“After joining James Sewell Ballet as executive director just nine months ago, Tony Caparelli has left the Minneapolis-based dance company. His last day was Oct. 3.” The search for a successor is already in progress.
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Hirst Tops ArtReview Power List; MoMA’s Halbreich Is No. 3
“Damien Hirst is the most powerful figure in the world of contemporary art, according to magazine ArtReview. Hirst, who topped the list in 2005, retakes the top spot after a recent sale of his work which made £111m. … Kathy Halbreich, an associate director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, becomes the first woman to make the top 10 in her own right.”
Booker Odds Favor Sebastian Barry
“Irish writer Sebastian Barry is the bookmakers’ favourite to win the Man Booker Prize for The Secret Scripture. The author is ahead of shortlisted rivals Steve Toltz, Linda Grant and Amitav Ghosh.”
An Ideal Time For The Pay-What-You-Can Performance
“The stock market is in turmoil. Unemployment is climbing. Banks are closing. Retail sales are slowing. TV analysts are sounding like so many Chicken Littles. What we have here is … a marketing opportunity.”
How Much Can Culture Do To Save A City?
“Culture was supposed to be Naples’s salvation, as so often is the hope in former industrial centers. The steelworks that drove much of the local economy had mostly closed by the end of the 1970s. The earthquake in 1980 compounded the misery. Then things looked up, for a while.” But the change wasn’t permanent. “The big question is how much culture ever does to turn around a struggling city. “
At Princeton, A Gehry Library That’s Light On Books
“Saw-toothed glass dances in a conga line above leaping arcs of metal roof at the Peter B. Lewis Science Library at Princeton University. The signature hand of Frank Gehry is unmistakable. But where are the books? … The New Jersey university, with Gehry Partners LLC, has embarked on a difficult task: to reinvent the library for an age when information largely takes on electronic rather than print form.”
Booker Shortlist Has That Familiar Feeling
“As literary horse races go, the Man Booker Prize for Fiction is notoriously hard to handicap. … Yet the biggest question hanging over this year’s contest is more basic: Does anyone really care who wins?” Hephzibah Anderson writes. “The judges seem perversely bent on finding the best Booker-style novel rather than the best novel of the year.”
To Soothe Sellers, London Auction Houses Give Guarantees
“Auction houses are guaranteeing prices of some top works in this week’s London art sales, which coincide with the worst financial crisis since the Depression. The sales … have a total minimum price tag of 107 million pounds ($187 million). Sotheby’s has more than half of its total lot value guaranteed; Christie’s International guarantees 38 percent, meaning both promise fixed prices to vendors whether the art sells or not.”
Faculty Union Forming At Manhattan School of Music?
Manhattan School of Music teachers have begun organizing to form a union, arguing that “they are poorly paid, lack job security and have little say in how the school is run and no recourse for complaints. … The struggle has injected a dose of real-world politics into the melody-basted halls of the Manhattan School, one of the city’s top conservatories and the producer of legions of highly skilled singers, pianists, fiddlers and other performers.”
Accused, Milan Kundera Says He Wasn’t An Informer
“In a sensational plot line that could have come straight from the pages of one of his own novels, the acclaimed Czech-born writer Milan Kundera has been accused of denouncing a Western spy to the Communist secret police when he was a student. … The reclusive Kundera, now 79, categorically denied the accusation yesterday, accusing [a Czech state] institute and [the] media of ‘the assassination of an author’.”