The past year has rightly shifted the way that cultural value is estimatedIn living memory, there has been no worse year for museums and galleries, along with many other arts organisations. With closure forced on them by the pandemic, they were unable …
The new award from the Women’s prize should scrap its age limit
Literary prize culture favours young and marketable writers – and the new Futures scheme is simply adding to the problemLast week, the Women’s prize announced a new award in partnership with Good Housekeeping magazine. “Futures” will provide promotiona…
In your face: how Chuck Close built images and tore them apart
Face blindness meant the photorealist artist, who has died aged 81, had to dismantle and reconstitute, making every cell of his pixellated portraits ever more dramaticChuck Close, painter of outsized photorealist portraits, dies aged 81Hugely enlarged,…
Stephen Colbert mocks ‘poorly handled regime change’ at Jeopardy!
Late-night hosts discuss the hosting controversy at Jeopardy! and the Republican fight against Covid safety measuresStephen Colbert addressed “the big story everybody’s talking about right now” on Thursday’s Late Show, “which continues to be the chaos …
Our art deals with real injustices, some in Palestine: no wonder we faced opposition « Forensic Architecture
Our battle to restore a statement to a Manchester exhibition was really about what can and can’t be said in cultural spacesOn Wednesday, protesters in Manchester reclaimed one of the city’s main cultural institutions. Despite the rain, pro-Palestine ac…
Jill Murphy, children’s author and illustrator, dies aged 72
The writer was best known for the much-loved picture book Peace at Last and the Worst Witch series of novels ‘I just wanted to have a book on the shelf’ | Jill Murphy Beloved children’s author and illustrator Jill Murphy has died at the age of 72. Murp…
Billie, Lorde, Lizzo: has being a female pop star in 2021 become unbearable?
New releases by three pop icons reveal their extreme attempts to protect themselves from the damage caused by fame. Pop stardom has never seemed less aspirationalThe mechanisms of pop stardom have never been subject to as much scrutiny as they are now….
‘The hypocrisy is nauseating’: Wes Streeting on state school arts cuts
Shadow child poverty secretary wants all pupils to have access to arts education after decade of Tory cutsWes Streeting can’t claim to be his inner-city comp’s most famous alumni. That claim goes to the Hollywood actor John Boyega who, like the shadow …
Advance copies of Sally Rooney’s unpublished book sold for hundreds of dollars
Uncorrected proofs of upcoming novels have been selling for large sums on eBay and Depop – despite the practice being banned by publishersWhen advance reading copies (ARCs) of Sally Rooney’s new novel Beautiful World, Where Are You were sent out in May…
Manchester’s Space Afrika: ‘We’re totally ourselves – Black artists in the 21st century’
The duo’s groundbreaking music takes the mischievous appeal of their home city’s sound and adds a fresh dose of dark ambienceJoshua Inyang and Joshua Reid’s Space Afrika project is galactic in scope. When the duo started releasing music in 2014, they w…