Film still from Tadanori Yokoo’s Kiss Kiss Kiss, 1966. Image courtesy the artist and Walker Art Center
German conceptualist Wolfgang Laib and Japanese Pop artist Tadanori Yokoo are among winners of the 2015 Praemium Imperiale Awards. Now in its 27th year, the Japan Art Association’s prize includes a 15 million yen (~$122,000) purse, a gold medal, and a testimonial letter. Tadanori Yokoo’s work is featured in International Pop, opening at the Dallas Museum of Art on October 11.
- Architect Frank Gehry, whose retrospective is now on view at LACMA, has been working pro bono for a year on plans for the Los Angeles River. Working with the LA River Revitalization Corp., he aims to cover the railroad tracks between downtown and Boyle Heights, making “a linear Central Park” along the riverfront. “If we do it right,” he says, “we can really make the High Line look like a little pishy thing.”
- Citizenfour director Laura Poitras is teaming up with filmmaker filmmaker AJ Schnack (Caucus, We Always Lie to Strangers) and former Hot Docs programmer Charlotte Cook to launch Field of Vision on September 27. Created with First Look Media, the “filmmaker-driven” unit will pair documentarians with news stories to create 40 to 50 nonfiction films per year. Aiming to “expand the language of visual journalism,” the group’s first project: a series, launching September 29, on Wikileaks’ Julian Assange.
- “I had the realization that that voice could be an instrument, that it could move like my hand moves… that within it were all these feelings we don’t have words for.” CBS’s Sunday Morning profiles composer, vocalist, and dancer Meredith Monk following her awarding of a 2015 National Medal of Arts.
- Throughout the just-closed Storylines show, a secret Adrián Villar Rojas sculpture was repeatedly reconstructed on the Guggenheim’s roof: by the artist’s mandate, Motherland—a replica mud bird nest—must be remade every time it deteriorates.
- The top presidential candidate for the arts? Bernie Sanders, according to The Art Newspaper’s ranking, which gives the senator an A+ for his voting record and arts advocacy (fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton earned an A). Top Republicans fared poorly, with Scott Walker, who “has gutted his state’s funding for the arts,” earning an F.
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