British rocker PJ Harvey’s newest album will also be a public art project, thanks to a commission by the UK arts non-profit Artangel. The musician and her long-time collaborator John Parish will record the new album behind one-way-mirrored glass inside the former staff gymnasium and rifle range of Inland Revenue at Somerset House in London. Visitors can watch Ms. Harvey and her band mates make musical art history for 45 minutes at a time for a small fee of £15. [Guardian]
German artist Anselm Kiefer took a field trip to Cern in Geneva for an up-close-and-personal view of the Large Hadron Collider and a chance to meet some of its leading scientists. The head of Arts@Cern Arian Koek helped organize the artist’s visit, and said, “I could see Anselm’s imagination spiral.” Will theories about star stuff show up in his next work? We hope so. [The Art Newspaper]
Pratt Institute’s Steam Whistles have played their final New Year’s tune. Designed and operated by the school’s chief engineer Conrad Milster, the whistles have been a local New Year’s Eve tradition in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill and Fort Greene for the last 50 years. Starting at 10:30 p.m. they played their swan song, accompanied by Mr. Milster on his handmade calliope keyboard. [Gothamist]
Beginning Monday, visitors to the National Arts Club will have the chance to see 80 previously lost prints by Spanish artist Francisco Goya that were discovered in an unmarked portfolio over the summer. Janet LeClair, the grandniece of American painter Robert Henri, donated the entire collection in 1994 to institution. [PageSix]
Times critic Roberta Smith starts the year off with some film reviews, taking a look at some of her favorite art biopics and documentaries of 2014. The top three are Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery, and Tim’s Vermeer. “The movies that stayed most with me form an odd unlikely triad, but they connect because each—sometimes inadvertently—says so much about the activity central to both making and experiencing art, which is simply the act of looking, whether as work, pleasure or exploration of both the world and the self,” she wrote. [New York Times]
And now that we’re officially two days into 2015, here is a little inspiration for the New Year courtesy of MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach. He posted this photo of a stunning sunrise with the following message yesterday: “a new day a new year …happy new year….for the last more than 25 years I have lived in cities with relatively increasing liberties, free to live your own way of life, speak up publicly, love who you are attracted to publicly and feel relatively safe and accepted…. this is such a fragile privilege …Berlin in the 1920ies was such a place of legendary liberties only to fall back to one of the most oppressive brutal inhuman totalitarian systems within a decade….. live your democracy consciously and peacefully protect it….it needs you.” [Instagram]
