“The winners for the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest” for worst opening sentence to a hypothetical novel “have been announced … The winner this year was Cathy Bryant of Manchester, England, who came up with this beautiful dud: ‘As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, …'”
Author: Matthew Westphal
LA’s Margo Leavin Gallery To Close After 42 Years
“The gallery’s reputation for championing serious artists with integrity made it a respected player in the years that Los Angeles art was gaining international prominence. Among the artists the gallery has shown are John Baldessari, Alexis Smith, William Leavitt, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Dowell and Lynda Benglis.”
Fitzwilliam Museum Appeals For £3.9m To Buy Poussin Masterpiece
“The painting, Extreme Unction, is from a famous series depicting the seven sacraments by the 17th-century French artist, which has been in an aristocratic English collection for more than two centuries, but has been on and off the market in recent years.”
Carol Ann Duffy Writing Revisionist Rapunzel Ballet
“The poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, is writing her first ballet, based on the classic fairytale of Rapunzel – and has promised to put back the darkness and terror left out of recent sugary visions of pink princesses with long golden hair.”
Challenge To CBC’s Online Music Portal Tossed Out
“The federal broadcast regulator has ruled in favour of the CBC in a challenge by a private broadcaster against the launch of internet portal CBC Music. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission ruled that the CBC does not have an undue preference and does not disadvantage other new media players in launching the free internet service.”
Renovation Of Melbourne’s Hamer Hall An Acoustical ‘Miracle’
“From the circle, the change was immediately apparent. Acoustic consultants Marshall Day and Lawrence Kirkegaard have managed a minor engineering miracle. Old Hamer Hall was the acoustic equivalent of a neglected Renaissance painting, its colour and detail obscured under grimy varnish. New Hamer Hall restores clarity and vitality to the symphonic sound.”
Von Freeman, 88, Giant Of Chicago Jazz
“Revered around the world but never a major star, worshipped by critics and connoisseurs but perpetually strapped for cash, the towering Chicago tenor saxophonist Von Freeman practically went out of his way to avoid commercial success.”
Despite Mixed Reviews, Public Theater Considers Taking Into The Woods To Broadway
“Theater producers are pursuing a possible Broadway transfer of the Central Park staging of [Sondheim’s] Into The Woods in spite of several negative reviews last week that would usually put a damper on such plans.”
Struggle Over Early Richard Serra Work In Ontario
The then-little-known sculptor completed the concrete-and-earthwork installation Shift in 1972 on what was, at the time, farmland 50 km north of Toronto. A developer now owns that land and would like to turn it into and exurb; though he insists he won’t harm the piece, he is appealing the protected heritage status conferred on Shift in 2009.
Manhattan’s Rainbow Room, Trapped In A Tug-Of-War
“It was probably the most cinematically perfect space in New York. It had that stylishly streamlined modern look – elegant crystal chandeliers here, a revolving dance floor there, long velvety draperies beyond. … Now, as it has for more than three years, the Rainbow Room sits empty on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the victim of a fight between a powerful landlord and a famous restaurant operator.”