Category Archives: Culture

‘When we rotated it 90 degrees it was obvious’: mystery sketch is rare Michelangelo draft for Sistine Chapel

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Image of man battling serpents is confirmed as preparation for renaissance artist’s masterpiece

A 16th-century drawing of a nude man, seen from behind, has been identified as a study by Michelangelo for his monumental masterpiece, the ceiling fresco of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.

The red chalk drawing has been linked to one of the figures battling serpents on the Worship of the Brazen Serpent painting. It is thought to date from 1512, shortly before Michelangelo painted that final section of one of the world’s most famous works of art, which he had started in 1508.

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‘Incredible privilege’: Richard E Grant chosen to host Baftas

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Actor said he is ‘celebratory person rather than somebody there to roast other actors’

It might be one of the hardest jobs in showbusiness, but there are certain tricks to being a good awards show host: insider-outsider status; personal jokes that punch up, never down; a zinger delivery; and keeping Will Smith’s wife’s name out your mouth.

This year, the Baftas chose Richard E Grant to host the 76th annual film awards ceremony, which takes place at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Sunday. The celebrated actor, 65, is tasked with making a three-hour statue ceremony entertaining for celebrities in the theatre and the millions of punters watching at home.

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Change to UK treasure law will ‘keep more artefacts in museums’

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Revised Treasure Act for England, Wales and Northern Ireland will broaden legal definition of treasure

A rise in the number of detectorists unearthing historical artefacts has prompted an effort to broaden the legal definition of treasure to help museums to acquire important items.

The heritage minister, Stephen Parkinson, said some items had been lost into private ownership rather than displayed publicly in museums, due to the wording of the Treasure Act 1996.

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Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive

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Augustus Gloop now ‘enormous’ instead of ‘fat’, Mrs Twit no longer ‘ugly’ and Oompa Loompas are gender neutral

Roald Dahl’s children’s books are being rewritten to remove language deemed offensive by the publisher Puffin.

Puffin has hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the author’s text to make sure the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today”, resulting in extensive changes across Dahl’s work.

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‘Party with purpose’: Sydney WorldPride kicks off with 500,000 expected to attend 300 events

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The city’s biggest ‘occasion’ since the 2000 Olympics will be a 17-day program celebrating equality

Sydney has marked the start of WorldPride with a Progress Pride flag raising ceremony, kicking off a 17-day program of art, performances, talks, parties, sport and comedy to celebrate equality.

The festivities will amount to Sydney’s biggest “occasion” since the 2000 Olympics and are expected to draw 500,000 visitors to 300 free and ticketed events.

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Bruce Willis diagnosed with dementia, family says

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Family of Die Hard and Pulp Fiction actor, 67, releases statement to share diagnosis following acting retirement owing to aphasia

Bruce Willis, who retired from acting last May as a result of aphasia, has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, his family announced on Thursday.

In a statement posted to the website for the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, the Die Hard actor’s family – wife Emma Heming, ex-wife Demi Moore and daughters Rumer, Scout, Tallulah, Mabel and Evelyn – revealed Willis’s aphasia had progressed into a diagnosis of dementia. Problems with language and memory, which instigated rumors about his cognitive state and prompted his retirement in May 2022, are “just one symptom of the disease Bruce faces”, they wrote.

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Reopened Manchester Museum gives voice to south Asian diaspora

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‘It’s time for a whole host of other perspectives,’ says museum’s director after £15m redevelopment

After 18 months of closure and a £15m redevelopment, Manchester Museum will reopen to the public on Saturday.

Alongside the existing collection of about 4.5m objects, from mounted mammals to botanical specimens and fossils, visitors will also be able to explore new spaces and hear diverse, untold stories.

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Birmingham’s singing station clock – a platform for ‘ordinary’ voices

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Aural clock, designed by Turner prize winner Susan Philipz for Curzon Street HS2 station, features sounds made by 1,092 city folk

“I think your voice would suit an F sharp. So that will be six o’clock,” said composer Andy Ingamells as he listened to my feeble attempts to sing Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, my go-to karaoke song.

He is in the process of recording the voices of 1,092 ordinary people from across Birmingham and Solihull so they can be immortalised in the chimes of a singing station clock, which will be placed in the centre of the HS2 railway station being built in the city.

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Perth festival 2023 opens to the world – with Aboriginal techno, the promise of Björk and uncomfortable truths

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Buoyed by a welcome return of international acts, the 70th Perth festival soars as artists dream of new worlds

The thrum of bare feet pounding the earth erupts across the darkened theatre. Four women charge over the stage, eyes bright and defiant, whirling their limbs and hips as if made of liquid adrenaline. With each exultant gesture, each primal pulse, the women suspend a dream of freedom in the air – a vision of Africa without colonisation.

Bikutsi 3000, which had its Australian premiere at Perth festival, is an afro-futuristic performance by Cameroon artist Blick Bassy that packs a bold political punch: centring women as the agents of emancipation from Africa’s treacherous history of imperialism, with dance as their only weapon. Among the ensemble of African women are two local Aboriginal dancers, Liani Dalgetty and Kristyn Lane, who join in the celebratory march towards freedom.

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German ballet director offers no apology over dog faeces incident

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Marco Goecke says he acted in heat of the moment after years of ‘annihilatory' criticism’

An award-winning German ballet company director who smeared his dog’s faeces on the face of a dance critic has failed to apologise, saying he was responding to decades of “annihilatory criticism”.

Marco Goecke admitted in an interview with the broadcaster NDR that his “means of attack” was “certainly not super” but said he had acted on impulse on seeing the journalist, Wiebke Hüster.

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German ballet director ‘smeared dog faeces on critic’s face’ after bad review

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Marco Goecke allegedly confronted Wiebke Hüster at Hanover State Opera, furious at her verdict on a previous show

The director of a leading German ballet company has been suspended from his post and is being investigated by police after allegedly smearing a critic’s face with his dog’s excrement at the premiere of his new show after she described one of his productions as “boring” and “disjointed”.

Marco Goecke, the head of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, has also been barred from the opera house, a spokesperson confirmed on Monday afternoon, after he confronted Wiebke Hüster, the ballet critic of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), in the interval of his latest show on Sunday night.

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How one Derbyshire museum took initiative in returning Indigenous artefacts

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Buxton Museum returned entire collection of Native American and First Nation artefacts to their original communities

When Taa.uu ‘Yuuwans Nika Collison first opened the email from Buxton Museum, she was, she says, “sort of in shock”.

Collison is a member of the Haida nation, the Indigenous inhabitants of a remote archipelago called Haida Gwaii off the very far north-west coast of Canada. For 25 years she and others had been lobbying museums and collectors around the world to return items made by her people back to their homeland, often with very little success. Here was a curator from a small town in Derbyshire she had never heard of, saying it had some Haida items in its collection, and it wanted to send them back.

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Dissident Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof released from prison

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The award-winning film-maker, who was arrested last July, has apparently been formally released from prison, though there is no official comment

Iran has released award-winning film-maker Mohammad Rasoulof more than six months after arresting him for criticising the government, a pro-reform newspaper reported on Monday.

Rasoulof, whose 2020 film There Is No Evil won the top prize at the Berlin international film festival, is one of several prominent artists, athletes and other celebrities detained in recent months.

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Anne Boleyn’s reputation as ‘temptress’ to be recast in new exhibition

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Henry VIII’s second wife was a deeply religious woman who resisted his advances for years, according to fresh research

Anne Boleyn was found guilty of adultery, incest and conspiracy – all, almost certainly, false charges trumped up by Henry VIII – and then executed. For centuries, her reputation was that of a scheming seducer.

Now Anne is being recast as a deeply religious woman who, far from plotting to become Henry’s second wife, bade her time for six years as a lady-in-waiting to the king’s consort, Catherine of Aragon. She deliberately never consummated her relationship with Henry until their “unofficial” marriage in November 1532 – just two months before their formal wedding.

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Brit awards 2023: Harry Styles and Wet Leg triumph while Lizzo delivers the glitz – as it happened

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Fontaines DC, Aitch, Becky Hill and the 1975 also won gongs, while Tom Grennan flubbed it. Here’s all the action from the 43rd annual music awards

• Read the full report here
• The trouble with the Brits
• The night in pictures

Shania is here! And in a week where she has a UK No 1 album with Queen of Me to boot. She’s performed with Harry Styles in the past; wonder if they’ll have a redux (or if she’ll present him with one of the awards that he’ll inevitably walk away with tonight).

RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Bimini Bon-Boulash has arrived in extremely punk fashion, wearing a dress that transplants the colours of the trans pride flag onto the union jack – a nice little injection of chaos onto this year’s red carpet.

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Tintin drawing by Hergé sells at auction for record £1.9m

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Belgian cartoonist’s black and white artwork from 1942 was used for the cover of Tintin in America

An artwork by Tintin creator Hergé has set the world record for the most valuable original black and white drawing by the artist after selling at auction for more than €2m.

The drawing, Tintin in America – created in 1942 – was used for the colour edition of the Belgian cartoonist’s 1946 book of the same name.

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Frida Kahlo’s husband may have helped her die, reveals Diego Rivera’s grandson

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The revered Mexican artist’s suffering was so great, she ‘probably’ asked her soulmate to assist in ending her life, documentary is told

People’s love of Frida Kahlo’s vibrant art is matched by fascination with her colourful private life. Now the battle to win greater attention for her talent – above and beyond her extraordinary, painful personal story – faces another potential knock.

A documentary about the Mexican artist is to reveal a secret suspicion that endures within the family of her husband and great love, the renowned muralist Diego Rivera.

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Kylie, Ultra Violet, Kim Petras: WorldPride festival has ‘something for everyone’, CEO says

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Sydney is gearing up for a massive, global party — but it’s also an important reminder of the work still to be done on LGBTQ+ rights

Sydney’s WorldPride will have something for everyone, organisers say, as the city gears up for 17 days of festivities surrounding the 45th anniversary of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

The festival – which will include more than 300 events – kicks off on Friday, and will end with an expected 50,000 people walking across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday 5 March.

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Hugh Hudson, director of Chariots of Fire, dies aged 86

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Oscar-nominated film-maker died on Friday at a London hospital after a short illness, his family said

Film director Hugh Hudson, who directed best picture Oscar winner Chariots of Fire, has died aged 86 following a short illness.

A statement released on behalf of his family said: “Hugh Hudson, 86, beloved husband and father, died at Charing Cross hospital on 10 February after a short illness.”

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Spanish film-maker Carlos Saura, director of ¡Ay Carmela!, dies aged 91

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One of Spain’s most prolific auteurs continued to work until the end – his last film, Walls Can Talk, was released last week

Veteran Spanish film-maker Carlos Saura, director of award-winning films such as Peppermint Frappé, ¡Ay Carmela! and Tango, has died aged 91, the day before he was due to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Goyas, Spain’s version of the Oscars.

Spain’s Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, the body that hands out the Goya awards, confirmed his death on social media, saying: “Saura, one of the essential film-makers in the history of Spanish cinema, has died at home today at the age of 91, surrounded by his loved ones. His final film, Walls Can Talk, came out last week and demonstrated his tireless activity and his love for his work until the very last moment.”

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