way out of the predicament. “This house is a laboratory because it allows people to visualize the possibility of going back to certain solutions that were implemented many years before us,” he said on a recent video call. “There was an ancient technology around water, but it was ... More

What does 'post-emerging' look like in today's dance landscape?
NEW YORK, NY.- Bill T. Jones still remembers warming up backstage for one of his first New York City performances, in 1977: a solo at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea, as part of a series for up-and-coming experimentalists. Jones was 25 and visiting from upstate New York, where he belonged to a small countercultural dance collective. He would be sharing that evening’s program with five other choreographers, including Baroque dancer Catherine Turocy, Merce Cunningham acolyte Kenneth King and postmodern-ballet iconoclast Donald Byrd. To be suddenly surrounded by so many different aesthetics, he said in an interview, “was exhilarating and terrifying.” “Quaintly, that was the big time,” he said. “A very important rite of passage. We felt that we had arrived.” In the nearly 50 years since, a lot has changed at the institution formerly known ... More

London Gallery Weekend announces events highlights, artist commissions and curator bursaries
LONDON.- London Gallery Weekend, the biggest gallery weekend event in the world, returns for its fourth edition from Friday 31 May to Sunday 2 June 2024 uniting the city’s network of world-class galleries for a three-day programme of exhibitions and events. With more than 130 participating galleries – ranging from established galleries to emerging spaces and featuring 16 new participants – London Gallery Weekend demonstrates the vibrancy and variety of the London gallery scene. Bringing new public art and performances to the city’s streets, and with more than 70 free events across the duration of the weekend, London Gallery Weekend offers visitors, curators and collectors from around the UK and abroad, an exceptional opportunity to engage with art and artists in a variety of ways. Each of London Gallery Weekend’s three days focuses ... More