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The Headlines
MUSICAL MASTERPIECES. A glorious development for Frida Kahlo fans: The trailblazing Mexican painter will be the subject of a musical, the Associated Press reports. Composer Jaime Lozano is handling the music, and playwright Neena Beber is writing the lyrics. The Kahlo family–approved venture is from producer Valentina Berger and BTF Media, which was reported in May to be at work on a TV series based on the Surrealist legend. In other art-and-music-and-acting crossover news, Ocula reports that singer and actress Maya Hawke, of the TV show Stranger Things, has released a video for her song “Thérèse,” which responds to Balthus’s 1938 painting Thérèse Dreaming.
ALLURING ACQUISITIONS. A collection of Indian art owned by the late artist Howard Hodgkin, which was turned down by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, because of worries that some pieces may have been removed from the country illegally, has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Newspaper reports. Of the 122 paintings and drawings, 38 have unclear provenance; they will be on long-term loan to the Met while still being owned by the Howard Hodgkin Indian Collection Trust. Meanwhile, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has received a gift of more than 2,000 prints from the late economist Richard E. Caves, the Boston Globe reports. “Though his vocation was economics, Dick’s secret desire was to be a print curator,” the MFA’s associate curator of prints and drawings, Patrick Murphy, said in a statement.
The Digest
Journalist Zachary Small paid a visit to the Space, the 50,000-square-foot studio space in Charleston, South Carolina, that Beeple, the creator of the record-smashing $69 million NFT, uses to make make work. “I am focused on legacy now,” Beeple told Small. [Vulture]
Archaeologists working in the northern part of Bavaria in Germany have unearthed what may be a 3,000-year-old clay statue of a water goddess from the Hallstatt culture. It measures about 7 inches tall. [Newsweek]
Children’s book illustrator Ronni Solbert, who frequently collaborated with her husband, the writer Jean Merrill, on books, including the 1964 hit The Pushcart War, has died at 96 of cancer. [The New York Times]
A copy of Shakespeare’s first folio, published in 1623, seven years after his death, sold for £2.4 million (about $2 million) at Sotheby’s in New York on Thursday. Of the 750 that were printed, only 232 are believed to be extant today. [BBC News]
TREND ALERT! When it comes to outdoor-furniture design, Brutalism is hot, according to the Wall Street Journal, and Architectural Digest says that Tiffany lamps are back in.
The Kicker
FLOWER POWER. The artist and floral designer Lutfi Janania has created flower arrangements for Bergdorf Goodman and an event hosted by artist Mickalene Thomas, but in a profile in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, he revealed a flower tip for projects that may have more modest budgets. “You can create fun, beautiful things with flowers from the bodega,” Janania told T . His recommendation is carnations. “They’re looked down upon, but they’re such a strong flower,” he said. “They stick around for, like, a whole three weeks.” [T: The New York Times Style Magazine]