“The Utica Symphony Orchestra could be back in the swing by the end of the year – at least for one concert. The financially strapped orchestra is staggering back on its feet after paying approximately $60,000 worth of debt … The symphony was forced to end its 2011 fall season early because of debts totaling near $100,000.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘Australia’s Dante’ – Peter Carey On Robert Hughes
“For God’s sake, this was the author of The Fatal Shore, his epic story of our country’s founding. He was the man who had shown us who we were, or what darkness we had to confront in order to grow up. He had grasped the cruelty of our birth and shoved it in our faces. Here, in this vast masterpiece, was the hell we were born into, and he would be our Dante.”
Eli Broad Holds Back Some Pledges To LA MoCA
“Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad hasn’t made scheduled payments to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles because the institution has $2.1 million in grants it hasn’t put toward exhibitions. … The missed payments come at a time when concerns over finances at the museum have resurfaced after four prominent artists quit MoCA’s board last month.”
Getting Stockhausen’s Operatic Behemoth Onto An Actual Stage
“The strings play in helicopters, the trumpeter’s on a trapeze, and a camel dances around while defecating planets.” Rock critic Alexis Petridis visits Birmingham to watch director Graham Vick grapple with Mittwoch aus Licht, the last of Stockhausen’s operas to get a complete performance.
Sarah Polley On The Nature Of Love
Says the writer/director of Away from Her and Take This Waltz, “We’re all kind of ugly in our relationships. I have a friend who thinks that you find someone who will take you and then you reveal yourself. … What’s sexy at the start of a relationship is how that person offers you the possibility of reinventing yourself. And then at some point you realise they probably won’t.”
The Town Saved By Shakespeare: Stratford, Ontario
Stratford’s Shakespeare Festival “is now one of Canada’s largest cultural institutions, doing at least a dozen shows each year on a $60 million budget. But in the early 1950s, Stratford was on the verge of becoming a ghost town. The town’s chief industry was repairing steam locomotives, a trade that was all but dead by the time hometown reporter Tom Patterson flew to England to plead with stage legend Tyrone Guthrie.”
Form Is Content, Example No. 9,563: On Fonts And Credibility
Errol Morris: “Here is my confession. My quiz wasn’t really a test of the optimism or pessimism of the reader. There was a hidden agenda. It was a test of the effect of fonts on truth. Or to be precise, the effect on credulity. Are there certain fonts that compel a belief that the sentences they are written in are true?”
Forget About Commissioning Public Art – Let’s Decommission Some!
“Undoubtedly, when work is commissioned, it comes with the highest hopes for its appeal, and longevity. But for those works that do not receive all the love, why is there no process for their removal? And I think we can take this line of thought further. Why not allow for the replacement or rotation of tired or ‘orphaned’ works, relocating sculptures to new public homes, where they might receive new attention and focus?”
A Brief History Of Synchronized Swimming, Starting With Benjamin Franklin
Yes, dear old Ben was evidently “America’s first stunt swimmer,” judging from a letter in which he describes performing feats for onlookers while swimming in the Thames. But the story really begins circa 1900 with a vaudevillian named Annette Kellerman. And then there was the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.
Texas Cites Of Mice And Men To Justify Execution; Steinbeck Heirs Cry Foul
“The mentally retarded protagonist of John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice And Men was drawn into controversy surrounding Tuesday’s execution of a Beaumont killer after the author’s son blasted a Texas court for mentioning the character in a guideline-setting death penalty ruling.”