“Cornelius Gurlitt, the German man who had been hiding more than 1,000 works of art – some believed to have been looted during World War II – has reached an agreement with German officials regarding his secret stash.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Now It Begins: Competing Claims to Paintings From Gurlitt’s Trove
“Lawyers for Cornelius Gurlitt, an octogenarian collector of art plundered by the Nazis, said Monday that a rival claim had been filed for a well-known Matisse painting” – Seated Woman/Woman Sitting in Armchair – “delaying plans to return the picture to descendants of the French art dealer Paul Rosenberg.”
Sound and Fury Begin Contract Negotiations at Met Opera
“The latest labor talks at the Met have gotten off to their most contentious start in decades, replete with colorfully threatening emails and emotions running nearly as high offstage as on.”
Paralyzed by Pluralism? Millennials: We’re Not Apathetic, We’re Undecided!
Zachary Fine: “Unlike those adults who encountered pluralism with their beliefs close at hand, we entered the world when truth-claims and qualitative judgments were already on trial and seemingly interchangeable. As a result, we continue to struggle when it comes to decisively avowing our most basic convictions.”
Greed Is Good: A 300-Year History of a Dangerous Idea
“We sometimes forget that the pursuit of commercial self-interest was largely reviled until just a few centuries ago. ‘A man who is a merchant can seldom if ever please God,’ St. Jerome said … It was not until the mischievous moralist Bernard Mandeville that someone attempted to gloss greed as anything other than a shameful motive.”
A Critic Revisits the Bolshoi After 30 Years
Alastair Macaulay: “The Russian nation and its capital city have greatly changed; Russia’s dealings with the West – and its presentation of its own history – have been transformed; and the Bolshoi Theater itself has been completely renovated and partly rebuilt … [and] visually, in its auditorium and its public spaces, [it] may well now be the world’s most splendid theater.”
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet Names New Artistic Director
It’s a tough job that Benoit Swan-Pouffer left behind about a year ago – “running a well-funded, New York-based operation with an extensive repertory of work by big-name choreographers”. But the company’s ballet mistress is ready to take it on.
Austrian Gov’t Declines to Bail Out Bankrupt Businessman by Buying His Art Collection
Karlheinz Essl “had offered to sell his 7,000-piece collection, most of which is housed in the Essl Museum near Vienna, to raise money to inject into his struggling DIY store chain bauMax.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.07.14
The Allure Of The New
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-04-07
BlogBack: David Ross Argues Against Deaccession Legislation
AJBlog: CultureGrrl | Published 2014-04-07
Visiting soloist hits the town with free pop-ups
AJBlog: Slipped Disc | Published 2014-04-07
From Julia Villagra: Wooing my peers (1)
AJBlog: Sandow | Published 2014-04-07
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Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum Gets $30 Million From Boeing
The museum, one of Washington’s top tourist attractions, “will use the money to renovate its main exhibition space that serves as home to such icons of aviation as the Wright Brothers’ airplane and Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.”