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The Met’s Frida & Diego Opera Imagines Feminist Revenge from Beyond the Grave

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She is the subject of a current exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and an upcoming one at the Tate Modern. Netflix is planning an adaptation of her life. Her unibrowed face stares out from tote bags, murals, notebooks, enamel pins, refrigerator magnets, and dorm-room posters across the globe. A recent auction of The Dream (The Bed) , 1940, helped send her market value into yet a higher strata. I speak, of course, of Frida Kahlo. Add to the list a new opera. El Último Sueño de Frida y Dieg o, which recently opened at the Met, stages an oneiric reckoning with two famed painters. The premise is deceptively simple: on a November day in 1957, Frida returns from the underworld during Día de los Muertos for a brief reunion with her husband, who is himself not long for the world of the living. Carlos Álvarez as Diego and Isabel Leonard as Frida in a scene from Gabriela Lena Frank’s “El Últi...

Rene Matić Awarded 2026 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize

Rene Matić was named the winner of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, one of the most prestigious honors in the field. They received the £30,000 ($40,250) prize for their exhibition “AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH,” which closed at CCA Berlin in February. Matić, who is based in London, works across photography, sculpture, sound, poetry, and film to examine social dynamics of race, gender, and intimacy through the lens of national symbols (flags are a recurring motif). Their practice includes an excavation of British subculture, including the “rude boy,” a fashion and ideological formation that emerged in the aftermath of postcolonial resistance movements. Part photography, part sculpture, and part installation, AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH positioned itself within the rise of right-wing populism, asking how the personal intersects with—and survives—the political. It extended an earlier exhibition staged at Vitrine Gallery titled “Born ...

Sideline Conversions 18 May (some rugby news and information to start the week)

A lineout scene in Saturday’s match between Petone and Ories. Petone won 39-10. Photo: Kinetic Images. Photos from the weekend at https://ift.tt/Ios1a4G The Swindale Shield reached its halfway point on Saturday and the race for the first round title is heating up with several teams in the mix and no conclusive favourite at this point....

Inside the Yard That Could Build Canada’s Submarine Fleet

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The Hanwha Ocean shipyard in Geoje, South Korea covers 4.9 million square metres. It employs roughly 31,000 people, operates its own fire departments, hospitals, and daycare centres, and produces approximately 45 to 60 vessels per year. Vanguard visited the Geoje facility and Hanwha Ocean’s Siheung R&D campus in late April as part of an editorial trip hosted by Hanwha, gaining firsthand access to one of the production facilities under consideration for Canada’s submarine fleet renewal. From explosives to ocean giants Hanwha’s origins trace to 1952, the year before the Korean War armistice, when the company was founded as Korea Explosives Co. What followed over the next seven decades is one of the more remarkable industrial stories in modern history. Korea emerged from the war as one of the poorest nations on earth. Within a generation it had become one of the world’s dominant industrial powers, and shipbuilding was central to that transformation...

A Rare Blue-Green Diamond Ring Sold for Over $17 M. At Christie’s Geneva

Earlier this week, a 5.5-carat diamond ring sold for over $17 million dollars during Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction in Zurich. The triangular-cut stone, known as Ocean Dream, thanks to its blue-green color, had an estimate of about $9-12 million. It is set into an 18-karat white gold band and surrounded by pink and white diamonds. Fortune magazine reported that the buyer was an unnamed private client and that the ring took 20 minute to sell. Max Fawcett, Global Head of Christie’s Jewellery, noted in a statement that this is the second time Ocean Dream has been offered at auction. (t sold for nearly $10 million in 2014, also at Christie’s Geneva.) According to the Smithsonian, it is “one of the eight rarest diamonds in the world.” Ocean Dream was one of seven colored stones in the 2003 exhibition “Splendor of Diamonds” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The ring comes with a letter issued by the Gemo...

More Than 100 Seattle Art Museum Workers Plan to Unionize

More than 100 Seattle Art Museum employees announced plans this week to unionize, joining the nationwide labor movement that’s swept through art institutions in the last six years.  The union, called the Seattle Art Museum Workers United, will represent workers in over 20 front- and back-end departments. The union told SAM director and CEO Scott Stulen of its formation in a letter, writing: “Our solidarity is a movement to improve working conditions in alignment with SAM’s mission, vision, and core values.”  The letter continues, “The challenges we face as unsustainable wages, subpar health benefits, and siloed, top-down decision-making, are undeniable, systemic, and have persisted across administrations.” The Seattle Art Museum did not respond to an ARTnews request for comment.  Details of the bargaining unit will be finalized over the coming months. Union organizers said they have a supermajority of support among eligible workers, including...

Beyond the Battlefield: Why Business Readiness Is the Real Backbone of Defence

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In this episode of Vanguard Radio , host J. Richard Jones sits down with Peter Dawe, Vice President of Defence Strategy at Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), to explore why business readiness—not just technology or equipment—is becoming one of the most critical components of Canada’s defence and economic security landscape. Drawing on more than three decades of experience in the Canadian Armed Forces and his current work supporting Canadian SMEs at BDC, Dawe offers a practical and execution-focused perspective on what it really takes for companies to succeed in defence and national-security supply chains. The conversation examines how operational discipline, governance, financial resilience and long-term sustainability often determine whether businesses can compete credibly in complex defence environments. Jones and Dawe discuss the growing intersection between defence and economic security, the realities facing SMEs entering defence markets, an...