News, comment, links and observations
Raspberry ripples and Oscar oddities
Original Cultures London announced
Original Cultures is an artistic collective with bases in the UK, Italy and Japan, dedicated to audiovisual collaborations inspired by street art, graffiti, hip hop and electronic music. It is staging its first London event over the course of a week from 27 February to 5 March this year, in which artists Ericailcane, DEM, Will Barras, Hiraki Sawa, Om Unit, Tatsuki and Tayone will be joining to create new works in a series of public events and workshops in and around the Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London.
Jerusalem: next stop Broadway - but when?
V&A concedes a few final extra viewing days
Outcry over closure of musical instruments gallery only prolongs the agony
The V&A has made a small concession to the musical outcry over its plan to substitute musical instruments with fashion galleries - an outcry you read first on theartsdesk. It is opening the instruments gallery for extra days before the closure on 22 February.
Guardian critic gets class conscious
Jim Moray - new album free through Songlines
Zweig classic back on screen
The great Austrian novelist returns to the spotlight
The huge upsurge in interest in the Austrian author Stefan Zweig continues at the BFI Southbank when Letter from an Unknown Woman is revived next week. Shot by Max Ophüls in 1948, it beautifully captures the spirit of Zweig’s post-Hapsburg, pre-Freudian Vienna, where bourgeois lives are fired by romantic ardour and obsessive longing.
Birthdays on the Tube: 30 January-6 February
Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap, Axl Rose, Alan Lomax, Alice Cooper and Bob Marley
Vox Pop: The V&A - Musical Instruments or Fashion?
The great museum jettisons music to make more fashion space - what does the public think?
The Victoria and Albert Museum intends on 22 February to disperse its collection of musical instruments to other venues, to allow more room for fashion and textile exhibits. Conductor Christopher Hogwood and composer Oliver Knussen are two more well-known names in the list of more than 5,100 signatories to the petition lodged at 10 Downing Street asking for the move to be prevented. theartsdesk invited big hitters on either side to debate the case - Roxy Music designer Anthony Price makes the fashion case, while conductor Laurence Cummings heads the musician's view. And we ask you: What do you think? Please take part in the debate by making your comment below.