“The Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York will undergo a $64-million expansion that will add approximately 100,000 square feet of space to its facilities. The expansion, designed by architect Thomas Phifer and Partners, is expected to be completed in 2014.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Rosa Guy, 89, Admired Young-Adult Novelist
“[She was] known for her unflinchingly direct novels for young people about black life in urban America … She addressed subjects that had remained largely unexplored in fiction for teenagers when she began her career four decades ago.”
Stephen Hawking Says That The Universe Is Like An Escher Print
“The universe may have the same surreal geometry as some of art’s most mind-boggling images. That’s the upshot of a study by the world’s most famous living scientist, Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge.”
Australian Ballet To Get New Production HQ
“A new national production facility for the Australian Ballet will be built in Melbourne’s southwest following the announcement yesterday of a $2 million donation from the federal government.”
Thomas Heatherwick On Redesigning London’s Red Double-Decker Buses
“Heatherwick describes why a second staircase and third door can help the busses stick to a timetable and reveals the best way to disguise traces of kebab smeared on a seat.”
Virginia’s Richmond Ballet Makes Its First Foreign Tour
“From June 15 through 19, this troupe of modest size and queenly ambitions will be making the first overseas trip in its 54-year history. For performances [in greater London], the 13-member company is bringing four works created in America and new to British audiences.”
Moscow Metro’s Mosaics Star In Performance Art Piece
In a 2am show at the Mayakovskaya station – comissioned by Stalin and opened in 1938 – “[the] stars of the evening were the mosaics in the soaring domes of the platform – a series of ovals of Soviet landmarks and heroes from the Kremlin and air force bombers to athletes and workers – the work of Alexander Deineka, one of the masters of Soviet modernism.”
Daria Klimentova May Be Running A Ballet Company Soon
The English National Ballet star, about to turn 41, “and her husband (an older English theatrical lighting expert) have a second home in Prague, where she runs a season of international ballet classes each summer. She’s turned down the job as director of the Czech National Ballet three times ‘because I was still young and wanted to dance’.”
John Adams On The Danger In Staging Nixon In China
“[The opera] lives right on the cusp between satire and the maudlin on the one hand, and something that’s quite visionary and, I think, quite genuinely and uniquely American. And I think the danger in staging it is to demean the characters; Nixon is so easily ridiculed.”
A Brief History Of Nothing (Or The Lack Thereof)
“We may start with Aristotle, who decided that ‘Nature abhors a vacuum’ and thus declared that there was no such thing as nothing, understood as absolute emptiness.” Theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser continues with Descartes (who agreed) and Newton (who completely disagreed) and on to Einstein and Heisenberg (of Uncertainty Principle fame).