At the center of the mess is a 28-year-old Chinese businessman who allegedly bought the Bacon with borrowed money that was never repaid and refused to honor his guarantee for the Richter when it failed to sell at auction.
Author: Matthew Westphal
What Ever Happened To The Librettist Of ‘Nixon In China’ And ‘The Death Of Klinghoffer’?
In the wake of the fame (or notoriety) of those two founding works of the genre now called “CNN opera,” composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars went on to the heights of the opera world. Yet librettist Alice Goodman didn’t rise along with them; instead, she moved to Britain and became an Anglican priest. Thomas May catches up with her. (Notably, both Adams and Sellars, whose collaboration with Goodman ended in long-lasting acrimony, have very warm words for her here.)
A New ‘Anna Karenina’ Coming From Joffrey And Australian Ballet
“The partnership will team the Russian composer Ilya Demutsky, who has been commissioned to compose a new score, with the Russian choreographer Yuri Possokhov. A former Bolshoi dancer, Possokhov currently is choreographer in residence at the San Francisco Ballet.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.23.17
Storm Brewing
The fact that in many places more than the lion’s share of public arts funding goes to organizations focused on the cultural tradition of upper class European whites is a center that will not hold. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-08-22
Voyeurism At The Balenciaga Exhibition
Summer has simply sped by and I haven’t even really gone on vacation yet (that’s coming up at the end of September). … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-08-23
John Abercrombie And Bea Wain, RIP
John Abercrombie, a guitarist of stylistic flexibility and uncompromising musical vision, died today in a hospital in New York’s Hudson River Valley. He was 72. … Bea Wain, who achieved popularity in the late 1930s when she sang with Larry Clinton’s band, died today in Los Angeles. She was 100. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-08-23
The Beet Goes On: Vegetable Orchestra Takes Root On New York’s Long Island
Inspired by the venerable Viennese Vegetable Orchestra, Dale Stuckenbruck created the Long Island Vegetable Orchestra. They make snake gourds into saxophones, butternut squash into horns, broccoli into flutes, and long orange root vegetables into, yes, “carronets.” “Over the years, [the LIVO] has performed at schools, galleries, libraries and at an environmental conference in Geneva. It even appeared in a film.” (includes video)
Juha, For 1,200 Years The Hero Of The Arab World’s Favorite Jokes
“[The] wise old fool, [with] his long-suffering donkey … has been a part of local culture for centuries – and has proved useful to Arab jokers and satirists right up until the modern day.”
The ‘Voice Of Choice’ For Audiobooks
“Mr. Guidall is the undisputed king of audiobooks: more than 1,300 so far, with a stack of new prospects beside his bed awaiting his attention. … He’s a bit disdainful of some of his competition in the audiobook world. ‘They’re just reading out loud,’ he said. ‘They don’t have an emotional underpinning. There’s a rhythm to speech in terms of what’s implied. If it’s raining in the book, there’s got to be something about the voice that evokes the rain.'”
University Of Utah Introduces Its New MFA In Ballet
“This fall, the University of Utah’s School of Dance welcomes the first class of candidates to its newly reinstated Master of Fine Arts in Ballet program, currently the only ballet-specific MFA in the country.”
Spectacle Of Hate: What We Can Learn From White Supremacists’ Long And Careful Cultivation Of Their Own Aesthetic
“The alt-right’s Tiki-torch, khaki-pants parade on Friday night has birthed many a ‘Hitler luau’ joke.” Yet, explains Rebecca Onion, white supremacist groups in the US, especially the two incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan, have a long history of deliberately making their physical appearance silly and using that silliness to help them get away with mayhem and murder.
Web Journalism’s ‘Pivot To Video’ Is Not – **Not** – Because Of Audience Demand
In a much-discussed Twitter thread, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reminds us that online news consumers, including Millennials, prefer their news in print (otherwise, why would so many sites resort to autoplay?) and explains why media company after media company is ignoring that preference (and laying off countless journalists in the process).