“Like the great architect and city planner Daniel Burnham before him, Muti” — the CSO’s music director designate — “is making no small plans. When he spoke of taking the CSO into Chicago neighborhoods to reach minorities and incarcerated and at-risk youth, he revealed a civic and humanitarian vision Burnham surely would have admired.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
For Newcomers To Dance, A Cheat Sheet
“Tribune reporter Christopher Borrelli, a devotee of cinema and other pop arts, is dating a woman who’s a passionate dance fan,” whereas he has a laundry list of questions about the art form. A dance critic answers them with this primer.
Barnes’ New Philly Home Does Little For Its Neighborhood
“Designers know how to make buildings that dazzle us visually. Yet they’re often so intent on satisfying their client’s complex organizational needs, they forget about their obligations to city life. The Barnes design, by New York’s Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, gets an ‘A’ in aesthetics and an ‘F’ in urbanism.”
With New York Productions, Berkeley Rep’s Profile Is Rising
“While Chicago’s Goodman and Steppenwolf theater companies have long track records of sending shows to New York, … Berkeley Rep’s emergence as a prime source for Manhattan stages is more abrupt and more unusual for a Bay Area not-for-profit theater.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Seeks Oldest Complete Set
The Encyclopaedia Britannica is “launching a quest to find the oldest complete set in private hands. Put together in the back streets of Edinburgh by an editor, an engraver and a printer, the first version of the encyclopaedia was released in weekly sections – costing six pence each, or eight pence if printed on smart paper – from July 1768.”
How ‘Bout A Vacant Fourth Plinth?
“I don’t want to see any more public art on the plinth – no war heroes and no more modern art either. … [E]verything put there seems to become at best a scabrous distraction from, and at worst a conscious insult to, the great art in the nearby National Gallery.”
From The Dregs Of A Price-Fixing Fund, Free Concerts
In California, $549,000 has “been allocated for free and discounted live-music performances up and down the state,” draining “what’s left of a $6-million cash kitty that five big CD distributors and three retail chains anted up in 2004 to settle the Golden State’s share of nationwide price-fixing allegations.”
Gates Foundation Gives African American Museum $10M
“The foundation, the largest private charitable fund in the world, is donating the money for the [National Museum of African American History and Culture’s] capital campaign and to support the design and construction of the museum, which is scheduled to open on the Mall in late 2015.” The museum is part of the Smithsonian Institution.
Owner Of 11 Stolen Warhols Won’t Pursue Insurance Claim
“The art world was abuzz in early September with word that a series of original works by famed Pop Art icon Andy Warhol had been stolen from the walls of noted art collector Richard L. Weisman’s Westside Los Angeles home. … Now, Weisman has said he is not going to pursue a payout from the company that insured the paintings.”
Walmart.com Drastically Cutting Prices Of Best Sellers
“The online division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) said on Thursday that it is pricing the top 10 pre-selling books on its website at $10 each, including free shipping.” The retailer is also “cutting the price of 200 of the nation’s best-selling books … by 50 percent or more from their listing price.”