General Art & Architecture of Interest

[kmaherali]

Plan to Resurface a Pyramid in Granite Draws Heated Debate

A project to restore granite blocks that once covered a greater portion of the Pyramid of Menkaure in Giza has been criticized by some preservationists.


The Pyramid of Menkaure was once clad partly in granite blocks, visible in the lower portion. A plan to restore more of them is generating debate.Credit...Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

When the Egyptian authorities released a video last week describing plans to resurface the Pyramid of Menkaure, the smallest of Giza’s three main pyramids, with the granite blocks that once clad part of its exterior, the initial reaction was swift — and harsh.

Some archaeologists criticized the idea. An online comment that was widely picked up by news organizations likened it to trying to “straighten the Tower of Pisa.” Others worried that covering the familiar limestone walls of the pyramid with new cladding would have the effect of turning the historic Giza plateau into an ersatz Disneyland.

The initiative was announced by Mostafa Waziri, the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, who called it “the project of the century” in a video posted Jan. 25 on social media. He has said the endeavor, led by a coalition of Egyptian and Japanese experts, would begin with at least a year of study, and that an international team would then decide whether to proceed with trying to restore the granite blocks that once covered roughly the bottom third of the pyramid.

Dr. Waziri did not return emails or a phone calls seeking comment. In an interview with the satellite TV station Ten on Tuesday evening, he dismissed criticism that has erupted online as “social media talk that has no basis in truth.”

Some online critics seemed to be under the impression that the smooth granite blocks visible in videos and photos of the pyramid — which contrast sharply with the more familiar textured limestone above — were new. But several Egyptologists said that they appeared to be the pyramid’s surviving granite blocks, which have been there for centuries, and which can be seen in photographs dating back to 1907.

The debate over the pyramid reflects a constant tension in the field of conservation: whether to try to return ancient structures to their earlier splendor or minimize intervention as much as possible.

“Both schools of thought elevate something,” said Leslie Anne Warden, an associate professor of art history and archaeology at Roanoke College, who emphasized that Egypt is far from the only country to confront these questions. “One is geared a bit more toward tourism. If you are going to Giza as a foreigner, you may be expecting to be transported to the ancient world. The other school says that you are glossing over huge portions of what happened and prioritizing one narrative.”


Elmo Asked an Innocuous Question

The Pyramid of Menkaure was built to house the tomb of King Menkaure, who ruled Egypt more than 4,000 years ago. It is the only one of the three main pyramids at Giza that was encased in multiple levels of Aswan granite, a red stone that comes from quarries more than 550 miles south of Giza. Scholars believe the pyramid was never completed after the king’s death.

Over the centuries, many of the granite stones fell off or were removed from the site for a variety of reasons, according to Morgan Moroney, the assistant curator of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern art at the Brooklyn Museum. Even in ancient times, she said, people reused them to build nearby monuments or houses. Earthquakes, erosion and vandalism wore away at them over the centuries.

Salima Ikram, the head of the Egyptology unit at the ​​American University in Cairo, is cautiously optimistic about the new project.

“Scanning and documenting the pyramid and the blocks on the ground is very useful,” she said. If the team were to put the fallen blocks back in place in a way that is reversible, she said, it would be “eminently sensible.” But she cautioned against restoring any blocks if their origins are unclear and suggested that further study would be necessary to confirm that the pyramid could still support the weight of more granite cladding.

Ibrahim Mohamed Badr, an associate professor in the department of antiquities restoration and conservation at Misr University of Science and Technology in Giza, was skeptical about which stones on the site — many of them unpolished — could be confirmed as original to the pyramid.

“The ancient Egyptians would have polished the blocks when installing them in the pyramid itself,” he said. “Any attempt to fix and polish them would be a blatant interference in the work of the ancient Egyptians, who did not complete this pyramid.”

The Ministry of Antiquities did not respond to a request for comment or confirm the project’s budget. Waziri told al-Mehwar TV that the initial phase of the project — which is beginning at a time of soaring debt and inflation in Egypt — was being funded entirely by his Japanese partners. “We will not pay a dime,” he said.

The Menkaure project is part of a broader investment in Giza’s infrastructure, which includes new restaurants and visitor facilities. The Grand Egyptian Museum, which reportedly cost $1 billion and has been in the works for two decades, is poised to open later this year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/arts ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

To Save Museums, Treat Them Like Highways



Ask any workers in the nonprofit arts sector — maybe after they have had a few drinks — and they will tell you that arts funding in this country is a mess.

Here’s an example: At a typical midsize arts institution — a place like the Toledo Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum of California or the Queens Museum, an institution at which one of us has firsthand experience — much of the energy of any director is spent cobbling together funding. Most of the annual budget comes from a combination of strapped local government agencies; private philanthropy, such as foundations, individuals and corporations; and ticket sales and other earned income sources, such as venue rentals or gala events.

But there’s a large chunk of the budget — usually about 40 percent — that involves infrastructure costs like keeping the lights on and paying the staff salaries. Those are the costs that few donors are stepping up to take care of (since there’s little public prestige) and that government arts grants, because of current rules, don’t cover. Yet it’s this gap in funding, this 40 percent, that’s too often threatening small and midsize cultural institutions across the country right now.

There is a better way to fund the arts in America. It requires a leap of faith and creative cultural and political organizing to achieve a change in mind-set.

As policymakers in Washington gather to draft a new budget for fiscal year 2025, they could solve culture’s current financial crisis and radically reshape how we think about sustaining the arts. They could do this by tapping into abundant appropriations that already enjoy bipartisan support. To make this possible, first we need to stop treating museums, theaters and galleries like sacred spaces that exist in some rarefied realm of public life. And we need to start treating them — and funding them — like interstate highways, high-speed internet and other infrastructure projects, using money that’s earmarked to maintain the country’s infrastructure.

Of course, a shift to considering the arts as part of our national infrastructure won’t be easy, either conceptually or practically. The mechanics of reallocating a small fraction of federal infrastructure dollars for cultural institutions would have to be mapped out, advocated and then put into legislation. Certainly, some politicians will object to funding the arts as infrastructure, just as they object to funding the arts in different ways now. But other industries are already subsidized by the federal government directly, as with the farm subsidy, developed during the Great Depression, which supports agricultural corporations to the tune of more than $10 billion a year.

There is currently no significant infrastructure money available to arts institutions from public coffers. On average, about 15 percent of an art museum’s annual budget is funded by government money, according to the Association of Art Museum Directors. Federal funding for the arts is largely allocated through the National Endowment for the Arts, or N.E.A., a beleaguered and consistently underfunded agency. The N.E.A. provides funding only for exhibitions and projects, and for fiscal year 2024, its allocated budget is $211 million for the entire country, which is less than the amount allocated by New York City for culture for the same year.

The N.E.A. is also a constant target of party politics over questions of content and appropriateness. Bad-faith actors earn political points by identifying the most controversial art exhibit in the country and using it as a cudgel to make all funding untenable. Political backlash over several N.E.A.-funded initiatives, including a 1989 exhibit of the photograph “Immersion (Piss Christ)” by Andres Serrano, who had received a small N.E.A. grant, led to attempts to defund the agency.

That’s why we need federal infrastructure funding for facilities, salaries and other infrastructural needs that can be delivered directly to institutions through a separate grant system. Infrastructure funding is plentiful and appealing across party lines; in 2021, in a bipartisan bill, the federal government allocated $1.2 trillion to national infrastructure projects over five years. If even 0.5 percent of those funds — $6 billion, or $1.2 billion annually over the same length of time — were marked to keep the lights on and pay salaries at the physical facilities that incubate, develop and present culture across the country, it would radically reshape our national cultural landscape. These funds would benefit crucial venues across the country, from the Headliners Music Hall in Louisville, Ky., to The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del. — small and midsize venues and institutions that ensure a thriving cultural identity in every corner of America.

This shift in funding could be negotiated into a new infrastructure bill, which could be on the table as soon as 2025. As with infrastructure projects such as the building and maintenance of highways, funding cultural institutions will directly support employment: Culture in the United States employs about five million people and pumps about $1 trillion into the economy annually. New funding would boost local economies, cultivate a more equitable arts sector, and promote and protect arts organizations in small and medium-size cities. It would help to disentangle larger arts institutions from the largess of wealthy individuals and corporations, which currently wield an inordinate and thorny amount of influence. (Think of the Sackler family.) And it could defang some of the most pernicious culture-war arguments against arts funding, since it’s much harder to object to paying to fix a museum’s leaky roof than to paying to exhibit a photograph.

Federal funding of cultural institutions has already been proved to work. The pandemic-era federal initiative known as Save Our Stages helped preserve about 3,000 independent venues across the country by providing emergency funding.

We can’t abandon that effort; we need to build on it. We need to treat culture as equal to other forms of national infrastructure, as important to our national well-being as safe roads, clean drinking water and accessible utilities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/10/opin ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

In Nagpur, the Orange City, known for its lush orange groves, Pratik Jain delivered a wonderful street performance at the picturesque Futala Lake. This spot, famed for its tranquil ambiance, hosted Pratik's heartfelt serenade, featuring songs like "Suno Na Sangemarmar", "Maan Mera", and "Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai".

Pratik's music not only captured the essence of street performance but also celebrated Nagpur's rich culture, blending the sweetness of oranges with the joy of live music.

This event at Futala Lake exemplifies the charm of street music, creating deep connections and unforgettable moments in the simplest settings.

JollyGul has also produced a short documentary titled "Street Music: The Culture of Busking", exploring the extensive and varied history of street music across different cultures and continents (link below).



Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4O99jNDmdo



Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYp3xFanfTc

[kmaherali]

Exhibitions around the world are celebrating the art movement’s centennial and asking whether our crazy dreams can still set us free.



This is not an article. It’s a fish in the shape of a piano, floating in a clear blue sky, seen through a keyhole.

Surrealism, the art movement that gave us disembodied eyeballs, melting clocks and animals with mismatched parts, was born in 1924 when the French poet André Breton published a treatise decrying the vogue for realism and rationality.

Breton argued instead for embracing the “omnipotence of dreams” and exploring the unconscious and all that was “marvelous” in life. Art that could reach beyond the rational could liberate humanity, he felt. “The mere word ‘freedom’ is the only one that still excites me,” Breton wrote in his “Surrealist Manifesto.”

It was a literary idea that became an art movement and revolutionized nearly all forms of cultural production. It’s now commonplace to call pretty much any weird experience “surreal.”

A century later, what does Surrealism still have to offer us? Do its philosophical and political arguments have anything to say about contemporary life? Do we still, even in the faintest way, hear that Surrealist commandment: “Transform the world, change life”?

Museum directors, curators and art historians around the world will attempt to answer such questions this year, and Surrealism exhibitions will be everywhere, all at once. From Paris to Fort Worth, from Munich to Gainesville, Fla., and all the way to Shanghai, art institutions are mounting shows that explore the movement.

ImageA René Magritte painting is displayed behind a table littered with papers and stationary items.

“The Secret Double” by René Magritte, during the installation of a Surrealism show at the Bozar art center in Brussels.Credit...C. Herscovici/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Ksenia Kuleshova for The New York Times
In celebrating the centennial, curators are reclaiming Surrealism for today: Some are elevating the often-forgotten female Surrealists; others are connecting the dots to other art eras, like German Romanticism or early Netherlandish art; and some are focusing on Surrealism in photography and film.

The Pompidou Center in Paris, which owns one of the most extensive collections of French Surrealist art in the world, has organized the largest of the shows: a traveling exhibition that opened in Brussels on Feb. 21 and moves to Paris on Sept. 4. The show then goes to Hamburg and Madrid, and wraps up at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2026.

By lending those museums about 30 major artworks by Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst and Man Ray, the Pompidou is giving each institution a base upon which to develop its own Surrealism show, and each will have a different focus.

The first iteration — “Imagine! 100 Years of International Surrealism,” at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium through July 21 — links Surrealism with Symbolism, a 19th-century precursor movement with a similar disdain for realism.

With all these interpretations of Surrealism floating around, it can seem difficult to pinpoint a definition of the term. What most experts agree on is that Surrealism wasn’t necessarily about art.

“I hope that people will discover that Surrealism is a state of mind and a way of looking at things,” said Francisca Vandepitte, who curated the show at the Royal Museums. “It’s not something theoretical and very complicated. The main force is something that we all know. It’s irrational, and it’s our dreams, and it’s liberating.”

Image
Sculptures and paintings in a white-walled gallery.

Hans Bellmer’s “The Doll,” and paintings by Salvador Dalí at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.Credit...Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris; Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Artists Rights Society; Ksenia Kuleshova for The New York Times

Invented in Europe in the wake of World War I, and following a flu pandemic, Surrealism embraced Freud’s theories of the unconscious, rejected authoritarianism and colonialism, and, at first, espoused communism, though many followers later rejected it.

Although Breton’s circle was mostly in Paris, Surrealism’s signature adherents were spread internationally: Dalí and Miró were Spanish, de Chirico was Italian, Magritte was Belgian, Leonora Carrington was British and Frida Kahlo was Mexican.

Even as Surrealism’s centennial is celebrated this year, some art historians see it as a much older impulse that runs like an electrical current throughout art history, with jolts in the Middle Ages, between the two World Wars, in the postwar era and in the 1960s.

“The Surrealists went back in history and claimed people like Hieronymus Bosch, or Giuseppe Arcimboldo, and said these were Surrealists before there was Surrealism,” said Robert Zeller, the author of “New Surrealism: The Uncanny in Contemporary Painting.”

Image
A black-and-white group photograph shows 12 men and women in 1920s dress.

Artists at an early Surrealism exhibition in London, in the 1930s, including Salvador Dalí, second row, third from left; and Paul Éluard, to his left.Credit...Evening Standard/Getty Images

“Other art movements said, ‘History is bunk and we want to start at year zero,’” Zeller added. “The Surrealists saw themselves as having had a legacy going backwards and forwards.”

Zeller also pointed out that the origins of Surrealism are not entirely unambiguous. Besides Breton’s manifesto, there was another “Manifesto of Surrealism,” written by the poet Yvan Goll, the leader of another Surrealist faction, and published a month before Breton’s. Goll rejected the Freudian aspect of Breton’s vision, and argued for a Surrealism grounded in reality, but taken to “a higher plane.”

Around the same time, the Belgian poet Paul Nougé also published his own Surrealist tracts called “Correspondence,” which are on display at an exhibition in Brussels at the Bozar art center.

Xavier Canonne, the show’s curator, said that Nougé should be regarded as a founder of Surrealism on par with Breton. “If there is one thing I’d like to come out of this show, it’s that people discover Paul Nougé,” he said. “And that people from outside Belgium discover that there was a real movement of Surrealism in Belgium for more than 70 years.”

Nougé influenced René Magritte to shift from abstraction to surrealism, Canonne said, and Nougé also established a Surrealist center in Brussels that attracted many other artists to the movement, even as Magritte moved to Paris in 1927 to join Breton’s followers.

Image
A man in a white-walled gallery stands with his arms folded in front of a painting by René Magritte.

Xavier Canonne, curator of “Histoire de ne pas rire. Surrealism in Belgium,” viewing “Portrait of Paul Nougé” by René Magritte at Bozar in Brussels.Credit...C. Herscovici/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Ksenia Kuleshova for The New York Times

Patricia Allmer, an art history professor at the University of Edinburgh, said that this contest for ownership reflects how flexible and adaptable Surrealism’s basic principles could be.

“Surrealism was indeed, from its beginnings, a multiplicity,” she said. “Breton’s manifesto became the famous one,” she said, but “you can’t claim it as a movement. It’s a plurality. That’s why it’s so rich and so malleable: It can be used by different artists in different contexts.”

Allmer also said that Surrealism didn’t find its most profound uses until female artists adopted its methods in the post-World War II era, as she plans to show in an exhibition she is curating later this year at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, England.

“Breton always emphasized the Surrealism breaks boundaries, but it often excluded women,” Allmer said. “Women artists took the truth of Surrealism to make feminist political statements and push beyond the gender boundary.”

Image
A Surrealist painting by Dorothea Tanning.

“A Very Happy Picture” by Dorothea Tanning.Credit...Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris; Ksenia Kuleshova for The New York Times

The notion that art should be ideological, rather than representational, is central to the Surrealist spirit, said Mark Polizzotti, whose book “Why Surrealism Matters” was published in January, he describes Surrealism as “a disrupter,” and a way of thinking that “perpetually challenges the existing paradigms and seeks new forms to maintain its emotional intensity.”

Polizzotti points to the Surrealists’ objection to French colonialism and racism, which he said were similar to the current discussions about racial equality and social justice. In his book, he quotes Breton’s declaration “Surrealism is allied with people of color, because it has always been on their side against every form of white imperialism and banditry.”

In an interview, Polizzotti said: “We’re in a world today that’s not unlike the world in which they emerged. We came out of a pandemic, there are questions about labor reform and anti-colonialism and exhibition strategies in the art world. These were things they were grappling with as well.”

The Pompidou’s exhibition will end with the death of Breton in 1966, but the show’s curator, Didier Ottinger, acknowledged that this wasn’t Surrealism’s final chapter.

Image
A woman in a white-waled studio in which five paintings of women in 18th century dress stand on easels.

Ewa Juszkiewicz in her studio in Warsaw. She is one of about 30 “New Surrealists” mentioned in Robert Zeller’s book “New Surrealism: The Uncanny in Contemporary Painting.”Credit...Anna Liminowicz for The New York Times

Acolytes of the Surrealists “tried to keep the idea of Surrealism alive for a few years,” he said. But in October 1969, one of its leaders, Jean Schuster, announced the formal dissolution of the Surrealist group in the French newspaper Le Monde.

Many artists refused to accept this death decree, and wrote in protest to Le Monde. “Letters came flooding in from all over the world from artists who said, ‘No, we are alive,’” Ottinger said. “So, as long as there were more artists, it could not die.”

Polizzotti said that Surrealism continued to extend into other art forms, like the tragicomic Theater of the Absurd and the bizarre skits of the British comedy troupe Monty Python. Surrealist tendencies also appear in the cinematic world of David Lynch, whose films, like “Eraserhead” and “Mulholland Drive,” dive into dark psychosexual desires that lie beneath the surface of a seemingly tranquil world.

And it has certainly not died in the fine arts, either. In Zeller’s book, he identifies about 30 “New Surrealists,” including the Polish painter Ewa Juszkiewicz, who makes portraits of women covered in plants, and the Taiwanese artist Lin Shih-Yung, who paints humans with bananas for heads.

“It’s the transformative nature of Surrealism that continues to make it relevant,” Allmer said. “Surrealism is inherently political. It started as a protest movement and a way to counter fascism and authoritarianism, so that’s why it still can be a very powerful political weapon for today. It will always be relevant. I would say, it’s a future movement.”

Some 2024 Surrealism Exhibitions

“Imagine! 100 Years of International Surrealism”
Through July 21 at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts Belgium, in Brussels; fine-arts-museum.be.

“Histoire de ne pas rire. Surrealism in Belgium”
Through June 16 at Bozar, in Brussels; bozar.be.

“Fantastic Visions: 100 Years of Surrealism From the National Galleries of Scotland”
Through Aug. 31 at the Museum of Art Pudong, in Shanghai; museumofartpd.org.cn.

“Surrealist: Lee Miller”
Through April 14 at the Heide Museum, in Melbourne, Australia; heide.com.au.

“But Live Here? No Thanks: Surrealism + Anti-Fascism”
Oct. 15 through March 2, 2025, at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, in Munich; lenbachhaus.de.

“Surrealism at the Harn,”
Through June 2 at the Harn Museum of Art, in Gainesville, Fla.; harn.ufl.edu.

“Surrealism From Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists”
March 10 through July 28 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; themodern.org.

“Surrealism 100: Prague, Tartu and Other Stories”
April 4 through Sept. 8 at the Eesti Rahva Muuseum, in Tartu, Estonia; tartu2024.ee.

“Surrealism: Worlds in Dialogue”
Aug. 31, 2024, through Jan. 5, 2025, at the Kunsthalle Vogelmann, in Heilbronn, Germany; museen.heilbronn.de.

“Surrealism So Far”
Sept. 4 through Jan. 13, 2025, at the Pompidou Center, in Paris; centrepompidou.fr.

“Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes”
Nov. 23 through April 27, 2025, at the Hepworth Wakefield, in Wakefield, England; hepworthwakefield.org.

A version of this article appears in print on March 3, 2024, Section AR, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: At 100, Surrealism Isn’t Really Dead. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/arts ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

Fighting for a snapshot of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Some psychologists suggest that taking a slower, more contemplative approach at museums could make visitors more likely to connect with the art.Credit...Guia Besana for The New York Times

Ah, the Louvre. It’s sublime, it’s historic, it’s … overwhelming.

Upon entering any vast art museum — the Hermitage, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art — the typical traveler grabs a map and spends the next two hours darting from one masterpiece to the next, battling crowds, exhaustion and hunger (yet never failing to take selfies with boldface names like Mona Lisa).

What if we slowed down? What if we spent time with the painting that draws us in instead of the painting we think we’re supposed to see?

Most people want to enjoy a museum, not conquer it. Yet the average visitor spends 15 to 30 seconds in front of a work of art, according to museum researchers. And the breathless pace of life in our Instagram age conspires to make that feel normal. But what’s a traveler with a long bucket list to do? Blow off the Venus de Milo to linger over a less popular lady like Diana of Versailles?

“When you go to the library,” said James O. Pawelski, the director of education for the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, “you don’t walk along the shelves looking at the spines of the books and on your way out tweet to your friends, ‘I read 100 books today!'” Yet that’s essentially how many people experience a museum. “They see as much of art as you see spines on books,” said Professor Pawelski, who studies connections between positive psychology and the humanities. “You can’t really see a painting as you’re walking by it.”

There is no right way to experience a museum, of course. Some travelers enjoy touring at a clip or snapping photos of timeless masterpieces. But psychologists and philosophers such as Professor Pawelski say that if you do choose to slow down — to find a piece of art that speaks to you and observe it for minutes rather than seconds — you are more likely to connect with the art, the person with whom you’re touring the galleries, maybe even yourself, he said. Why, you just might emerge feeling refreshed and inspired rather than depleted.

To demonstrate this, Professor Pawelski takes his students to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, home to some of the most important Post Impressionist and early modern paintings, and asks them to spend at least 20 minutes in front of a single painting that speaks to them in some way. Twenty minutes these days is what three hours used to be, he noted. “But what happens, of course, is you actually begin to be able to see what you’re looking at,” he said.

Julie Haizlip wasn’t so sure. A scientist and self-described left-brain thinker, Dr. Haizlip is a clinical professor at the School of Nursing and the Division of Pediatric Critical Care at the University of Virginia. While studying at Penn she was among the students Professor Pawelski took to the Barnes one afternoon in March.


A gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Sandra Jackson-Dumont, who oversees education programs at the museum, said you could make a sprawling museum digestible and personal by seeking out only those works that dovetail with your interests.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

“I have to admit I was a bit skeptical,” said Dr. Haizlip, who had never spent 20 minutes looking at a work of art and prefers Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock to Matisse, Rousseau and Picasso, whose works adorn the Barnes.

Any museumgoer can do what Professor Pawelski asks students such as Dr. Haizlip to do: Pick a wing and begin by wandering for a while, mentally noting which works are appealing or stand out. Then return to one that beckons. For instance, if you have an hour he suggests wandering for 30 minutes, and then spending the next half-hour with a single compelling painting. Choose what resonates with you, not what’s most famous (unless the latter strikes a chord).

Indeed, a number of museums now offer “slow art” tours or days that encourage visitors to take their time. Rather than check master works off a list as if on a scavenger hunt, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, who oversees the education programs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, said you can make a sprawling museum digestible and personal by seeking out only those works that dovetail with your interests, be it a love of music or horses. To find relevant works or galleries, research the museum’s collection online in advance of your visit. Or stop by the information desk when you arrive, tell a staff member about your fascination with, say, music, and ask for suggestions. If the person doesn’t know or says, “we don’t have that,” ask if there’s someone else you can talk to, advised Ms. Jackson-Dumont, because major museums are rife with specialists. Might you miss some other works by narrowing your focus? Perhaps. But as Professor Pawelski put it, sometimes you get more for the price of admission by opting to see less.

Initially, nothing in the Barnes grabbed Dr. Haizlip. Then she spotted a beautiful, melancholy woman with red hair like her own. It was Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting of a prostitute, “AMontrouge” — Rosa La Rouge.

“I was trying to figure out why she had such a severe look on her face,” said Dr. Haizlip. As the minutes passed, Dr. Haizlip found herself mentally writing the woman’s story, imagining that she felt trapped and unhappy — yet determined. Over her shoulder, Toulouse-Lautrec had painted a window. “There’s an escape,” Dr. Haizlip thought. “You just have to turn around and see it.”

“I was actually projecting a lot of me and what was going on in my life at that moment into that painting,” she continued. “It ended up being a moment of self-discovery.” Trained as a pediatric intensive-care specialist, Dr. Haizlip was looking for some kind of change but wasn’t sure what. Three months after her encounter with the painting, she changed her practice, accepting a teaching position at the University of Virginia’s School of Nursing, where she is now using positive psychology in health care teams. “There really was a window behind me that I don’t know I would have seen,” she said, “had I not started looking at things differently.”

Professor Pawelski said it’s still a mystery why viewing art in this deliberately contemplative manner can increase well-being or what he calls flourishing. That’s what his research is trying to uncover. He theorized, however, that there is a connection to research on meditation and its beneficial biological effects. In a museum, though, you’re not just focusing on your breath, he said. “You’re focusing on the work of art.”

Previous research, including a study led by Stephen Kaplan at the University of Michigan, has already suggested that museums can serve as restorative environments. And Daniel Fujiwara at the London School of Economics and Political Science has found that visiting museums can have a positive impact on happiness and self-reported health.

Ms. Jackson-Dumont, who has also worked at the Seattle Art Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art, said travelers should feel empowered to “curate” their own experience. Say, for example, you do not like hearing chatter when you look at art. Ms. Jackson-Dumont suggests making your own soundtrack at home and taking headphones to the museum so that you can stroll the galleries accompanied by music. “I think people feel they have to behave a certain way in a museum,” she said. “You can actually be you.”

To that end, many museums are encouraging visitors to take selfies with the art and post them on social media. (In case you missed it, Jan. 22 was worldwide "MuseumSelfie" day with visitors sharing their best work on Twitter using an eponymous hashtag.) Selfie-takers often pose like the subject of the painting or sculpture behind them. To some visitors that seems crass, distracting or antithetical to contemplation. But surprisingly, Ms. Jackson-Dumont has observed that when museumgoers strike an art-inspired pose, it not only creates camaraderie among onlookers but it gives the selfie-takers a new appreciation for the art. In fact, taking on the pose of a sculpture, for example, is something the Met does with visitors who are blind or partially sighted because “feeling the pose” can allow them to better understand the work.

There will always be certain paintings or monuments that travelers feel they must see, regardless of crowds or lack of time. To winnow the list, Ms. Jackson-Dumont suggests asking yourself: What are the things that, if I do not see them, will leave me feeling as if I didn’t have a New York (or any other city) experience? (Museum tours may also help you be efficient.)

The next time you step into a vast treasure trove of art and history, allow yourself to be carried away by your interests and instincts. You never know where they might lead you. Before leaving the Barnes on that March afternoon, Dr. Haizlip had another unexpected moment: She bought a print of the haunting Toulouse-Lautrec woman.

“I felt like she had more to tell me,” she said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/trav ... 778d3e6de3

[kmaherali]

Riken Yamamoto of Japan is recognized for modest designs that inspire social connection and both literal and figurative transparency.



Riken Yamamoto, whose understated buildings quietly emphasize community and connectivity, has been awarded this year’s Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor.

“Whether he designs private houses or public infrastructure, schools or fire stations, city halls or museums, the common and convivial dimension is always present,” the jury said in its citation announcing the award on Tuesday. “His constant, careful and substantial attention to community has generated public interworking space systems that incentivize people to convene in different ways.”

ImageA view through the vast corridors of an open-air summer cottage reveals the trees and greenery on the other side.

Yamakawa Villa, 1977, Nagano, Japan. This early project, for a client who wanted a summer cottage in the woods, is designed like an open-air terrace, without exterior walls. Living rooms seamlessly merge -- and animals are welcome.Credit...Tomio Ohashi/The Pritzker Architecture Prize
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An open structure with no walls, but with a wood-plank roof and similar floors as the only elements connecting the capsule rooms.

In the private residence, Yamakawa Village, sleeping quarters and the kitchen are dispersed into small rooms.Credit...Tomio Ohashi/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

The desire to eliminate barriers between public and private realms was evident in Yamamoto’s first project, from 1977, a private open-air summer house in the woods of Nagano, Japan. “It has only a roof, no walls,” the 78-year-old architect recalled in a telephone interview from Yokohama, Japan, where he is based. “In the winter season, many of the animals are coming in.”

Similarly, a house in Kawasaki that Yamamoto designed the following year for two artists featured a pavilion-like room that could serve as a stage for performances, with living quarters underneath.

People continually asked, “Why Yamamoto makes such a strange house?” the architect said. “I explain the meaning every time: The community is the most important thing. Every family has a relation to community.”

The prestigious Pritzker award may be most closely associated with “starchitect” recipients such as Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid. But in recent years the jury has also recognized lower-profile designers, such as Francis Kéré of West Africa (2022), Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal (2021) and Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara (2020).

Image
Glass-walled buildings housing glass-walled classrooms are connected by platforms and terraces, framing a courtyard.

Saitama Prefectural University, 1999, Koshigaya, Japan. Its nine buildings are linked by terraces that transition into walkways through sloping green spaces and courtyards. Transparent walls make classroom and buildings visible from afar, encouraging collaboration and connection.Credit...Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

Yamamoto’s public projects with his firm, Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop, have also been oriented around social interaction. Saitama Prefectural University, completed in 1999, features nine transparent buildings connected by terraces, allowing views from one classroom to another. “Distinguishing where one building ends and another begins is intentionally blurred,” the Pritzker says in its image book of Yamamoto’s work, “prompting an architectural language of its own.”

“His architecture clearly expresses his beliefs through the modular structure and the simplicity of its form,” the jury said in its citation. “Yet, it does not dictate activities, rather it enables people to shape their own lives within his buildings with elegance, normality, poetry and joy.”

The architect has combined transparency, functionality and accessibility in projects like the Future University, Hakodate (2000), whose underlying philosophy, “Open Space, Open Mind,” is reflected in Yamamoto’s open spaces. The classrooms, auditorium and library are lined with glass walls and open common areas are placed just outside of the transparent rooms on overlapping levels, encouraging students and teachers to work collaboratively.

Image
A transparent cube, several stories tall, with an open parking area on the ground floor.

Hiroshima Nishi Fire Station, 2000, Hiroshima, Japan. The facade, interior walls and floors are constructed of glass, lending the appearance of a transparent volume. Credit...Tomio Ohashi/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

Image
A man in an orange jumpsuit and white helmet with a net beneath him scrambles across a line strung from one side of fire headquarters to the other as observers watch.

Hiroshima Nishi Fire Station 2000 Hiroshima, Japan. The visible atrium, where the firefighters train, encourages the community to view and engage with them in a reciprocal commitment between civil servants and the people they serve.Credit...Tomio Ohashi/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

For the Hiroshima West Fire Station (2000), Yamamoto constructed the facade, interior walls and floors out of glass and made the atrium where firefighters train central to the building, encouraging passers-by to view and engage with those who are protecting the community.

When designing Jian Wai SOHO in 2004, nine residential towers and four small home offices just east of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Yamamoto said he successfully resisted the developer’s efforts to make the community gated. “I tried to make it open to the city,” the architect said.

In 2020, Yamamoto designed the Circle at Zurich Airport, an indoor-outdoor complex of hotels, restaurants and stores featuring glass walls, windowed ceilings and thin concrete columns.

Typically airports “have only souvenir shops, but this is completely different,” Yamamoto said in 2016, adding that his complex “is not for the airport itself. The planned city is for local residents of the Zurich region.”

Born in 1945 in China and trained in Japan, Yamamoto was 5 when he lost his father, an engineer, whose career he sought to emulate, eventually finding his way to architecture. At the age of 17, he visited Kohfukuji Temple, in Nara, one of Japan’s most famous Buddhist shrines, with a history dating to the seventh century. There he was captivated by the five-story pagoda symbolizing the elements of earth, water, fire, air and space.

“It was very dark, but I could see the wooden tower illuminated by the light of the moon,” he said in the Pritzker biography, “and what I found at that moment was my first experience with architecture.”

In 1968, Yamamoto graduated from Nihon University and three years later received a Master of Arts in Architecture from Tokyo University of the Arts. He founded his practice in 1973.

Yamamoto was influenced by his mentor, the architect Hiroshi Hara, designer of the Umeda Sky Building in Osaka, which features two towers connected at the top by glass bridges and is now considered a landmark. Yamamoto’s 2018 winning design for the Taoyuan Museum of Art in Taiwan comprises two buildings with green inclined roofs connected with an aboveground corridor.

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A row of terraced housing units capped with arched floating roofs.

Hotakubo Housing, 1991, Kumamoto, Japan. Housing clusters arranged around a tree-lined central square drew on traditional Japanese living arrangements that foster communality.Credit...Tomio Ohashi/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

Inspired by the theories of Hannah Arendt, Yamamoto is committed “to the belief that all spaces may enrich and serve the consideration of an entire community,” the Pritzker jury said, “and not just those who occupy them. He moved from single-family residences to social housing, such as the Hotakubo project in Kumamoto (1991), with 16 housing clusters arranged around a tree-lined central square. The design drew on traditional Japanese “machiya” (townhouses) and Greek “oikos” (households) — living arrangements that foster collectivism.

He went on to create larger public projects, like Tianjin Library in China (2012), which incorporates bookshelves into an intersecting grid of wall beams. Stone louvers on the exterior mitigate dust and achieve transparency.

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Tianjin Library, 2012, Tianjin, China, with a collection of six million books. The building appears as 10 crisscrossing levels; from any level viewers can see others levels. Credit...Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

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Inside are the tall shelves built into a system of grids.

The Tianjin Library has a collection of six million books. The shelves are integrated with a grid of intersecting beams.Credit...Nacasa & Partners/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

Yamamoto has also made an effort to personally give back, collaborating with the architects Toyo Ito and Kazuyo Sejima on disaster-relief community housing following the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that struck Tohoku in 2011 and caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. And in 2018 he instituted the Local Republic Award, to honor young architects.

“For some reason, we’re educated to accept that an architect must be good and arrogant, leading us to wrongly believe arrogance is a condition for goodness,” Graham McKay, an architect and professor, wrote in his “Misfits’ Architecture” blog in 2021. “I’d like to use Riken Yamamoto and his career to illustrate that that’s not true.”

Often composed of essential, everyday materials like aluminum, glass, concrete and wood, Yamamoto’s buildings don’t call attention to themselves. But their priorities come through loud and clear. “My architecture is a strong message,” Yamamoto said, “to make something in relation to other people.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/arts ... cture.html

[kmaherali]

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTZM4UL5lyg

JollyGul is thrilled to announce the release of the original ghazal video “Daur-e-Hayyat,” featuring the profound poetry of Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar, sung by the talented Dr. Karim Gillani and Kashif Din. This captivating piece brings to life the enduring verses of Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar (1878–1931), a distinguished figure in the Indian struggle for independence, whose poetic prowess delves into the philosophical and spiritual realms of existence, resilience, and the quest for freedom.

“Daur-e-Hayyat” (The Time or Cycle of Life) explores the transient nature of life and the human spirit's indefatigable resilience against temporal challenges. Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar's words echo through time, offering inspiration and solace to those engaged in the perpetual fight for justice and liberation. His poetry, marked by its thematic richness and depth, continues to resonate across generations, celebrating the literary, cultural, and political heritage of the Indian subcontinent.

The murder of Hussain (A.S) is mentioned and described as actually the fatality of Yazed; Islam comes to revival after every Karbala-like bloodshed: This is a profound statement on the martyrdom of Hussain at Karbala, symbolizing the triumph of truth and righteousness over falsehood and tyranny. Hussain's martyrdom is seen not as his defeat but as the moral and spiritual defeat of his oppressor, Yazed. It suggests that Islam, or faith itself, is rejuvenated and strengthened through the sacrifice of the righteous, echoing the theme of rebirth and renewal after adversity.

This ghazal is enchantingly rendered by Dr. Karim Gillani and Kashif Din, whose vocal prowess and emotional depth breathe new life into Jauhar's timeless verses. Accompanied by a serene melody in Raga Yaman, composed by Dr. Karim Gillani, and the elegant sounds designed by Hi Studio Productions, the video features naturally beautiful landscapes captured and directed by Alizain Mevawala and Riaz Ali.

“Daur-e-Hayyat” is a highlight of Dr. Karim Gillani’s sixth original album, "Echoes of the Divine: Sufi Soundscapes," which masterfully arranges and composes various styles and genres of South Asian Sufi traditions to enhance the soundscape of Sufi spirituality and unity.

We invite you to experience the beauty and depth of “Daur-e-Hayyat,” a testament to the enduring power of poetry, music, and the human spirit in the ongoing journey towards freedom, justice, and truth. Join us in celebrating the artistic and spiritual contributions of Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Dr. Karim Gillani, and Kashif Din to our shared cultural heritage.

[kmaherali]

An Artist’s Response to a Racist Mural Walks a Fine Line

Activists urged Tate Britain to take an offensive artwork from 1927 off its walls, but the museum instead commissioned Keith Piper to create a response.


“Viva Voce,” a video created by Keith Piper shares a new gallery space at Tate Modern with a 1927 mural by Rex Whistler.Credit...Kemka Ajoku for The New York Times

For nearly 100 years, a 55-foot-long mural was the backdrop to a high-class restaurant at Tate Britain. As diners quaffed fine wine and ate expensive dishes, they could glance at the painting by Rex Whistler depicting a hunting party riding through a fantastical landscape.

Few visitors to the London art museum appeared to notice two small sections of Whistler’s scene, each taking up just a few inches: one depicting a white woman, wearing a billowing dress and bonnet, dragging a Black boy by a rope, as the boy’s unclothed, terrified mother watches from a tree; the other showing the same boy, shackled by a collar, running behind a cart.

It was only in 2020, after George Floyd’s murder and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, that antiracism campaigners highlighted those sections on social media and demanded the mural’s removal. Soon, Tate shuttered the restaurant, and administrators began agonizing over what to do about the painting, titled “The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats.”

On Tuesday, their solution went on display when Tate Britain reopened the ornate room containing the work. Rather than diners, the mural now surrounds a large video work by the Black British artist Keith Piper that aims to highlight and explain Whistler’s racist imagery. Chloe Hodge, the exhibit’s curator, said Piper’s work would be on display for around a year.

With this new presentation, Tate Britain is trying to balance the demands of activists, who want offensive artworks removed from view, and conservative politicians and art enthusiasts, many of whom want museums to avoid any hint of “woke” posturing. But in steering a middle course between those positions, Piper said, he knew that he and the museum could annoy both sides.

“A lot of people said this is a poisoned chalice,” Piper said.

Image
A man wearing a dark jacket, sweater and pants leans against a wall with his hands clasped.

Keith Piper’s piece directly addresses the racist imagery in Whistler’s mural, and views in through a critical and historical lens.Credit...Kemka Ajoku for The New York Times

Called “Viva Voce” after the Latin name used for college oral exams in Britain, Piper’s 22-minute, two-screen film dramatizes an imagined conversation between Whistler (played by Ian Pink) and a university lecturer (Ellen O’Grady). In the film’s first half, the academic questions Whistler about the history of the mural, which the artist completed in 1927. The mood switches suddenly when she points to Whistler’s depiction of the Black mother hiding in a tree.

“Who is this?” the lecturer demands. “Oh, just a bit of humor,” Whistler replies.

The lecturer has more questions for Whistler: about the racist depictions of Black people in other artworks he produced, and about the treatment of ethnic minorities in 1920s Britain.

In the video, Whistler is confused by the line of questioning. “This is all becoming rather unsavory,” he says: “I thought you wanted to discuss my work.”

In Britain, discussions around problematic artworks have tended to focus less on an artist’s motivations and societal influences, and more on whether a sculpture or painting should be on display at all. But Whistler’s mural, which is painted directly onto the museum walls, is protected under British heritage laws, meaning Tate Britain could not easily remove or alter it, even if its administrators had wanted to. And last year, Britain’s Conservative government published guidance that said museums must “retain and explain” problematic statues or artworks that are part of a building.

Even so, some art critics and members of Tate’s own young and diverse staff urged the museum to hide the mural behind a screen.

Image

Antiracism campaigners began to highlight sections of the Whistler mural on social media around 2020, after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.Credit...Kemka Ajoku for The New York Times
Image

Tate Britain could not remove or alter the work, even if its administrators had wanted to, because of British heritage laws.Credit...Kemka Ajoku for The New York Times

Hodge, the curator, said that she chose Piper to respond to Whistler’s mural because she felt he would “engage deeply” with the original painting and wouldn’t produce “something reactionary.” She added that she expected the work to divide opinion. “We can’t commission work that’s going to do everything for everybody,” Hodge said: “This is Keith’s own artistic response at the end of the day.”

For decades, Piper — a founder of the Blk Art Group, a collective of Black artists formed in 1980s England — has explored issues of racism and slavery in his art. In his 1996 video work “Go West Young Man,” a father and son discuss racist stereotypes; “The Coloureds’ Codex,” a fake historical artifact Piper created in 2017, features jars of black, brown and cream paint to represent the ways that plantation owners classified and controlled enslaved people.

Zehra Jumabhoy, an art history lecturer at the University of Bristol, said that she was surprised when Tate Britain chose Piper for the commission because “his early work was so angry.” If the museum had wanted to avoid inflaming tensions around the mural, there were safer options, she added.

Yet for some artists, Piper was the obvious choice. Hew Locke, the prominent Guyanese British artist, said that Piper’s art had the bravery, historical rigor and occasional humor needed for the high-profile commission. Piper was “his own man,” Locke said, and was not out to please anyone but himself.

Image
Two large screens, installed in a darkened gallery, show a close-up of a painting on one side, and a man and a woman in conversation on the other.

Chloe Hodge, the exhibit’s curator, said that she expected the work would divide opinion. “We can’t commission work that’s going to do everything for everybody,” she said.Credit...Kemka Ajoku for The New York Times

In an interview at Tate Britain’s cafe, Piper said that he had never eaten in the restaurant space where his work is now on show — “It was too expensive!” he said — and so hadn’t seen the mural before the uproar.

But he had not been shocked to learn that there was racist imagery on Tate Britain’s walls, he said — such stereotypical figures were once commonplace in British art. What had surprised him, though, was how long the museum took to do something about the mural. While delving into the institution’s archives, Piper said, he found visitor letters dating from the 1970s that complained about the painting.

Though the way Whistler had portrayed Black people was unacceptable, Piper said, he didn’t agree with those who had urged Tate Britain to remove the mural or hide it behind a screen. “My argument is, by leaving it up, it becomes an important witness to history, and by countering it, we learn things and we hear things, that we may not have heard before,” he said. “That’s the important role of the arts and of museums.”

After the interview, Piper walked through into Tate Britain’s newest gallery to make some final checks on “Viva Voce.” He chatted briefly with Hodge, who said that some other Tate Britain staff members had come by to see the piece. Although they liked it, she said, some had expected the film to be “more condemnatory of Rex Whistler.”

Piper looked surprised. “Isn’t it condemnatory?” he asked.

Hodge paused for a moment. “Well,” she said, “there’s always two sides.”

Whistler’s Mural in Tate Britain

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/arts ... piper.html

[kmaherali]

Divers searching for ancient shipwrecks make incredible discovery


Researcher’s used Homer’s Iliad as a guide to find a number of ancient artifacts (Picture: Greek Ministry of Culture)
© Provided by Metro

Explorers have found 10 shipwrecks off the coast of Greece, with one being at least 5,000-year-old.

Researcher’s used Homer’s Iliad as a guide to find a number of ancient artifacts during a four-year survey off the coast of Kasos in the Aegean sea.

They found the remains of 10 sunken ships, with the oldest dating back t o 3,000 BC.

The ships span across different eras, including the Classical period (460 BC), the Hellenistic period (100 BC to 100 AD), the Roman years (200 BC – 300 AD) and the Byzantine period (800 – 900 AD).

The most recent vessel was a World War II era ship made of wood, the Greek Ministry of Culture announced.

Unique finds from Spain, Italy, Africa and Asia Minor were also found.
This includes a Spanish amphora with a seal on its handle dating between 150-170 AD.


Researchers found the remains of 10 sunken ships (Picture: Greek Ministry of Culture)


Unique finds from Spain, Italy, Africa and Asia Minor were also found (Picture: Greek Ministry of Culture)


Everything was found 65 and 155 feet below surface (Picture: Greek Ministry of Culture)

Drinking vessels, African terra sigillata flasks and a stone ancho from the 8th century BC were also discovered.

They were all found between 65 and 155 feet below surface.

Kasos served as a major trade hub east of Crete and played a role in the Trojan war, according to Homer’s Iliad.

The survey’s website said: ‘It is the first systematic research on the seabed of Kasos with the main objective of locating, recording and studying the antiquities of an area at the crossroads of cultures and once a center of navigation.’

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/di ... 6a62&ei=64#

[kmaherali]

Happy video day #dancewithSL fam! I put together this tribute dance piece, a fusion of Kathak and Sufi dance choreography in Qawaali style for the Ismaili Diamond Jubilee year. Through my dance journey, this year has been particularly special in that I've found a niche and a love for the exploration of spirituality in my art. Thank you to Alhamra Unplugged for collaborating with me on this piece that holds such a special place in my heart.
Diamond Jubilee Mubarak!

Music: Allah Hoo - Alhamra Unplugged Season 1 (Khalid Khan, Qasim Yousaf, Aqleema Dar, Abubakar Javed) (Check the song out at

/ allah-hoo-and-piya-ghar-aaya-1 )

Male Dancers: Rahim Printer (lead), Gowtham Ratnaraj, Aman Rajput, Irfan Lakhani, Arnold Wallang, Jassy Grewal
Female Dancers: Shereen Ladha (lead), Shaila Premji, Shama Kassam, Karina D'Mello, Zeeanna Ibrahim, Sahar Ibhrahim, Salima Fakirani
Videography: Anil Mohabir (Icon Motion)
Rahim's Costume: Chandan Fashion (@chandanfashion)

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-CZ3RG_GXI