CULTURE VULTURE
Cartoon Network Live! comes to du Forum
Abu Dhabi’s du Forum is set to host the world premiere performance of Cartoon Network Live! Heroes Unite from October 11 to 14. The interactive stage production will feature some of Cartoon Network’s most popular characters, from Ben 10 to The Powerpuff Girls. The Yas Island show, which is directed by award-winning director and choreographer Bart Doerfler, is being put on by SES Live, Live Nation Middle East and Turner’s Cartoon Network. “We are thrilled to bring this brand new live stage production to Abu Dhabi, and get the opportunity to share this firsthand experience with our young audience, families and Cartoon Network fans of all ages, bringing them closer to their favourite superheroes,” says Ali Haidary, the chief executive and founder of SES Live. Tickets are available through www.ticketmaster.ae.
Christie’s to sell prints from MoMA collection
Auction house Christie’s has announced it will sell more than 400 prints from the photographic collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York from October to April next year. The museum, which was the first American institution dedicated entirely to modern art, began acquiring its collection in 1930, and holds more than 30,000 prints today. The sale features works spanning more than 100 years of photographic history, from 1860s prints by Carleton Watkins, to works by major figures of the early 20th century such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston and Edward Steichen. Online auctions held during these months will emphasise major themes of the MoMA’s collection, including photography by women and the shift from pictorialism to modernism. Many of the prints being offered for sale were made in preparation for the artists’ MoMA exhibitions.
NYUAD Art Gallery looks at 1950s-60s New York art scene
The New York University Abu Dhabi Art Gallery has announced its new season of exhibitions under the rubric “from New York to Palestine”. Opening on October 4, Inventing Downtown New York: Artist-Run Galleries, 1952–1965 will bring a major collection of historical artworks organised by the Grey Art Gallery, New York University’s fine art museum, to Abu Dhabi for an investigation of the New York art scene between the peak of abstract expressionism in the early 1950s and the rise of pop art and minimalism in the early 1960s. Inventing Downtown is the first major museum exhibition to survey these formative years in the history of North American Modernism from the perspective of 14 key artist-run galleries. Featuring over 200 paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, photographs, and films, the show will include works by established figures such as Yayoi Kusama, Claes Oldenburg, Alex Katz, Allan Kaprow and Yoko Ono.