Banksy confirms a new statue in central London of a man blinded by a flag is his work

LONDON (AP) — Elusive street artist Banksy said Thursday that a new sculpture that appeared in central London of a man striding off a plinth, with his face blinded by a billowing flag, is his work.

In a humorous video posted Thursday on his Instagram account, Banksy showed snippets of how the sculpture was put up in the dead of night. The sculpture appeared to have been erected in the early hours of Wednesday on a plinth on a traffic island in Waterloo Place, near Buckingham Palace.

Before the artist's post, locals and tourists gathered to inspect the statue on the assumption it was Banksy's work because his signature was scrawled at the base of the plinth.

The statue is situated close to those of King Edward VII, who reigned between 1901 and 1910, and legendary nurse Florence Nightingale, as well as the Crimean War Memorial.

What's Up: Kids Help Phone walk, Abdulrehman reading, Ningiukulu Teevee and Zuki Selects, WPG RPG CON

BMO Walk So Kids Can TalkSt. Vital Park, 190 River Rd.Sunday, 10-11 a.m.Winnipeggers can do their part in spreading some warmth and cheer in the lives of others by walking with more than 14,000 people across the country this weekend at the annual BMO Kids Help Phone walk.

The annual five-kilometre walk is in aid of the dedicated 24/7 e-mental health service, which offers free, multilingual and confidential support to young people.

The event will help the charity rally communities, increase awareness and work towards changing the landscape of youth mental health in the country.

Established in 1989, the charity began as a phone counselling service supporting youth experiencing forms of abuse, but evolved after listening to feedback from users to address everything from crisis situations to everyday concerns of growing up.

RMTC's Rubaboo: A Métis Cabaret is a musical mélange of jazz, folk, roots

You’ve probably had sirop d’érable and pemmican, but have you tried rubaboo?

A scoop of peas or corn, a dash of flour and onions, bison meat if you have it, a maple syrup garnish — and suddenly you’re cooking with bear grease (which you shouldn’t forget to add, either).

In a pinch, you might substitute grouse for bison meat, and throw in some extra turnip and parsnip plus wild vegetables to thicken your rubaboo stew.

Cooking and fusion metaphors are never far from how we talk about cultural blending, but in Canada, we’ve tended to resist America’s more assimilationist image of the melting pot. Instead, we talk of mosaics, or sometimes salad bowls, to emphasize eclecticism.

How a father and daughter duped NYC’s art world with fake Warhols and Banksys

NEW YORK (AP) — A little over a year ago, the New York City art dealer Robert Rogal received a visit to his private showroom from a young woman, who seemed eager to offload a family heirloom.

Introducing herself as Karolina Bankowska, she carried a framed painting signed by Andrew Wyeth, resembling the watercolor landscapes the celebrated artist had completed early in his career. Intrigued, Rogal accepted the piece on consignment, figuring it might fetch between $20,000 to $30,000 at auction.

“The provenance was a little fuzzy,” he said. “But she seemed credible. It wasn’t an obvious counterfeit.”

In fact, Rogal now believes the painting was a fake — one of at least 200 carefully designed imitations that federal prosecutors say Bankowska, 26, and her father Erwin Bankowski, 50, tried to pass off to unwitting buyers.

Winnipeg photographer captures striking stills that market major motion pictures

Eric Zachanowich is the most famous photographer you’ve probably never heard of.

He’s worked with Tinseltown heavyweights such as the late Robert Redford, Ralph Fiennes, Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson and Anya Taylor-Joy, and even appeared in Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson’s wrestling biopic The Smashing Machine, disguised as, you guessed it, a photographer.

“It was for one of the opening scenes so I could shoot Dwayne Johnson walking to the ring. I made the final cut of the movie — although it’s hard to place me — and also got a spectacular photo that was used heavily during marketing,” says Zachanowich, 32.

More often than not, he operates as a silent observer on the sets of cinema blockbusters and prestige television dramas alike, his lens capturing the world’s biggest A-listers at their most vulnerable and intense moments.

Powerful family drama played out with puppets

Otosan makes a compelling case that a powerful theatrical experience doesn’t necessarily require grand sets, elaborate costumes, complicated, complex storylines — or for that matter, even spoken dialogue — to create deeply resonant, human stories that pierce the heart.

Spring in her step

For Evelyn Hart, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet will always be home.

The legendary prima ballerina and former RWB principal dancer will return to the Centennial Concert Hall stage this week for the 2025/26 season finale, reprising her role as Winter Woman in James Kudelka’s The Four Seasons. (It’s a reunion of sorts; fellow RWB company alumni Alexander Gamayunov, CindyMarie Small and Dmitri Dovgoselets will also be performing in the work.)

“I keep waking up every day, pinching myself, thinking I’m so lucky. It feels, literally, as if I’ve just been transported back in time,” says Hart, 70, who joined the company 50 years ago, in 1976. (And speaking of long-serving alumni, this show is the last in the final season to be programmed by former artistic director André Lewis, who was recently honoured with the title of artistic director emeritus for his half-century at the company, 30 of those years at its helm.)

The Four Seasons, which uses the Vivaldi masterwork of the same name to tell the story of the four seasons in a man’s life, is a special ballet for Hart. It’s the work that got her back onstage after she’d officially hung up her pointe shoes for good in 2006 (Aug. 23, 2006, to be exact, because a ballerina never forgets that date; these days, she performs in soft shoe).

Writes of Spring: Manitoba poets explore our relationship with land and water

For the 11th year of Writes of Spring, co-editor melanie brannagan frederiksen and I asked Manitoban writers to send us poems on the theme set by the League of Canadian Poets: Land & Sea.

We wanted to know: what does it mean to live in a province at the centre of Canada that still has 645 kilometres of coastline?

Lake Winnipeg is the 12th largest lake on Earth, with the largest watershed of any lake in this country. Not only that, but Winnipeg is criss-crossed with fresh water, from the Red River to Omand’s Creek. What does it mean, in the midst of all that water, to live on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene Peoples and the homeland of the Métis Nation?

Basically, we asked Manitobans to describe their relationship with water and land in poetry.

Stirring oratorio pays homage to Indigenous veterans

‘My war wasn’t in Europe. My war was when I came back to Canada and I couldn’t vote until 1962,” says composer Andrew Balfour. He’s paraphrasing a quote by an Indigenous veteran and the inspiration for his oratorio notinikew (i went to war).

Wordless puppet show explores father-daughter ties

Having a parent who travels for work is a challenge for any child, but whenever Shizuka Kai’s father left on a voyage to capture elusive footage of white wolves and kodiaks, there was an element of danger that didn’t exist for other children.

“I would say I kind of grew up with my dad telling us that he actually might not come home,” says Kai, a Vancouver-based puppet maker and theatre artist. “A moment I vaguely remember as a kid was when he sat us down and explained the life-insurance process because (he) might actually get attacked and eaten by a bear, and that’s the reality of this project (he was) doing.”

That reality is put through a puppeteer’s lens in Otosan, the closing production of the 2025-2026 season at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People.

Based on Kai’s experiences growing up as the child of a dogged wildlife videographer, combined with memories from a joint trip to Alaska in Kai’s early 20s, Otosan — on to May 17 — is told in a wordless tabletop puppet show featuring lifelike renderings of father, daughter, grizzly bear and snowy owl.

What's up: poetry, art show, Stink-O-Vision, Dill the Giant

Writes of Spring poetry launchMcNally Robinson Booksellers, 1120 Grant Ave.Sunday, 2 p.m.FreeA dozen Manitoba poets will convene at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location this weekend to share their words exploring both land and sea.

The annual Writes of Spring poetry reading, a joint venture between the Free Press, the Winnipeg Arts Council and Plume Winnipeg, takes place Sunday at 2 p.m.

The 11th annual event helps celebrate National Poetry month, with Manitoba poets submitting work with the hopes of being selected for the collection of poems (which appear in print in the 49.8 section of Saturday’s Free Press).

This year’s collection, whose theme was “land and sea,” was edited by Ariel Gordon and melanie brannagan frederiksen, who will host the event. This year’s selected poets, who will also be featured at the launch, are RYAN AD, Jody Baltessen, Janine Brown, Joanne Epp, David Jón Fuller, James Hargrove, Bertrand Nayet, Désirée Penner, proma tagore, Alexander Wiebe, Jess Woolford and Chey Wright (also known as IDIC Verse).

Get ready for the bare-knuckle round — Debaters returns to Winnipeg Comedy Festival

Is Big Oil a good thing for Canada? Do butter tarts beat Nanaimo bars? Should Canada become the 51st state? Is Velcro better than laces?

It may sound like you’re overhearing snatches of conversation from both the kids and adult tables of a family party, rather than questions posed on the CBC Radio One program The Debaters.

However, the weekly family-friendly program on CBC’s primary radio news service has always been a little more fun than factual, a little more whimsy than weighty.

“I prefer when it’s got a little bit of meat to it,” says Steve Patterson, the Ontario comedian who has hosted the show since 2007.

Once punished for weaving, this Mexican artisan uses her loom for LGBTQ+ resistance

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Xaneri Merino wasn't meant to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps.

Now a transgender woman, she was identified at birth as a boy in San Pedro Jicayán, an Indigenous community in southern Mexico where men are largely barred from becoming weavers.

Merino was expected to tend cattle or work in the fields. Yet her grandmother defied those rigid gender norms, passing on to her the ancestral practice of the backstrap loom — an ancient, portable device operated using a strap secured around the weaver’s waist.

“She began sharing her knowledge with me in secret,” said Merino, who used to hide in her grandmother’s adobe home to weave at age 13. “She taught me how to make the thread from scratch, to feel the textures and respect nature.”

Priceless 2,500-year-old golden helmet returned to Romania after Dutch museum raid

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — A priceless golden helmet dating back 2,500 years was returned to Romania on Tuesday after the national heirloom was stolen from a Dutch museum where it was on loan last year.

The ornate Cotofenesti helmet and three golden bracelets — some of Romania’s most revered national treasures from the Dacia civilization — were taken from the Drents Museum in January 2025 in a raid which shocked the art world and devastated Romanian authorities.

But after 14 months of investigations, diplomatic tensions, and three suspects in an ongoing trial, most of the artifacts arrived at Bucharest Henri Coanda International Airport on Tuesday from where authorities transported them under guard to Bucharest’s National History Museum. They were displayed in a glass cabinet, flanked by masked, armed guards.

Cornel Constantin Ilie, the museum's interim director, said that the artifacts have been returned “not as simple patrimony items, but as relics of our historical memory, as the legacy of a civilization that continues to define us.”

Musical tale of emancipation a real tour de force

Aspiring reporter Annie Londonderry (Berkley Silverman) has a story to tell the readers of the World, so she arrives at the newspaper’s headquarters, the tallest building in New York City in the year 1894.