“Adam Lerner has been named director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Lerner was previously director of the Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar in Lakewood, Colorado, which will merge with the Denver museum as part of the hiring.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Chloë Moss Wins Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
“British playwright Chloë Moss has won the 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for This Wide Night. A sympathetic portrait of imprisoned women, their friendships formed in confinement and their struggles to start life anew upon release, the play premiered at London’s Soho Theatre and toured regionally in the United Kingdom — including performances at four women’s prisons.”
Audience Head Count At Joe The Plumber Book Signing: 11
“Joe the Plumber (no longer a plumber; first name actually Samuel) popped into our town yesterday evening to sell his new book and to remind people that he’s still a plain and simple guy. Mission accomplished, on at least one of his missions. About 11 people wandered into the rows of seats set up hopefully in the basement of a downtown Border’s bookstore to hear Joe speak.”
Joseph O’Neill Wins PEN/Faulkner Award For Netherland
“Joseph O’Neill has won the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for his widely praised novel ‘Netherland.’ Set in New York after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the book has drawn repeated comparisons to ‘The Great Gatsby’ while managing to overcome American readers’ indifference to cricket, the game around which much of its narrative is built.”
At Auction, YSL’s Was Highest-Grossing Private Collection
“The biggest auction ever held in Europe ended last night with Yves Saint Laurent’s two Qing bronzes as the star lots, after objections from the Chinese government and a legal challenge failed to halt their sale. Christie’s International’s six-session sale in the Art Nouveau exhibition hall of Paris’s Grand Palais raised a combined 374.4 million euros with fees ($477 million), beating estimates….” Dealers naturally hope this has positive implications for the market in general.
New York City Center Board Hard Hit By Madoff
“One of the largest venues regularly presenting dance and musicals, the 2,750-seat City Center has more Madoff investors on its board than any other major New York performing-arts group. Madoff himself was a director for at least a decade, until his arrest on Dec. 11, according to City Center tax returns. … The contracting economy and the Madoff investments could clip the wings of [City Center’s president,] one of the city’s cultural leaders.” NOTE: A spokesperson for New York City Center has said that the original renovation budget was $150 million (not $300 as stated by Bloomberg), and that the renovation plans were modified several months before the Madoff situation was revealed. City Center also says that plans for the renovation have not been affected by Madoff
China Plays Hardball After Christie’s Auctions Bronzes
“China said it will tighten control on Christie’s International’s activities in the nation, hours after the company auctioned a pair of Qing Dynasty bronzes in Paris, ignoring China’s calls to return the allegedly looted items. In a statement today, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, or SACH, ordered officials to scrutinize artifacts the London-based auction house imports and exports from China.”
Obama Proved Arts-Sensitive In His Chicago Pol Days
“Hopes are running high in the arts because all eyes and ears are on Barack Obama, and Obama’s eyes and ears seem to be attuned to the arts. But go back a little more than 10 years and you discover that Obama, an Illinois state senator at the time, was even then getting an earful from arts and cultural institutions — and apparently receiving their message loud and clear.”
California Students Get To Put Rent On After All
“After a flap that raised the ire of the gay community and ruffled feathers across the Newport Beach campus, drama students will be allowed to stage a production of ‘Rent,’ a musical about struggling artists in New York City.”
National Theatre’s Tom Morris Is Bristol Old Vic’s New A.D.
“National Theatre associate director Tom Morris has been appointed as the next artistic director of the troubled Bristol Old Vic as it gears up to full reopening over the next year. In the post, which has been vacant since May 2007 when Simon Reade resigned prior to the regional playhouse’s shock closure that August, Morris will be reunited with his former colleague Emma Stenning, who has been appointed as Bristol’s executive director.”