Three great releases of lost concerts by Duke Ellington Orchestra, John Taylor & Stan Sulzman, and Joe Henderson
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Kwame Nkrumah memorial, Accra, Ghana
Sculptures in the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum
[Rachel Strohm/Creative Commons]
To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
WHEN Ghana’s socialist president Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown on February 24 1966, while on a visit to North Vietnam, one of the many vengeful acts by the putschists was to tear down his modest statue and symbolically decapitate it.
Sculpted by Nicola Cataudella in classical Greco-Roman counterpoise, it had Nkrumah stepping forward wearing a fugu — the traditional worker’s smock — with his right hand raised in a salute while holding a traditional walking stick in his left.
Cataudella was inspired by a press photo of the moment when Nkrumah, in traditional dress, declared Ghana’s independence on March 6 1957. His modest statue was unveiled a year later at Parliament House in Accra.
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