“A university student’s satirical musical about Princess Diana has been banned from opening to the public over fears of causing offence. The University of Brighton has decided the controversial performance should be open to invited guests only.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Oslo Opens $800M Opera House
“An $800 million opera house that seems to slope like an iceberg into the Oslo fjord opens tomorrow. The Carrara-marble-clad opera house — Norway’s largest cultural building in seven centuries — aims to revive the industrial waterfront and showcase the country’s oil wealth.”
Collectors To Give 50 Museums 50 Works Apiece
“Herbert Vogel, an 82-year-old retired postal clerk, and his wife, Dorothy, 72, a former librarian, spent about 45 years and their life savings collecting Minimalist, Conceptual and post-1960s art. In 1992 the couple pledged more than 2,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Now, having amassed more art than could be exhibited in most museums, they will distribute 2,500 more pieces to institutions across the country.”
Newseum Design Reflects Anxieties Of Newspaper Biz
“How many mediocre buildings can one city absorb? And what if these buildings are meant to affirm our highest values? Those questions come to mind as I ponder the Newseum, the latest reason to lament the state of contemporary architecture in this city. Rising on a prominent site along Pennsylvania Avenue, it joins a spate of new memorials and museums that have been reshaping the historic center of Washington….”
Have Summer Music Fests Passed The Saturation Point?
“In a slumping music business,” summer festivals “pack a box office punch: the top five American festivals generated a combined $60 million in ticket sales last year, according to Billboard magazine’s estimates. At least four new festivals will make their debuts this summer, raising the total to more than a dozen. Various concert promoters are already warning of the dangers of oversaturation, and point to the clutch of stars headlining multiple festivals.”
Public Theater Exec. Director To Step Down
“Mara Manus, who led the Public Theater out of the red and through nearly six years of steady financial growth, has decided to step down as the organization’s executive director. … Ms. Manus, 49, who notified the theater’s trustees of her decision at a board meeting on Thursday, will serve out the term of her contract, which ends in August.”
MoMA’s Most Intimate Exhibition Space: The Bathroom
“There are several reasons you might want to stage an unauthorized group exhibition inside the fifth-floor restrooms at the Museum of Modern Art: to attract attention, to poke a little fun at a powerful institution, to make a satirical point about the high-dollar commercial art world, to invite your friends to watch you pull off a good goofball stunt.” Such a show last week was, of course, “intended not so much for the fleeting moment as it was for the Web. “
LA Weekly Fires Alan Rich, Ends Classical Coverage
“Alan Rich, among the most highly regarded music critics in the U.S., has been let go from LA Weekly. The newspaper, which will discontinue regular classical music coverage, is among the 16 outlets owned by Village Voice Media, which earlier this month ‘laid off’ the staff film and dance critics from its flagship, The Village Voice.”
Bulgarian Crime Novelist ‘Murdered By His Characters’
“Bulgaria’s Georgi Stoev, the author of crime stories who died after he was shot in the head in downtown Sofia, feared for his life because of the books he wrote, publisher Nedyalko Nedyalkov said. ‘Georgi was murdered by his characters,’ Nedyalkov declared Tuesday in an interview for Nova Television.”
Hockney’s Tate Painting Is A Thing Of Beauty
“David Hockney’s gift of the most ambitious of his recent landscape paintings to the Tate proves once and for all what a great national treasure this man is. … Hockney’s big paintings of woodlands in the changing seasons have a bounce that’s totally different from anything else in the entire history of British landscape art.”