Banned at home, Thai filmmakers’ adaptation of Macbeth wins dual prizes at Tripoli fest

Yet another Thai cinematic production has won over a festival jury abroad, despite struggling against film censors at home.Shakespeare Must Die (2012), an allegory of Thailand’s recent political struggles critiquing the legacy of Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed prime minister, was awarded two prizes at Lebanon’s inaugural Tripoli International Film Festival, held in November, which was organized around the theme of “cultural resistance.”

Michael Sullivan, Pioneer Chinese Art Scholar, Dies at 96

Michael Sullivan, a pioneering British art historian in the field of Chinese traditional and contemporary art, died in his home in Oxford, England, on September 28, at the age of 96. He had just completed a three-week trip to China.

Whitney Biennial 2014 Artists Announced

Following the highly praised co-curated Whitney biennial of 2012, for the 2014 edition, which commences in March, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York will bring in not two but three curators, to further diversify the Biennial’s range and scope. Stuart Comer, chief curator of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Anthony Elms, associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and artist and professor in the painting and drawing department at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, Michelle Grabner will channel their collective experiences to give the Biennial a “bold new form.”

Jitish Kallat to Curate India’s First Biennale

Celebrated contemporary Indian artist Jitish Kallat will curate the second edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India’s first biennale, which is to take place in December 2014. Kallat hopes to bring artists in dialogue with one another to “induce shifts in each other’s perceptions and practices and to collectively expand the tools with which we might propose versions of the world today.”