The season opener of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées is a ballet about Josephine Baker.
The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées opened its season with Josephine, a ballet by Germaine Acogny that traces the life and work of Josephine Baker. The solo performance revisits Baker’s 1925 Paris debut, highlighting her stage innovations, activism in the French Resistance, and advocacy for civil rights. Costumes by Chanel specialty atelier Paloma punctuate the performance, shifting from funerary black silks to a nude bodysuit. The program pairs Acogny’s work with Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring, offering a dialogue between historical and contemporary dance.
London’s National Gallery is getting a new wing to house its “expanded collection.”
London’s National Gallery will open a new wing as part of its Project Domani initiative, funded by $502 million in private donations, including two record-breaking pledges from the families of Michael Moritz and Julia Rausing. The expansion will provide flexible and permanent galleries to integrate recent acquisitions alongside the museum’s pre-1900 Western masterpieces, such as works by Van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, and Rembrandt. While the museum has not committed to collecting modern and contemporary art, the wing will allow dialogue between older holdings and 20th-century pieces it already owns, including Picasso’s Fruit Dish, Bottle and Violin (1914). The project also anticipates collaboration with the Tate to manage loans and new displays, with the wing expected to open in the early 2030s.
A $3.5 million juvenile triceratops is part of Phillips’ modern and contemporary art sale.
Phillips will feature a juvenile triceratops skeleton, nicknamed “Cera,” in its November modern and contemporary art auction, with a presale estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million. Excavated in South Dakota in 2016, the 66-million-year-old fossil represents the first complete juvenile triceratops ever found and includes more than two-thirds of its skeleton, making it unusually intact. The sale is part of a newly introduced “Out of This World” section, which pairs extraordinary natural objects with modern and contemporary artworks to appeal to collectors seeking rare and unconventional items. Phillips collaborated with Swiss dealer Christian D. Link to present the fossil, highlighting both its scientific significance and its place in a broader collecting context.
There’s an art heist film screening at the New York Film Festival.
Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind will provide the New York Film Festival with a quietly unconventional take on the art heist. Inspired by real “blue-collar” thefts of the 1970s, the film follows JB, a former art student, as he and a small group of accomplices attempt to steal a few Arthur Dove paintings from a sleepy Massachusetts museum. The heist is deliberately low-stakes, but Reichardt uses it to explore the cultural and social tensions of post-1960s America, reflecting the era’s conservative turn and the emptiness of suburban life. Filmed against the backdrop of I. M. Pei-designed architecture and period-accurate modernist works, the movie intertwines crime, history, and the quiet unraveling of its protagonist.
At the Seoul Architecture Biennale, Thomas Heatherwick wants to move out of the “echochamber.”
In a recent interview, Thomas Heatherwick shared that he used his role as general director of the Seoul Architecture Biennale, which included designing the four-story Humanise Wall in Songhyeon Green Plaza, to engage the city’s residents directly, using provocative, large-scale installations that invite interaction and reflection on the built environment. By prioritizing public participation over traditional architectural hierarchies, Heatherwick hopes the festival will encourage thoughtful, long-term engagement with design and urban life.
Today’s attractive distractions:
Thaddaeus Ropac has opened within a Milanese palazzo.
In Barcelona, a mathematician shows where art and architecture meet.
A new biography shines a light on the woman behind superstar Jane Birkin.
The best view in Paris is to be had from the secret apartment atop the Eiffel Tower.
