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      Artforum Selects Tina Rivers Ryan as New Top Editor

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      The curator and essayist will become the magazine’s next leader after a period of turmoil.Artforum named Tina Rivers Ryan its next top editor on Thursday, selecting the curator to lead the prestigious magazine after a tumultuous year.“For decades, the editors at Artforum have ensured that this historic magazine has remained a trusted and indispensable resource for conversations about contemporary art and its role in the broader culture,” Ryan, who specialized in digital art as a curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, said in a statement.Five months ago, the magazine fired David Velasco, its editor in chief, after he signed and published a letter calling for Palestinian liberation shortly after the Israel-Hamas war began. Some staff members were upset with his termination; longtime editors resigned in protest and artists declared a boycott. Some writers pulled their essays and some advertisers pulled their spots in the publication, resulting in a noticeably slimmer issue after the events unfolded.Penske Media Corporation, which owns the publication, has spent the past several months attempting to rebuild.Ryan, who has contributed to Artforum over the years, gained notice for a popular essay criticizing the NFT boom. She later softened her stance and helped the Buffalo museum cash in on the craze by organizing an online exhibition and fund-raiser.“We could not be more excited for this next chapter of Artforum with Tina at the editorial helm,” the magazine’s publishers, Danielle McConnell and Kate Koza, said in a statement. “Tina is a brilliant writer and uniquely positioned to uphold the magazine’s reputation for publishing the highest quality long-form criticism, while also contributing to a dynamic vision of audience expansion via continued digital growth and live events.” More

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      Audience Snapshot: Four Years After Shutdown, a Mixed Recovery

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      Covid brought live performance to a halt. Now the audience for pop concerts and sporting events has roared back, while attendance on Broadway and at some major museums is still down.It was four years ago — on March 12, 2020 — that the coronavirus brought the curtain down on Broadway for what was initially supposed to be a monthlong shutdown, but which wound up lasting a year and a half.The pandemic brought live events and big gatherings to a halt, silencing orchestras, shutting museums and movie theaters and leaving sports teams playing to empty stadiums dotted with cardboard cutouts.Now, four years later, audiences are coming back, but the recovery has been uneven. Here is a snapshot of where things stand now:Broadway audiences are still down 17 percent from prepandemic levels.On Broadway, overall attendance is still down about 17 percent: 9.3 million seats have been filled in the current season as of March 3, down from 11.1 million at the same point in 2020. Box office grosses are down, too: Broadway shows have grossed $1.2 billion so far this season, 14 percent below the level in early March of 2020.Broadway has always had more flops than successes, and the post-pandemic period has been challenging for producers and investors, especially those involved in new musicals. Three pop productions that have opened since the pandemic — “Six,” about the wives of King Henry VIII, “MJ,” about Michael Jackson and “& Juliet,” which imagines an alternate history for Shakespeare’s tragic heroine — are ongoing hits, but far more musicals have flamed out. The industry is looking with some trepidation toward next month, when a large crop of new shows is set to open.Many nonprofit theaters around the country are also struggling — attracting fewer subscribers and producing fewer shows — and some have closed. One bright spot has been the touring Broadway market, which has been booming.— More

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      Petra Mathers, Author Whose Children’s Stories Soared, Dies at 78

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      Her winsome animal characters and their comic adventures expressed universal truths and feelings, rendered in a naïve and often surrealistic style.Petra Mathers, a German-born children’s book illustrator and author whose kindly, often bumbling animal characters were nonetheless quietly heroic and often risked much for love, died on Feb. 6 at her home in Astoria, Ore. She was 78.Patty Flynn, her executor, said that Ms. Mathers and her husband, Michael Mathers, a photographer, who was 79, took their own lives. There did not appear to be an obvious health concern that precipitated their act, though they had often told friends that they could not live without each other. They were a private, devoted couple, and the timing of their deaths remains a mystery.With spare, naïve images rendered in ink, pencil and watercolor, Ms. Mathers’s stories — whose subjects included a soulful museum guard (an alligator) who falls in love with the subject in a painting (another alligator) and a warmhearted chicken named Lottie and her best friend, Herbie, a duck — were just as sparely written, but imbued with sly humor and wit, captivating both her 8-and-under audience and their parents.The first book Ms. Mathers wrote, “Maria Theresa,” was the story of a dreamy fowl who has all sorts of adventures.HarperCollins“Here is the story of a chicken who flees the coop,” Carol Brightman wrote in 1985 in a New York Times review of Ms. Mathers’s first book, “Maria Theresa,” the tale of a dreamy fowl who has all sorts of adventures. “You know the type. No ordinary laying hen, this one sometimes stops ‘in mid-peck as if listening to faraway voices.’”Ms. Mathers’ prose and her “flat, old-fashioned cutout Surrealism” combined “an attention to both the commonplace and the arcane which marks the best of children’s literature,” Ms. Brightman wrote. “The book’s final tableau of circus folk (and fowl) dancing the Tango Argentine outside Miss Lola’s Airstream is a triumph of this vision. What else but a hopelessly romantic chicken, one that never forgets to lay the morning egg, could bring us such a show.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Mercer Labs Exhibit Uses Braille. Is It Accessible to All?

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      Roy Nachum designed the spectacle-filled Mercer Labs, which he touts as inclusive. But some advocates for blind people say his use of Braille can feel exploitative.While he was settling into Manhattan after moving from Israel in 2004, the 24-year-old artist Roy Nachum decided to contend with a second challenge: Inspired by his grandmother who had lost her sight, and in search of new inspiration for his artwork, he blindfolded himself. For the next 168 hours, he felt his way around his apartment in the East Village and used a cane to navigate to and from the nearby grocery store.That experience of being engulfed in the sounds and the chaos of a new city helped inspire the exhibits in his new immersive installation, Mercer Labs. It opened for previews in January at a 36,000-square-foot space in a sleek, Brutalist-style building at 21 Dey Street — the site of the former Century 21 department store.Nachum, whose artwork often incorporates Braille, became renowned for designing the Grammy-nominated cover for Rihanna’s album “Anti,” featuring a photo of Rihanna as a child wearing a gold crown embossed with Braille. He and the real estate developer Michael Cayre founded Mercer Labs with an ambitious mandate: to be a “place where the traditional hierarchies between art, architecture, design, technology and culture are dissolved,” and where “diversity and inclusion are celebrated,” according to a news release. The site is expected to open officially on March 28.One of Roy Nachum’s signature designs is this cover image for Rihanna’s 2016 album, “Anti,” which features a photo of her as a child wearing a gold crown embossed with Braille.The founders advertise Mercer Labs as a “museum of art and technology.” At the moment, it contains 14 exhibition spaces that use high-tech projectors, digital screens, LED lights and sound systems to display Nachum’s perception-teasing creations. Some exhibits feature Braille, tactile displays and immersive sounds intended for blind and low-vision visitors as well as sighted ones. In one of the rooms, attendees with vision can don sleeping masks and listen to a set of immersive sounds, the better to understand Nachum’s experiences from 2004 with touch and navigation. In still another space, guests stroll through a cave covered with pink hydrangeas that can be explored through touch.Nachum’s installations are on view at the moment, but when Mercer Labs officially opens in March, Nachum and Cayre intend for it to become a multipurpose site, with exhibitions by other artists, musicians and even actors; event spaces that can be rented for private use; and displays spotlighting fashion brands as well as up-and-coming New York companies. They would not elaborate on which specific brands or artists they have partnered with, citing nondisclosure agreements.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chelsea Hotel’s Cast of Characters, Captured by Its Resident Photographer

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      Plus: a chef’s guesthouse in Bali, art that explores girlhood — and more recommendations from T Magazine.Step by StepThe Fashion Executive Alison Loehnis Shares Her Beauty RegimenLeft: Alison Loehnis, the President of Yoox Net-a-Porter. Right, clockwise from top left: Jennifer Behr Velvet Bow Barrette, $128, jenniferbehr.com; NARS Laguna Bronzing Powder, $40, narscosmetics.com; Augustinus Bader the Cream, $300, net-a-porter.com; Sisley Paris Black Rose Cream Mask, $200, net-a-porter.com; Macrene Actives High Performance Tinted Moisturizer, $165, net-a-porter.com; Oribe Intense Conditioner for Moisture & Control, $52, oribe.com; Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower Eau de Parfum, $380, net-a-porter.com; and Sisley Paris Nutritive Lip Balm, $100, sisley-paris.com.Left: courtesy of Net-a-Porter. Right: courtesy of the brandsIn the morning I tend to wash my face before I get in the shower. I usually use the Dr. Barbara Sturm Enzyme Cleanser; it’s lightweight so is great for travel and comes in a powder form you mix with water. I’m a longtime user of Biologique Recherche and swear by Lotion P50. On my eyes I use the Tata Harper Elixir Vitae Eye Serum, which is firming and lifting. My moisturizer depends on the season: When it’s cold I’ll use Augustinus Bader the Cream. If it’s humid I’ll use the Light Cream. About a year ago, I discovered this desert island product, which is Natura Bissé Diamond Cocoon Sheer Eye cream — it’s a tinted eye cream that makes you look rested. After the shower, I use the Augustinus Bader Body Lotion. When I need it, I’ll use either Biologique Recherche Masque Vernix, which is a bit rich, or Auteur’s retinol serum. For flights, I always take the Omorovicza Queen of Hungary Evening Mist with me — the flight attendants will usually ask for a spray. Sisley has this Black Rose Cream Mask that’s always in my travel bag, too.For makeup, I love Hourglass Veil Hydrating Skin Tint or Macrene Actives Tinted Moisturizer. If it’s humid, I use the Westman Atelier Vital Pressed Skincare setting powder. It leaves no chalky finish whatsoever. I’m an eye person — I love the Hourglass Voyeur Waterproof Liquid Liner for the top lid and, on the bottom, I’ll use Sisley Phyto-Kohl Perfect pencils. For mascara I use Tom Ford Extreme Mascara. NARS Laguna Bronzing Powder, to me, is just perfect. Sisley also has two products that I’m obsessed with, one is the Nutritive Lip Balm and the other is their Phyto-Lip Twist in nude. At night, I’ll go more pronounced on the eyeliner and apply much more mascara. I might use a Charlotte Tilbury Lip Cheat pencil.Hair-wise, I use Olaplex No. 4P Blonde Enhancer Toning Shampoo. If you have dark hair with highlights, it’s the one thing that counters warmth supersuccessfully. For conditioner, I’ll either use Oribe Intense Conditioner for Moisture & Control or Davines Love Smoothing Conditioner, which is a brand I adore. I use a GHD dryer and a Mason Pearson hairbrush. I also have a Dyson Airwrap that I use just to make sure that I don’t have so much heat on my hair. Oribe has this great product called Imperial Blowout, and I use K18 to repair damage. My style tends to be very pared back, but I absolutely love Jennifer Behr hair accessories — I have her bows in a whole bunch of colors, and I’ll wear one in a low ponytail or a little tortoiseshell clip.I’ve been a Diptyque customer for a long time. The one that I came upon a few years ago and haven’t left is Eucalyptus. You don’t smell it everywhere, and I adore it. I have a really strong sense of smell. My dad worked in the fragrance business and I remember reading about Carnal Flower from Frédéric Malle when it launched, and they described it as this tuberose with a hint of eucalyptus. I bought it without smelling it and I’ve worn it ever since.This interview has been edited and condensed.Stay HereA Guesthouse in Bali With a Seven-Course Tasting MenuLeft: the pool at Shelter Island, a new eight-room guesthouse in Bali from the American chef Will Goldfarb and his wife, Maria. Right: bunk beds in the family room at Shelter Island.Martin WestlakeThe pastry chef Will Goldfarb studied with Ferran Adrià, the chef of El Bulli in Spain, before opening his own restaurant, Room4Dessert, in New York’s NoLIta in the mid-aughts. It was well- known for its eight-course dessert menus (the New Yorker writer Bill Buford described it as “dessert as performance art”). But two years into the project, Goldfarb closed his pioneering restaurant and eventually relocated to the island of Bali. In 2014, he reopened Room4Dessert just outside of Ubud. Its dining experience has always been immersive — during a meal, guests move between the property’s orchard, medicinal herb gardens and a multiroom restaurant with a terrace — but as of this month, visitors can spend the night at Goldfarb’s new eight-room guesthouse, Shelter Island, which he and his wife, Maria, transformed from an abandoned Balinese homestay, upcycling as many materials as they could. Rooms are decorated with locally made paintings, and an umbrella-lined pool is bordered by gardens with fragrant frangipani trees and a traditional shrine. The restaurant, which is next to the guesthouse, serves a seven-course meal preceded by seven snacks — which might include a creamy ricotta-stuffed squash blossom drizzled with a black shallot sauce — and followed by seven petits fours. Once you’ve had your fill of food, there are trails to follow through the nearby rice fields, and cooking, permaculture and ceramics workshops at Goldfarb’s academy. Rooms from $75 a night (including breakfast); room4dessert.com.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Guy Wildenstein, Art Family Patriarch, Found Guilty in Tax Trial

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      Mr. Wildenstein hid a prized art collection and other assets from French authorities to avoid paying millions in inheritance taxes, a Paris court ruled.Guy Wildenstein, the international art dealer, was found guilty in France on Tuesday of massive tax fraud, the latest twist after years of legal entanglements that have unraveled the secrecy that once surrounded his powerful family dynasty.Mr. Wildenstein, 78, the Franco-American patriarch of the family and president of Wildenstein & Co. in New York, was sentenced by the Paris Appeals Court to a four-year prison sentence, with half of it suspended, and the other half to be served under house arrest with an electronic bracelet. The court also sentenced him to pay a one million euro fine, or about $1.08 million.He stood accused of hiding significant chunks of his family’s art collection and other assets in a maze of trusts and shell companies when his father, Daniel, died in 2001, and after his brother, Alec, died in 2008.Prosecutors had said that he was trying to dodge hundreds of millions of euros in inheritance taxes. At the trial, which was held in the fall, they had requested a slightly more lenient prison sentence for Mr. Wildenstein, but they had also requested a much larger €250 million fine, or about $270 million.The Wildensteins, a family of French art dealers spanning five generations, were historically secretive about the exact details of their collection, which has included works by Caravaggio, Fragonard and many other blue-chip artists.Prosecutors said that the family was responsible for “the longest and most sophisticated tax fraud” in modern French history, by concealing art and other assets under complex foreign trusts and by shielding artworks worth millions of dollars in tax havens. By doing this, prosecutors said, the family grossly underestimated its enormous wealth when the time came to pay inheritance taxes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Painter’s Role? Capturing the Sparkle of a Gemstone

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      As one artist wrote: “Luxury is not found in the cold pixels of our phone or computer.”There are myriad words to describe how light enters and reflects in diamonds and gemstones. They glisten and sparkle, twinkle and dazzle. Often they are luminescent, sometimes brilliant and certainly eye-catching.But conveying those sentiments artistically, as in a drawing or painting, requires an entirely different kind of articulation. And as times have changed, so have the techniques used to capture jewelry, as well as the reasons for depicting it.“There is a code to always respect so that the eye can read the volume and the jewelers can understand the design,” Estelle Lagarde, 29, a gouache painter and jewelry designer in the Haute-Savoie region of eastern France, wrote in an email. “The light always comes from the top, at 45 degrees to the left. Thanks to this code, we know where to place the shadows and light.”Ms. Lagarde’s use of that code, which guides artisans turning designers’ ideas into reality, can be seen in her meticulously detailed images of jewelry and watches. She begins each project the same way: making a contour drawing using a software program, “in order to have the exact dimensions of the technical drawing and the contours of the piece.” She then prints the sketch on a sheet of gray paper and fills its curves and spaces using paint pigments and a long, thin hair brush, called a rigger brush, that allows her to paint fine lines and intricate details.She has created artworks for watch brands such as Vacheron Constantin, MB&F and Purnell and for jewelry companies including Messika and her own Lagarde Jewelry. And she always sells her jewelry with its matching painting, and also accepts painting commissions. Currently, a ring called Pop Candy (21,000 euros, or $22,630) is her entry level piece.The Pop Candy ring.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What’s Hidden in Woodlawn’s Mausoleums? Extraordinary Stained Glass.

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      On a sunny Bronx morning late last year, an all-star team of stained-glass experts prepared to enter a dank 1894 tomb at Woodlawn Cemetery that had been opened just once in the past century.The mausoleum at hand held the remains of José Maria Muñoz, a Panamanian-born New York merchant and son of a Spanish general. The scholarly tomb raiders were five energetic stained-glass conservators and art historians conducting an unprecedented survey of some 1,200 stained-glass windows that were installed in free-standing Woodlawn mausoleums from 1878 to the present.The 1894 mausoleum of José Maria Muñoz, a Panamanian-born New York merchant and son of a Spanish general.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWoodlawn sits on 400 rolling acres ornamented with 1,300 such private family mausoleums, including extravagant Gilded Age temples erected for captains of industry, robber barons and the merely very wealthy. These titans of affluence and their spouses often spent lavishly on the adornment of their final resting places — even if the interiors of these grand structures weren’t destined to be seen by more than friends and family.As soon as the team entered the mausoleum, shrieks could be heard bouncing off the interior stone walls. The experts had discovered a variety of stained glass none of them had ever encountered before.On the back wall of the sepulcher, behind the stone sarcophagus that filled most of the clammy chamber, a jeweled blue-glass orb protruded from the flat plane of a stained-glass window — breaking through into the third dimension. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More