Without Friday’s agreement between the museum and collectors Doris and Donald Fisher, “the shock of Mr. Fisher’s death on Sunday would have been far more traumatic. One [of] his most ardent wishes concerning his public legacy – the prominent, and local, display of his artwork – will be fulfilled.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Donald Fisher, Gap Founder And Art Collector, Dies At 81
“Along with his wife and business partner, Doris Fisher, he became a philanthropist and a major political donor, helped keep the Giants in San Francisco and amassed one of the world’s great collections of modern art.”
For Banned Books Week, A Poem By A Persecuted Author
“An author of young adult fiction whose books have provoked bans and complaints in the US for tackling controversial topics such as teenage prostitution and drug addiction has written a poem that is being used to champion the cause of banned books across America.”
Cash-Strapped, East London’s Largest Theatre To Go Dark
“Hackney Empire – London’s flagship variety theatre – is to go dark in the new year due to financial difficulties, making much of its workforce redundant. The venue will continue to operate a full programme until the end of its pantomime in January 2010,” then close the house “‘for a period of reflection’ of between six and nine months.”
Inside Alan Gilbert’s Office
The New York Philharmonic’s new, 42-year-old music director “radiates a youthful vigor, an almost boyish sense of the casual, that is meant to draw a bright line separating the future of the august institution from its European-influenced and somewhat stuffy recent past. So, too, does his suite.”
Blanche Moyse, One Of Music’s Quiet Heroes, Turns 100
“She was a co-founder of the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. She established the New England Bach Festival, which offered tremendous performances of Bach’s masterpieces for 35 years. She created a vibrant musical community of both amateurs and professionals in rural Vermont. … She should be celebrated more.”
Stoppard, Hadid Win Japan’s $158K Praemium Imperiale
“The Japan Art Association on Thursday named British playwright Tom Stoppard as a recipient of the Praemium Imperiale, one of the richest awards in the arts world. Two more Britons also won the prize — Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid and sculptor Richard Long — as did Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto and Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel.”
Haven’t We Always Been Obsessed With Vampires?
“[P]erhaps instead of talking about vampire crazes, we should really be talking about vampire droughts. The brief, anomalous periods when few or perhaps even no vampire movies, books, or TV shows are produced at all. The Garlic Years.”
It’s Okay That Frank Gehry Won’t Be Redesigning Brooklyn
“It is a shame that Gehry wasn’t given a chance to build his transparent, landscape-topped arena, but it is hard not to cheer the fact that the rest of his plan for the Atlantic Yards has also been abandoned. … Surely we’ve learned by now that having large chunks of the city designed by one architect, no matter how talented, is not a good idea.”
Snapshot Of Philadelphia Orchestra: Not A Pretty Picture
“Against the dark backdrop of financial crisis and a leadership overhaul in progress, the Philadelphia Orchestra Association met yesterday to present its traditional state-of-the-orchestra snapshot.” Though “the meeting was notable for what it did not cover,” the institution’s “leaders emphatically articulated the seriousness of the orchestra’s financial condition.”