Latest news with #TateModern
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Who is Zohran Mamdani's wife? How pro-Palestine artist met NYC mayor candidate in very modern way
As socialist Zohran Mamdani stunned the New York City 's mayor's race by winning the Democratic primary this week, his wife became an unexpected overnight star. Mamdani's illustrator wife Rama Duwaji, 27, had been low-key during her husband's social media-driven campaign before joining him on stage when he celebrated victory on Tuesday night. Some critics of the left-wing candidate, 33, had even accused him of 'hiding his wife from NYC' during his bruising primary against former Governor Andrew Cuomo. But Duwaji was all smiles as she marked her husband's victory on stage, and wrote on Instagram that she 'couldn't possibly be prouder' of him as he shocked his establishment opponent. Mamdani, who met his wife on the dating app Hinge, lovingly addressed Duwaji in front of his crowd on Tuesday, saying 'Rama, thank you' as he kissed her hand. The potential future First Lady of the Big Apple says on her Instagram bio that she is 'from Damascus', however a Mamdani campaign spokesperson told the New York Times that she was actually born in Texas. She is best known for her illustrations and animations, many of which are pro-Palestine themed and criticize Israel and the Trump administration. Duwaji's artwork has appeared in numerous galleries including London's Tate Modern, and has been included in news outlets including the New Yorker, the BBC and the Washington Post. As his wife's lack of presence on the campaign trail became a source of ammunition for his opponents, Mamdani took on his critics with an Instagram post of his own. 'If you take a look at Twitter today, or any day for that matter, you know how vicious politics can be,' Mamdani wrote alongside images from their civil ceremony. 'I usually brush it off, whether it's death threats or calls for me to be deported. But it's different when it's about those you love. 'Three months ago, I married the love of my life, Rama, at the City Clerk's office. Now, right-wing trolls are trying to make this race – which should be about you – about her.' He added: 'You can critique my views, but not my family... (Rama) isn't just my wife, she's an incredible artist who deserves to be known on her own terms.' Among Duwaji's recent artworks shared to her Instagram include calls to release previously detained Columbia student and pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was locked up by the Trump administration for months without being charged with a crime before he was freed last week. In May, she also shared an animation condemning Israel's treatment of civilians in Gaza, which showed a woman holding a bowl that read 'it's not a hunger crisis... it is deliberate starvation.' Duwaji's thrust into the limelight comes as her husband rapidly rose to national prominence with his surprise victory this week. The 33-year-old has faced mounting questions about his experience since he gained traction and ultimately won the Democratic primary, with his only public service work coming as a state assemblyman. In the state assembly, Mamdani promoted few bills, and his legislative record includes co-sponsoring bills requiring prisons to house inmates based on their self-declared gender, preventing law enforcement from asking about a perp's immigration status, and forcing small businesses to make their product packaging eco-friendly. Critics have said a Mamdani win will see the Big Apple slide back into the type of permissive lawlessness that scarred the city during the COVID crisis, but which woke locals and lawmakers scoffed at. When asked by Good Morning America this week about his lack of experience, Mamdani avoided talking about his record and turned the question back on his recent run for mayor. 'The experience that I show in this moment is to be able to meet the crisis that New Yorkers are facing, and deliver them a new kind of city,' he said. 'One that is unencumbered by the old ways.' Mamdani has described himself as 'Trump's worst nightmare', and his far-left policy platform sharply divided the nation as he gained traction in the mayor's race. He says he wants to raise taxes on the top one percent of New York earners - something the mayor does not have the authority to do - and make a number of city services free including childcare and buses. The city assemblyman has also proposed spending $65 million on transgender care, freezing rent on rent-stabilized apartments, and creating city-owned grocery stores. He has also advocated for defunding the city's police department, defended pro- Palestine slogans like 'globalize the intifada' - which critics say is an anti-Semitic call for the destruction of Israel - and said he would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Time Out
a day ago
- Time Out
It's official: England's most-visited attraction is in London
It's no secret that London is every tourist's favourite English destination. We've got fantastic food, incredible culture and hundreds of buildings that house centuries and centuries of fascinating history. So, it's not surprising that England's most visited attraction in 2024, as revealed by VisitEngland, can be found here in the capital. The British Museum saw 6.5 million visitors in 2024, making it the most popular free attraction in all of England and the most visited attraction in the country overall. That figure is up 11 percent compared 2023. If you're not one of those millions and millions of people who have already seen the British Museum for themselves, check out our guide to it here. If you've not got long, Time Out' s contributing writer Alex Sims advises that 'a great way to see all the big hitters and get a feel for the place is by picking up one of the great museum maps that give you timed routes around the labyrinthine institution. The hour-long route is a great whistle-stop tour around the museum's best-known objects.' Looking forward, the museum has big plans to build on its immense popularity last year. Its Western Galleries are getting a huge makeover and it will apparently start undergoing the 'biggest transformation of any museum in the world'. Nine out of England's top ten most visited free attractions for 2024 belong to London. The Natural History Museum came in second place with a total of 5.9m visitors (you can find everything you need to know about that here) and the Tate Modern earned third place with 4.6 mill, which was down three percent compared to the year before (we've got an in depth guide to that, too). As for the English attractions that charge an entry fee, London landmarks still came out on top. The Tower of London was the most visited paid-for attraction in 2024 with 2.9m people checking it out and Kew Gardens was the runner-up with 2.3m (an impressive 15 percent increase on its 2023 headcount). Overall, VisitEngland discovered that attractions across England enjoyed a 1.4 percent increase in footfall from 2023 to 2024. But visitor levels are still a whopping 27 percent less than what they were in 2019. The top 10 most visited attractions in England in 2024 British Museum National History Museum Tate Modern Brighton Pier V&A National Gallery Somerset House Science Museum, London Royal Museums Greenwich National Portrait Gallery
Scroll.in
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
What happens when an American meme finds itself at the gates of New York's City Hall
The image drifts through American feeds like a half-remembered dream: grainy, sepia-toned women in 1960s Tehran laugh in miniskirts, cocktails in hand, neon signs bleeding into the night. 'Iran before the revolution,' the caption sighs – a digital epitaph for a modernity America imagines it birthed. This meme, shared with performative grief, erases the Shah's SAVAK death squads, the feudal poverty, the US-backed dictatorship that birthed the revolution. Isn't history. It's colonial fan fiction. Progress, to the American gaze, means miniskirts and muted faith – a modernity measured in proximity to whiteness. Iran before the Islamic revolution. — Tom Harwood (@tomhfh) June 17, 2025 Now, the flicker of a live feed: June 24, 2025. Queens pulses with 36.6-degree C heat and disbelief. Thirty-three-year-old Zohran Kwame Mamdani – socialist son of a Ugandan Marxist scholar and an Oscar-nominated filmmaker – has toppled disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary. Beside him stands Rama Duwaji, 27, a Syrian-born illustrator whose ink-stained hands have animated Palestinian solidarity art for The New Yorker and the Tate Modern. They are the meme incarnate: Mamdani in his East African khanzu or sharp suits, Duwaji in minimalist linen, her Instagram feed (@ramaduwaji) a gallery of Brooklyn murals and keffiyeh-clad protesters. Cosmopolitan. Educated. Unapologetically Muslim. The aesthetic is flawless. Iran before the revolution — Abu Mexicuh 🇵🇸🪂🔻☭ (@notronmexicuh) June 17, 2025 The backlash *Cut.* The digital scream begins. Not nostalgia, but venom. Tabloids brand Mamdani a 'radical fundamentalist'; Cuomo allies darken his beard in attack ads, splicing his image with 9/11 rubble. Groups funded by billionaires warn of disaster. Why? Because though Mamdani has donned the costume of the memes, he is dismantling the script. He describes Gaza as a 'genocide,' vows to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under International Criminal Court warrants, and promises free buses by 2027 funded by taxing millionaires. Duwaji's ceramics scream what the meme silences: plates glazed 'Free Palestine', animations of Israeli tanks crushing protesters . Her Nina Simone quote hangs like a grenade: 'An artist's duty is to reflect the times.' This cognitive whiplash isn't accidental. It's revelatory. The meme demands Muslims perform secularism only as aesthetics –assimilated in dress but silent on power. Mamdani and Duwaji shatter the fantasy. He advocates socialism, not sharia; her art weaponises beauty against empire. Yet the moment Mamdani condemns Israeli policy, his Muslim identity – once rendered palatable by his pedigree and designer wardrobe – becomes the explanation. The label 'fundamentalist' is activated, fashioned into a cudgel by decades of post-9/11 fear. "Revolution@, by Syrian artist Rama Duwaji. #Sudan #Lebanon #Iraq #Algeria — Rasha Al Aqeedi (@RashaAlAqeedi) October 24, 2019 Split-screen America Fade between two images: Frame One: The 1967 Tehran nightclub. Frozen. Silent. Politically inert. Safe. A modernity America can pity and possess. Frame Two: Mamdani's victory speech: 'I'll be mayor for every New Yorker'. Duwaji's Instagram: 'Couldn't possibly be prouder'. Alive. Unsilenced. Threatening. The backlash exposes America's acceptance as conditional. Duwaji's client list that includes the Tate Modern? Ignored. Her pro-Palestinian art? Weaponised as 'radicalism'. Mamdani's tenant advocacy in Queens? Erased. His policy platform – municipal grocery stores (funded by corporate taxes), a $30 minimum wage – in attack ads becomes 'Soviet overreach'. Acceptance lasts only until sacred cows are gored: unwavering Zionism, capitalist dogma, American innocence. Even their love story – meeting on Hinge, marrying at City Hall – is mined for suspicion. When trolls accused Mamdani of 'hiding his wife', he fired back: 'You can critique my views, but not my family'. The hollow idol The meme endures because it is dead – a relic that allows Americans to mourn Muslims they never tolerated alive. But Mamdani and Duwaji are the ghost stepping from the frame. Their potential residency at Gracie Mansion isn't just political; it's a referendum on whether America can stomach the modernity it fetishises. His coalition – 50,000 volunteers, young White voters flipping decades of political orthodoxy –embodies the complex, vocal Muslim presence the meme erases. Where the meme offered miniskirts as symbols of liberation, Duwaji offers art as resistance. Where it promised silent assimilation, Mamdani demands redistributive justice. In a must-read comic in the Washington Post, illustrated by Rama Duwaji, Palestinian artist Reem Ahmed recounts the experience of being trapped under rubble for 12 hours following an Israeli bombing in Gaza: — MIX (@mixdevil66) November 24, 2023 Fade out The meme was never about Iran. It was always about us. As Mamdani stands one election from Gracie Mansion, America's reflection is clearer than ever: a nation clinging to its own fundamentalism – not of scripture, but of conditional belonging. The real 'fundamentalists' are those who demand modernity without justice, diversity without dissent, Muslims without voice. In the flicker between the grainy past and the vivid present, the illusion burns away. What remains is a choice: confront the living – or keep mourning the dead.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Daniel Craig, 57, looks worlds away from his James Bond days as he sports a much fuller head of hair and quirky sense of style at Tate Modern's 25th Anniversary Gala
Daniel Craig looked worlds away from his 007 days as he arrived at the star-studded Tate Modern 25th Anniversary Gala in London on Wednesday night. The actor, 57 - who finished his time as James Bond with the 2021 film No Time To Die - donned a typically suave cream tux and co-ord tie for the occasion. Sporting a stylish pair of orange-tinted sunglasses over his eyes, Daniel was showcasing a much fuller head of hair than usual. The star was also sporting long salt and pepper sideburns. He seemed in good spirits for the occasion, and was pictured posing with his arm around Maria Balshaw, the director of Tate's four art museums across the country. The actor - who was a widely popular Bond - enjoyed a five-film stint with the franchise, beginning with the 2006 movie Casino Royale. During his days as 007 the actor sported a more rugged look than he does now, with Craig often seen opting for a longer hairstyle at events post-Bond. He was was joined at the event on Wednesday by a host of stars, including Reese Witherspoon, Bianca Jagger, Sir Grayson Perry, Gwendoline Christie and Tracey Emin. Legally Blonde actress Reese, 49, looked effortlessly chic on the night in a sophisticated black midi dress as she posed up a storm for photographers. Her elegant ensemble featured an asymmetrical neckline, a black leather belt with gold hardware, and a figure-hugging silhouette. Adding a touch of height, Reese teamed the look with classic pointed black court heels and carried a sleek gold clutch. Reese's outing came after she announced Sunnie, a Gen Z-focused spin-off of her Hello Sunshine label, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity earlier this month. He was joined at the event by Reese Witherspoon, 49, who exuded elegance as she arrived at the star-studded Tate Modern 25th Anniversary Gala in London on Wednesday night The actress put on a leggy display in a chic white mini dress, featuring short puffed sleeves, a scoop neckline, a figure-hugging design, and exposed stitch detailing. Flaunting her long, toned pins, Reese added inches to her frame with a pair of white stiletto heels, which featured a large buckle fastening. On stage, Reese described Sunnie as a 'celebration' of young women's creativity, curiosity and agency. She said: 'It's been a dream of mine to build a space where young women can be the truest version of themselves, 'We've discovered that young women are not defined by doom and gloom as they're often portrayed in media – they're complex, creative individuals with incredible agency. 'Sunnie will be a celebration of that spirit, giving them the tools and community to navigate life's challenges while embracing their authentic selves.' According to The Hollywood Reporter, the multi-platform brand will feature collaborations with such Gen Z creators and celebrities as YouTuber Lana Condor, Canadian high diver and social media personality Molly Carlson, and Young Sheldon actress Raegan Revord. The group announced strategic alliances with organizations including Child Mind Institute, IF/THEN Initiative, and Purdue University, which will serve as the brand's official university partner. Former actress Bianca Jagger also turned heads as she arrived at the fundraising gala wearing a stylish silk co-ord The Sunnie ecosystem will span social content, digital zines, book clubs, custom curriculum, and real-world events. Maureen Polo, head of direct-to-consumer at Hello Sunshine said: 'Young women – despite the many pressures they face – are intentionally creating space for joy, 'They're writing their own stories, setting boundaries, finding community, and embracing both digital and real-world connections on their terms. 'And yet, 75 percent say advertising rarely reflects how they actually talk, dress, or act — a clear signal that the industry still isn't truly seeing them. 'Sunnie will support and amplify these efforts, providing content, curriculum, and experiences that resonate with how they actually live their lives, not how adults assume they do.' Hello Sunshine was launched in 2016 by Reese and Sarah Harden and has produced TV series such as Big Little Lies and The Morning Show. It was acquired by Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs' Candle Media in 2021, according to the publication.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Tate raises £43m from donations as it launches ‘ambitious' endowment fund
Tate has launched an endowment fund and secured £43m from donations in what it calls 'one of the most ambitious cultural fundraising campaigns of its kind in the UK'. Donations to the Tate Future Fund have come from individuals, foundations and Tate trustees, including James Bartos, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Nick Clarry, Mala Gaonkar, Anthony and Sandra Gutman, Jack Kirkland, Jamie and Michael Lynton, the Manton Foundation, Jorge M and Darlene Pérez, Manizeh and Danny Rimer, and Roland and Sophie Rudd. The aim of the campaign is to raise an endowment of £150m by 2030 to help support the Tate's exhibition programme and research in perpetuity. Donors are being solicited from Tate's extensive global supporter network. Tate's director, Maria Balshaw, said: 'There are a number of organisations in the UK that are working hard to create endowments, especially in higher education, but no cultural organisation has done an active campaign like this before. 'Many organisations in the arts sector would really like to have this kind of support. If you look to our North American peers, museums like MoMA, the Met or the Whitney all have very significant endowments. It is what protects them from the vagaries of economic change and allows them to think and plan long term.' The fund was announced by Tate's chair, Roland Rudd, at Tate Modern's 25th anniversary fundraising gala on Wednesday night, which was attended by more than 600 artists and philanthropists. The gala itself raised more than £1m from table hosts and guests, which will be used to directly support the Tate's artistic programme, its collection and its learning and educational activities. The gala followed Tate Modern's anniversary celebrations in May, when more than 76,000 people visited the gallery in a single weekend. More than 70% of those who visited were under 35 years old, and 2,000 of them joined Tate Collective, making it the largest arts membership scheme for young people in the world with more than 180,000 members, Tate said. Balshaw said the Tate's ethics committee helped 'advise on every kind of donation that we get'. Other cultural institutions have recently been urged by pro-Palestine supporters to cut ties with Bloomberg Philanthropies over the company's alleged links to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion In September, dozens of film-makers including Mike Leigh, Julia Loktev and James Schamus called on the New York film festival to drop the sponsor. In January, more than 20 artists taking part in an exhibition at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts staged a walkout in support of pro-Palestine demonstrators calling on the organisation to cut ties with Bloomberg Philanthropies. And in May, hundreds of theatre and arts professionals demanded Islington's Almeida theatre end its partnership with the company. Balshaw said Bloomberg Philanthropies supported 'a very wide range of arts organisations in the UK and across the world, and they are already very longstanding supporters of Tate. 'In common with all arts organisations and museums in this country, our ethics committee follows the principles laid out by the Charity Commission, so we are obliged to consider all donations with a presumption that we should accept the money if it's for public benefit.'
