“Carnegie Hall, the 118-year-old concert hall in New York City, plans to sell $100 million of bonds later this year to fund renovations of its studio towers and backstage areas, according to Standard & Poor’s.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
When Fakes (Nefertiti?) Worm Their Way Into Prominence
“‘Nefertiti’ does not look much like any other ancient Egyptian sculpture. On the other hand, it does have an early 1900s feel: somewhere between Art Nouveau and Art Deco, just right for the moment it was first seen publicly, in 1924. … Do such worries matter? After all, scientific tests support the authenticity of Nefertiti….”
Video On Demand May Be Indie Film’s White Knight
“For years, filmmakers flocked to the Cannes Film Festival to sell their independently financed movies, confident they’d soon see their work exhibited in movie theaters.” That’s grown less and less likely. “But there’s a potential savior on the horizon called video on demand — and it may be hiding somewhere inside your cable television box.”
At Lincoln Center Theater, Remembering Horton Foote
“The playwrights Edward Albee and Romulus Linney, the actors Robert Duvall and Harris Yulin, and Foote’s children were among those who recalled his pungent wit and wry humor, his stubbornness and his courtly gentleness.” Albee told the assembled: “Horton never wrote a character in any of his plays. Horton only wrote people.”
Salonen’s Back Goes Out, So His NY Phil Dates Are Off
“The New York Philharmonic said that Esa-Pekka Salonen, … the outgoing music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, had withdrawn from a series of concerts scheduled for Wednesday through Saturday with the New York orchestra because of back trouble.” David Zinman will step in.
Lincoln Center Is Named After … Abe? Maybe, Maybe Not.
“Surprisingly, after five decades, the origin of the word ‘Lincoln’ in Lincoln Center ‘is a mystery,’ said Judith Johnson, Lincoln Center’s corporate archivist. ‘It is one of those questions that should have an answer — because so many other places in New York have a reason for their naming. But that’s not true here.'”
The Eiffel Tower’s Journey From Loathed To Loved
“The tower is so beloved that few today remember the storm of vitriol, mockery and lawsuits provoked by its selection as the startling centerpiece of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. … Even as Eiffel was breaking ground by the Seine River in February 1887, 47 of France’s greatest names decried in a letter to Le Temps the ‘odious column of bolted metal.'”
The Berlin Wall: A Piece Of The Past Too Efficiently Erased?
“[A]s Germany prepares to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the wall’s collapse on Nov. 9, many Berliners wish they had left more of the structure intact as a memorial.” The director of the city’s tourism bureau put it this way: “One mistake was to take away too much of the wall. We did the job in a very German way — very organized — and we finished it off, almost completely.”
Little Kids, Candy And The Neural Circuitry Of Self-Control
“For decades, psychologists have focussed on raw intelligence as the most important variable when it comes to predicting success in life. [Columbia University professor of psychology Walter] Mischel argues that intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even the smartest kids still need to do their homework.”
Missing Poet Presumed To Have Fallen To His Death
“Award-winning poet Craig Arnold, who went missing in Japan in late April, is presumed to have died after a fall, his employer, the University of Wyoming, announced Friday. … The American search team that arrived tracked Arnold to the edge of ‘a high and dangerous cliff, and there is virtually no possibility he could have survived the fall,’ the release explained.”