“[A] rift has formed between the orchestra’s upper management and its players on allegations that company leaders haven’t been honest about the circumstances behind the longtime conductor’s departure. While the company says [Jorge] Mester quit, his representative says he was fired. … One symphony musician was reportedly let go for expressing outrage at Mester’s departure.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
On The Walls Of A Mosque, Painted Scenes Of Battle
“Painting living creatures, and especially humans, is extremely controversial in Islam and banned completely by some sects.” But at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, “worshipers gaze up at something that was illegal under Saddam Hussein’s rule and even now could put the mosque at risk: paintings” depicting the 7th-century battle that led to the Shiite-Sunni split.
To Kill A Mockingbird Turns 50, With Fanfare
“Its publisher, HarperCollins, is trying to tap into what appears to be a near-endless reserve of affection for the book by helping to organize parties, movie screenings, readings and scholarly discussions.” Festivities in Harper Lee’s hometown “are not expected to attract an appearance by the mysterious Ms. Lee, who is 84 and still living quietly in Alabama after never publishing another book.”
Broadway To Dim Lights Tonight In Honor Of Kuchwara
“Liza Minnelli and Edward Albee also issued statements. Minnelli remembered [longtime AP theatre critic Michael] Kuchwara as an artistic and thoughtful man who took pride in his work. Albee called the loss of such ‘an intelligent and perceptive critic … an especially sad note.'”
Out Of Anger, A New Award For Women In Theatre Is Born
Sparked by an e-mail from Theresa Rebeck, the Lillian Hellman Awards for Outstanding Achievement by Women in the Theater — a.k.a. the Lilly Awards — came into existence this month after “not only the Tonys but several of the other season-end awards orgs honoring Broadway and Off Broadway had once again cited very few female theater artists … for their contributions.”
A Performance Artist On Re-Performing Abramovic
“Imponderabilia [in which two nude performers stand flanking a narrow doorway] is not as still as the other pieces. When people walk through, you’re constantly readjusting, a little bit here, a little bit there. The intent or the energy or the aggressiveness of the audience becomes very visible.”
Arthur C. Danto On Sitting Opposite Marina Abramovic
“Marina leaned her head back at a slight angle, and to one side. She fixed her eyes on me without — so it seemed — any longer seeing me. It was as if she had entered another state. I was outside her gaze. Her face took on the translucence of fine porcelain. She was luminous without being incandescent.”
Advice To Young Critics
“If you want to write, the best thing is to read whatever you can get your hands on – novels, poetry, literary as well as art criticism, theory, love letters, the backs of cornflakes packets, the writings of ferocious lunatics and great stylists alike.”
Report: Four-Color Kids’ Books Are Anything But Green
Rainforest Action Network “tested a random sampling of 30 books from the top 10 U.S. children’s publishers, and found that 18 of them contained fibers linked either to tropical hardwoods or acacia pulp wood plantations in Indonesia. Paper and pulp companies raze natural rainforests … to create the plantations.”
One Century On, Mark Twain’s Memoirs To Be Published
The author “left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century. … [I]n November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography.”