What We Learned This Week: Charli XCX Photo Purchased by National Portrait Gallery
Photographer Harley Weir's 2023 portrait of singer-actress Charli XCX has been added to the collection of London's National Portrait Gallery: Weir's photo became one of the key images associated with Charli's Brat era, the 2024 album that became a pop cultural phenomenon for its candor and debauchery. Weir "has developed a distinctive photographic language that combines intimacy with a powerful sense of presence," noted Brandei Estes, the National Portrait Gallery's senior curator of photographs. Portraits of pop stars have been grabbing more and more art-world headlines recently, notes one website recently,
Weekend Update: Chess as Art
If you missed watching the Marcel Duchamp birthday chess playoff at MoMA last month (above, with Chess Master Susan Polgar), you can get your own game on this summer, starting with an evening of chess at the Noguchi Museum and Garden tomorrow night. Scroll down for info. Readymade inventor Marcel Duchamp encoded the ultimate Dada strategy when he stated, in 1923, that he was quitting art and devoting himself to playing chess. The artist who championed wordplay, absurdity, and gender-ben...

