“On Monday, after two decades of resistance, France returned to New Zealand the mummified heads of 20 Maori warriors that have been held in French museums for more than two centuries.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Michael Christie, Having Taken Minnesota Job, To Leave Phoenix Symphony
Conductor Michael Christie, newly-appointed head of Minnesota Opera, will give up another of his jobs, music director of the Phoenix Symphony, at the end of next season.
American Folk Art Museum, Once Near Collapse, Now Stabilized
“The American Folk Art Museum can survive in a storefront on New York’s Upper West Side, its volunteer president said today, buoyed by more than $3.5 million in contributions and pledges since it sold its main building to the Museum of Modern Art.”
Bill T. Jones Dances John Cage
His latest work, Story/Time, is based on Cage’s 1958 piece Indeterminacies, “a series of one-minute spoken-word stories that was different each time it was performed and was eventually recorded as an album. Mr. Jones’s version puts him at a desk onstage, reading his own series of mostly autobiographical stories, as his troupe’s nine members surround him.”
Capturing Dancers In Flight: The 360 Degree Project
Ryan Enn Hughes places his subjects – members of the street dance crew Northbuck Krump and students at the National Ballet school of Canada – “inside a circle of 48 cameras, which are networked up to take a simultaneous image of what he calls a ‘peak’ moment of action – a jump, an arabesque, a slide.”
L.A. Opera Adopts Dynamic Ticket Pricing
“Los Angeles Opera is the latest arts group to adopt a dynamic ticket-pricing policy. The company will announce Wednesday new pricing programs for the 2012-13 season, including a new low ticket cost of $18 for every performance.”
Jaipur Literature Festival Grows Into One Of World’s Largest
The annual fete “began with ‘a few readings’ on the edge of a small arts event … This year, with Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra, Jamaica Kincaid, Lionel Shriver and Richard Dawkins among its lineup, organizers expect as many as 100,000 attendees to turn up in this arid Indian city.”
Italian Case Against 92-Year-Old Antiquities Dealer Thrown Out
“The trial of Robert E. Hecht Jr., the alleged mastermind of an international black market in ancient art, ended with no verdict this week when a three-judge panel in Rome found the time allotted for the trial had expired.”
We Have Lenin And Kim Jong Il, But Who’s The Great-Granddaddy Of All Embalmed Despots?
None other than Alexander the Great. His preserved body, hijacked by one of his generals, was displayed in a secular shrine just as Lenin’s and Kim’s corpses are now, and for the same purposes.
L.A. MoCA To Create Original Programming for YouTube
“Joining its hometown industry and betting on the success of YouTube’s new initiative to promote original content, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles announced that it would start an online video channel in July featuring news and talk-show programming, among other art-focused shows.”