News: Design and business, art and technology, ideas and good stuff
2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded for the discovery of mRNA vaccines against covid-19
October 2023
The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.”
Image ©Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach, copy ©Nobel Prize
Museum Boijmans van Beuningen at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam | Exhibition
29 Sep 2023 - 14 Jan 2024
See a selection of exceptional art from the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen this autumn at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. The exhibition is based around various themes, allowing for the display of a wide range of artworks from all historical eras.
Exhibits include The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel, The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer by Edgar Degas and Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room.
Copy ©Rijksmuseum, image: Cindy Sherman, untitled, 1981 ©Boijmans van Beuningen
Human Behavioural Biology | Robert Sapolsky | Stanford University | Free video lectures | Amazingly brilliant
2010 and still so relevant
When you understand the individual parts, you will understand the complex system. Robert Sapolsky
This course covers how to approach complex normal and abnormal behaviors through biology; how to integrate disciplines including sociobiology, ethology, neuroscience, and endocrinology, to examine behaviours such as aggression, sexual behaviour, language use, and mental illness. 25 lectures that will possibly change your life. Robert Sapolsky is if not the best professor-ever, very close to it.
Copy ©Apple podcasts, image: video still ©Stanford
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny | Dutch National Opera | Kurt Weill | Bertold Brecht
6-27 Sep 2023
Mahagonny: A place where anything goes – as long as you pay.
Leading stage director Ivo van Hove returns to Dutch National Opera with this masterpiece by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Using techniques from the world of film such as green screens and live camera images, he has turned this famous opera about the deceptive city of gold into a highly topical story, one that leaves a lasting impression.
Image ©Marta Syrko, copy ©Nationale Opera & Ballet
H’ART Museum: New name for the Hermitage Amsterdam
1 September 2023
British Museum, Centre Pompidou, Smithsonian now in Amsterdam
Director Annabelle Birnie today announced new international partnerships with the British Museum, Centre Pompidou and Smithsonian American Art Museum bringing world-famous art collections to Amsterdam. They mark a fresh start for the museum known as H’ART Museum from Friday 1 September. The new H’ART Museum shows the uniting force of art and opens its windows to the world.
The H’ART Museum’s first major show will be the Kandinsky exhibition held in partnership with the Centre Pompidou in mid-2024. Later, in 2026, H’ART welcomes the British Museum’s Feminine power exhibition.
Image and copy ©Hart Museum Amsterdam
Käthe Kollwitz | Brilliant German Expressionist’s work can be seen in Berlin and Köln
Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945)
Käthe Kollwitz was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching, lithography and woodcuts) and sculpture was part of the German Expressionist movement. Her themes encompassed self-portraits, politics and social criticism, motherhood, war.
Extensive collections can be found at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Berlin (new location at the Theater Building at Charlottenburg Palace) and Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln (reopens end 2023).
kaethe-kollwitz.berlin
kollwitz.de
Images: Self-portrait, lithography, 1934 ©Käthe Kollwitz Museum Berlin, Copy ©Wikipedia
Frank Auerbach | Twenty Self-Portraits | Frankie Rossi Art Projects | London
19 April to 14 July 2023
When one is young, one is excited by drama and when one’s old, truth is exciting – Frank Auerbach
‘I didn’t find actual formal components of my head all that interesting when I was younger, smoother and less frazzled. Now that I’ve got bags under my eyes, things are sagging and so on, there’s more material to work with’.
The eleven drawn and nine painted self-portraits are all recent. As William Feaver says: ‘Self-portraits have the implication of self-regard and there’s absolutely nothing of that in these. They show all sorts of frustrations and irritations and breath held- all the things we feel if we look in the mirror.’
Copy ©Frankie Rossi Art, Images ©Frank Auerbach
Anafaza 2023 by Ohad Naharin | Performed by Batsheva Dance Company | Tel Aviv, Israel
June 2023
Anafaza, Ohad Naharin’s iconic piece for Batsheva Dance Company, made its debut in December 1993, on the 30th anniversary of Batsheva’s foundation. Since then, and over two decades, it has been performed in front of no less than 300,000 viewers in Israel and worldwide, and cemented its place in the canon of local culture. 30 years after it was performed for the first time, Anafaza presenting Batsheva Dance Company and Batsheva Ensemble on one stage, with live music performed by Ohad Naharin, Danni Makov, and Avi Belleli (“Tractor’s Revenge”).
Image and copy ©Batsheva Dance Company
Next Year in Moscow | A brilliant podcast about Russia’s future | Arcady Ostrovsky | The Economist
March 2023
Understand Russia through the insights of its free-thinkers in exile.
When the shelling of Ukraine began a year ago, free-thinking Russians faced a fateful choice: lie low, resist or flee. Hundreds of thousands decided to leave. For them the war meant the future of Russia itself was now in doubt.
In this eight-part series, The Economist’s Russia editor, Arkady Ostrovsky, finds out what happened to these exiles for a new podcast series. Their stories help solve the mystery of why this senseless war began – and how it might end.
Image and copy ©The Economist
Rijksmuseum to stage largest Vermeer exhibition ever | Amsterdam
10 February - 4 June 2023
Never before have so many Vermeer’s been brought together.
In the spring of 2023, the Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands, will dedicate a retrospective exhibition to the 17th-century master Johannes Vermeer for the first time in its history. With loans from all over the world, this promises to be the largest Vermeer exhibition ever.
In contrast to Rembrandt, Vermeer left a remarkably small oeuvre with about 35 paintings. As his paintings are generally considered the most prized treasures of every museum collection, Vermeer paintings are rarely lent out.
Copy and image ©Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
