“The Museum of Modern Art has announced one of the largest monetary gifts in its history, a $40 million unrestricted donation from the Chicago hedge-fund billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin, whose name will now adorn one of the museum’s best-known buildings, the 1964 black steel-and-glass East Wing, designed by Philip Johnson.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Misty Copeland’s Masterclass In Her SoCal Hometown Becomes A Love Fest
“The crowd of about 200 huddled in the parking lot of San Pedro City Ballet, ensconced in fog and drizzle. Restless and excited, they might have been awaiting the arrival of a rock legend. … Neighbors crouched on the roof of a small bungalow next door to get a glimpse of the action. When at last a gray SUV rolled up, smartphones and tablets shot into the air and the chanting began: ‘Misty, Misty, Misty.'”
How Rock-Paper-Scissors Became A Sport, Complete With World Champions And Professional Players
It started, as so many cool things do, in Canada, with two brothers who liked to play the game and trash-talk in their garage. “At its peak in the mid-aughts, the World Rock Paper Scissors Society was holding championships complete with black-and-white-shirted referees. They had corporate sponsorships from Microsoft and Yahoo! and a pot of $10,000 for the winner. The 2007 championships were televised on ESPN and Fox Sports.”
Mexico’s Literary Prankster Goes To War With The World’s Biggest Spanish-Language Publisher
“For several months this year, Mario Bellatin, one of Mexico’s best-known novelists, waged a quixotic war against Grupo Planeta, the largest publishing group in the Spanish-language world. An eccentric public figure who wears a variety of striking, artist-designed prostheses in lieu of his missing right forearm, Bellatin had an unwavering demand: that Planeta unpublish his magnum opus, Salón de Belleza.”
A Netflix For Rock Concert Tickets – Can It Work?
“Jukely is a new live-music-subscription app, the so-called ‘Netflix of Concerts.’ For $25/month, you can go to as many shows as you like (with some strings attached, of course, more on that later), reducing the friction and longterm planning normally associated with going to concerts. … It almost seems like too good of a deal, which raises the question: is it too good to be true? Can it last? And how does it work?”
Inside The Making Of Season Two Of ‘Serial’
“It was the day after the first episode of the second season of the Serial podcast finally kerplunked into view – along with its subject, a soldier named Bowe Bergdahl, who in 2009 walked off his post in Afghanistan and was captured by the Taliban … – and the show’s host, Sarah Koenig, who doesn’t sound quite like her deliberately paced radio self in person, was a little unnerved by all the attention.”
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Needing More Cancer Treatment, Withdraws From ‘Trovatore’ At The Met
The Russian baritone, who announced last June that he has a brain tumor, will be returning to London for treatment and will miss four scheduled performances of the Verdi opera in February.
Crisis In The Humanities? What Crisis?
“In the English-speaking world, over the past half-century, the proportion of students studying humanities at university has hardly changed. … And, very importantly, the rapid expansion of higher education in the world over the past couple of generations means that, in absolute numbers, more people are studying the humanities than ever before. The question is why humanists have not been able or willing to recognise their own sustained success.”
Who’s The Next Bob Fosse? Broadway Dance Weigh In
Five of the pros involved in Dance Machine, the company dedicated to preserving the choreography of great Broadway musicals, make their predictions – and one or two names keep coming up.
The Naughty Stuff They Found When They Cleaned A Couple Of Old Dutch Master Paintings
“Recently, a painting in the British Royal Collection was cleaned, revealing the younger van Ostade’s own lowbrow humor in the figure of a man urinating in front of a dog. Now the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena is sharing a similar discovery: Its newly restored 1641 Isack van Ostade painting of peasants butchering a pig shows a man defecating in the corner.”