Friday's Art Notes

_'Herring and Philosophy Club', 2006 by Maira Kalman. "Various Illuminations (Of a Crazy World)":http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/mkalman, a retrospective of Kalman's narrative art work, opens today at the Jewish Museum in New York. Collection of Ellen and Roger Grimes. Courtesy of the Jewish Museum._ We'll have an interview with Maira Kalman and a slide show of her works in the coming weeks. * Bob Dylan has been given permission to play concerts in China, as long as he plays songs that have been pre-approved by the government, via "Rolling Stone":http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-approved-to-play-first-shows-in-china-20110311. * Jennifer Egan won the National Book Critics Circle Award Thursday night for her experimental novel, _A Visit From the Goon Squad_, via "The New York Times":http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/books/visit-from-goon-squad-wins-critics-award.html. Jeffrey Brown "talked to Egan":http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2010/07/conversation-author-jennifer-egan.html about her book back in July. * An upcoming exhibit organized by the Smithsonian Institution is under fire from archaeologists who dispute the manner in which artifacts were recovered from a Javanese shipwreck, via "The New York Times' Arts Beat":http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/archeologists-criticize-smithsonian-over-java-objects/. * Meanwhile, the Smithsonian is sending a curator to Madison, Wisc., to collect the signs made by citizens protesting the elimination of collective barganing rights for state employees, via "CNN":http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-08/politics/wisconsin.smithsonian_1_labor-history-budget-impasse-state-workers?_s=PM:POLITICS. * The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has returned a traditional headdress to a clan of the Tlingit tribe in Alaska that its had in its collection since the 1950s, via the "Richmond Times-Dispatch":http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2011/mar/10/TDMET02-vmfa-returns-native-american-headdress-ar-895231/.