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I’ll say that I did not expect the exhibition “Modernity and Opulence: Wiener Werkstätte Women,” at the Jewish Museum in New York, to open with work by two men. Nor did I anticipate the wall label lauding one Nazi, listed among the founding members described as “progressive thinkers.” But I’d been eagerly awaiting my afternoon with the work of the little-known ladies of fin-de-siècle Vienna, so this puzzling prelude was hardly a deterrent.  Alongside the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements, the Wiener Werkstätte—a collective active in Vienna from 1903 to 1932—made wallpapers, cutlery, and more that brought natural motifs indoors at a time when industrialization was severing nature from modern life. At their best, these movements framed beauty as something that should be accessible to everyone, and the built environment as one total work of art. Aesthetic experiences were here not reserved for museums or the elite, but folded in along with daily drudgeri...

Lakapi Samoa chief executive officer Seumanu Douglas Ngau Chun. Photo: RNZ Pacific/Talaia Mika By Talaia Mika of RNZ There will be “no more Manu Samoa” if the government does not accept a proposed World Rugby review of Lakapi Samoa (Samoa Rugby Union) and the country is subsequently sanctioned. That is the warning from Lakapi Samoa CEO Seumanu Douglas Ngau Chun. “If we get to that point, then there will be no point [in] rugby in Samoa because once we get sanctioned, then there will be no more Manu Samoa, no funding, and that [would be] a great loss to us,” Seumanu told RNZ Pacific. He said if the Samoan government does not accept the review or the review recommendations, sanctions from the sport’s global governing body would be inevitable. Seumanu’s warning comes as the Samoan government and Lakapi Samoa remain at loggerheads over the future of the country’s national rugby administration, with the government having withd...

Matthew Barney has been an integral part of the first two editions of the Aspen Art Museum’s AIR festival in Colorado: last year, with a performance in a former military drill hall on a cattle ranch; this year, with a related sculptural installation on a nearby tract of open land. The performance , an abstract sort of musical revue titled TACTICAL Parallax , drew elements from Barney’s previous works Redoubt (a 2019 film and related sculptures engaged with pioneering and alchemical spirits associated with the American West) and Secondary (a 2023 film and set of sculptures inspired by the violence and grace of football and a notorious incident in the 1970s that exposed the sport’s darkest side). Related Articles In Five New Shows, Matthew Barney Turns His Abstract Football Film Into Sculptures and Paintings ...

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Latino may make its home in the Arts and Industries Building, which the organization already owns, rather than in a purpose-built one, reports the New York Times , which says the decision may be made at a board meeting to take place August 31. The Smithsonian confirmed the meeting to the newspaper but declined to comment further.  The 1881 building is on the National Mall, sited between the Smithsonian’s Castle and the Hirshhorn Museum. The board previously resolved to erect new buildings for the Latino Museum and the American Women’s History Museum, passing over Arts and Industries. The new buildings would have required congressional approval, since the proposed sites are owned by the National Park Service. The Republican-dominated Congress is generally supportive of President Donald Trump, who has, in his second term, issued numerous searing critiques of the Smithsonian, including in a 20...

By Kevin McCarthy  If you’re not used to crawling out of bed at 3am, I’ve got a deal for you. Get up at 4am, and watch the Ellis Park first test excitement from around the 50 minutes mark. Of course that’s a crazy idea. Springbok tests have to be consumed in darkness, with a gnawing...

South Asian modern art is having a very good run. Auction sales topped $100 million last year, records have tumbled, and Christie’s and Sotheby’s have both made a show of the category in London this summer.  There is, however, a problem with all that new money: forgeries. Dealers and specialists say forgeries are proliferating as prices for artists including S.H. Raza, M.F. Husain and Sadequain have climbed, according to the  Financial Times . Dadiba Pundole, whose Mumbai gallery represented several leading Indian modernists during their lifetimes, estimates that as many as one in 10 modern artworks sold privately in India could be fake. “There have always been some fakes, but in the last 15 years values have gone up, so there’s been a spurt,” Pundole told the FT. “It’s become a real menace.”  Charles Moore, of London’s Grosvenor Gallery, said he is offered a likely fake by private sellers “every couple of weeks.” Once, the obviou...