The shop, currently in the lobby, will be relocated to the basement, so Aitken has called “for a broad shaft to be pierced through the museum’s Independence Avenue forecourt…. Aitken hopes his light-filled basement space will function as ‘a personal sanctuary, where you can get lost.’ This is hardly the model most museums use when considering their shops.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Dear TV Theme Music: What’s Become Of You?
“Even you must admit that you are not what you were. Anyone whose memory reaches back even as far as the mid-’90s, when the theme to ‘Friends’ gave the Rembrandts a brief career in real-world pop, knows that. Recall the effervescent Latin pop of ‘I Love Lucy,’ the dark march of the ‘Dragnet’ theme, the hopeful soft-rock of the theme to ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show.'”
Site Lists 21K Works Of ‘Degenerate’ Art Seized By Nazis
“The Web site, the result of eight years of research by art historians at [Berlin’s Free University], includes works by Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, Otto Dix, Marc Chagall, Max Beckmann, Wassily Kandinsky and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. It gives details of the museums they were seized from and their current location, in cases where it is known and where the work wasn’t destroyed.”
Torn Picasso, Repaired, Goes Back On The Wall At The Met
“It’s virtually impossible to tell that on a January afternoon a woman taking an adult education class accidentally fell into the canvas, causing a six-inch vertical tear along the lower right-hand corner.” Now, however, “The Actor” is protected behind plexiglass.
Contest For Oxford Professor Of Poetry Begins In Earnest
“The university announced that so far there had been three nominations for the job: Geoffrey Hill, Paula Claire and Seán Haldane. This year’s election is a re-run after a debacle last year, when first Derek Walcott pulled out over sexual harassment allegations, and then Ruth Padel withdrew,” having “told journalists about the accusations.”
Canada Gives Ottawa Museums $15M In One-Time Funding
“Marc Mayer, director of National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, called the funding ‘a huge relief’ and an example of the Conservative government being ‘responsive to our needs in the short term.'” But what of the long term?
Prop Firearm ‘Seriously’ Injures RSC Actor, Delays Opening
“Darrell D’Silva sustained the injury to his hand during technical rehearsals. The RSC’s artistic director Michael Boyd said the actor had undergone surgery and returned to work with his hand in a sling.”
Survey: Foundation Funding Fell 8.4% In 2009
It was “the largest decline ever tracked by the Foundation Center. Grants made by the nation’s 75,000 foundations fell to $42.9 billion from $46.8 billion in 2008. The drop is a huge contrast to giving in 2008, when grants actually rose by about 2.8% over 2007 levels.”
For Shame, Georgia
“Having lived in Atlanta for 14 years until returning home to Manhattan three years ago, I can attest to Georgia’s guiding Red Neck mentality: ‘the arts promote imagination and creativity and are therefore bad for our children, especially with all those homosexuals in high places.'”
When 3-D TV Is A Religious Experience
“Boston-based CatholicTV has gone 3-D. … But — and here’s the trouble — there’s no storytelling. CatholicTV’s website is mostly travelogue showing off architectural marvels such as St. Peter’s Square and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.”