“While President Obama and leaders from 19 other world economic powers meet at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, Michelle Obama is scheduled to shepherd dignitaries’ spouses through a day of arts-hopping Friday.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Why The NEA’s Communications Director Got Demoted
“Rocco Landesman, the new NEA chairman, issued a written explanation today ‘to clarify the issues’ surrounding an Aug. 10 conference call in which Yosi Sergant, representing the NEA, invited representatives from the arts world to get involved in President Obama’s United We Serve volunteerism initiative. “
Restored, Empire State Building Art Deco Murals Reappear
“People who walked into the Empire State Building have done their looking up outside, craning their necks to see the top, 1,250 feet above the street. As they made their way to the observation deck, they had little reason to look up in the cathedral-like lobby. Now there is something to look up at.”
Compiling A Literary History Of America
“So how does one select which moments and artifacts from North America’s last 500 years deserve inclusion? With a meeting.”
Opening-Night Boos And All, Gelb’s Met Is Not The Old Met
Beginning the season as he did, “with a brand-new, pared-down production of an opera that was a trademark of the old Met, was ‘not an accident,'” Peter Gelb said. “His self-proclaimed mission from the beginning has been to revivify an institution whose core audience he thinks is rapidly aging itself to extinction…. ‘I didn’t understand fully how difficult it was going to be,’ he added.”
At NY Phil, A Different Feel — And A Different Look
“The son of current and former members of the Philharmonic’s violin section,” newly minted music director Alan Gilbert already has “transformed the relationship between the music director and the players.” He has also “radically changed the seating formation,” a major adjustment for musicians.
Female Novelists Crowd Giller Prize Long List
“Female authors of historical fiction dominate the long list of nominees for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize – a selection that will likely silence the grumbling that followed the release of last year’s long list, when only three of the 15 nominees were women.” This year, only two of the 12 are men.
Flash-Mob Dancers Welcome G-20 To Pittsburgh
“At 1:15 p.m., three groups of 100 students sent wishes for a peaceful G-20 Summit through simultaneous, surprise performances — or flash mobs — and then dispersed 3 minutes later.” The dancers wore “matching orange peace sign T-shirts.”
New Musicals Need A Stronger Support System
“[W]ithout new blood being pumped into the genre, we’ll end up trapped in a theatrical Twilight Zone populated entirely by drag queens, film adaptations, and greatest hits CDs. Even the Edinburgh fringe, an invaluable platform for new material, seems to treat musicals with vague embarrassment and a lack of critical seriousness.”
‘Lazy Sexism’ Excluded Female Authors From Collection
“The British Fantasy Society has now apologised for the omission” of women from its volume of interviews with horror fiction authors. The society’s chair said it was “disgustingly simple for a man not to notice these things, a blindness to the importance of correct gender representation that I feel embarrassed to have fallen into.”