“Just weeks before the opening of the Barnes Foundation’s new museum in downtown Philadelphia, the institution’s general counsel Brett Miller has died. His body was found this weekend at his home, a spokesman for the museum has confirmed.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
English National Opera Moves Partly Back Toward Resident Company Model
“From next season, this group of a dozen of the best of our younger singers – all British or British-trained – will become a sort of core resource for ENO, each of them assigned a bespokely tailored [sic] programme of roles over two or three seasons.”
Leonard Cohen’s Former Manager Convicted Of Harassment
“A Los Angeles County jury Thursday found the former business and personal manager of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen guilty of violating restraining orders, making harassing phone calls and sending thousands of harassing emails” following her firing by Cohen in 2004 for embezzlement.
Pulitzer Prize For Drama To Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Water By The Spoonful
The play, which premiered at Hartford Stage Company in October, depicts “a wounded Hispanic soldier returning to his Philadelphia neighborhood after serving in Iraq … as family matters scuttle his grand plans and feed his issues of guilt, anger and dependency.”
Mark Rylance To Premiere HisOwn New Play At Guthrie
“Mark Rylance has cribbed from the work of Louis Jenkins long enough. Having twice recited compositions by Mr. Jenkins, the mischievous poet of Duluth, Minn., in lieu of more traditional acceptance speeches at the Tony Awards, Mr. Rylance will give him proper credit on a new play they have written together and which will make its debut at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis next year.”
Re-Thinking What Makes Art ‘Authentic,’ As A New York Critic Visits Mali
Holland Cotter: “In the West we have a particular definition of authenticity and a mania for it as a standard for art, especially art that we envision as elemental, unmodern, unspoiled. We gauge genuineness in terms of age, rarity, uniqueness, history of use, motives for creation. But in Africa, as often as not, authentic is simply what works, socially and spiritually: for example, the way each Dogon tourist dance keeps a larger dance, and Dogon identity, alive.”
Benjamin Millepied’s New L.A. Dance Project Will Have No L.A. Dancers
The choreographer “divulged that the organization will feature a total of seven dancers, none of whom is from L.A. … ‘It would’ve been my wish’ to hire local dancers, Millepied said. But he said he was looking for dancers of a certain quality and caliber, and ‘most people that great usually have jobs’.”
Designer/Developer Builds New Buenos Aires Arts District ‘From Scratch’
Fashion designer-turned-real estate magnate Alan Faena is creating “a sort of Shoreditch-by-the-River-Plate for culture-starved Argentines” in the waterfront neighborhood of Puerto Madero. The district already has a new visual art center; there are plans for a hotel by Philippe Starck, a residential complex designed by Norman Foster, and “parks, cultural centres and an artist residency.”
A Cardboard Cathedral For Quake-Ravaged Christchurch, NZ
“Shigeru Ban’s £2.7 million temporary replacement – known as the Transitional Cathedral – has a lifespan of between 20 and 30 years, is 25-metres tall and constructed from cardboard tubes on a timber and steel A-frame.” Construction should be completed by December.
Engineers Argue That Christchurch’s Original Cathedral Can Be Saved
“A prominent group of engineers say it is ‘technically feasible’ to restore the Christ Church Cathedral” – badly damaged in last year’s earthquakes – “and have launched a 100-signature petition to halt the demolition.” City officials had determined that the late-19th-century structure was too badly damaged to be safe, and the local Anglican Diocese says that reconstruction to current codes would be too costly.