The Penn Museum (officially, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology) has theoretically been available to visitors since its opening in 1887, but it was actually used almost entirely by researchers until 2012. Since then, attendance has risen to about 180,000 a year — a figure which should leap dramatically starting this weekend, when 10,000 square feet of new exhibition space will house hundreds of items never before shown to the public. – The New York Times
Author: Matthew Westphal
Arts Institutions In Venice Reeling From Record Flooding
Salt water from the lagoon covered 80% of the city, reaching levels of up to six feet, the second-highest since records began about 90 years ago. The Biennale, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, La Fenice opera house, and St. Mark’s Basilica are among the many museums, archives, and other institutions that have temporarily closed while trying to contain the damage. – Deutsche Welle
Desperate Rio Art Museum Gives Layoff Notice To All Staff, May Shut Down
The Museu de Arte do Rio, opened in 2013 in the Praça Mauá on the city’s waterfront, has not been receiving its scheduled payments from the Rio de Janeiro prefecture government; all 126 employees, who haven’t been paid since September, received the legally required advance notice for layoffs this week. – The Art Newspaper
The ‘Mattress Monster’: Yvonne Rainer Recreates One Of Her Oddest Avant-Garde Dances From The 1960s
“It could be a dream or a nightmare. You’re 84. What would it be like to have an artistic conversation with your 30-year-old self? [Rainer] is finding that out as she reconstructs, in collaboration with Emily Coates, Parts of Some Sextets, which she created in 1965 for 10 performers and 12 mattresses. A complex braiding of movement, text and, yes, mattresses, it builds an invigorating labyrinth of choreographic activity.” – The New York Times
Jayne Wrightsman’s “No Loans” Edict for Gifts & Bequests to the Metropolitan Museum
Today’s announcement by the Metropolitan Museum about the “exceptional bequest” by trustee emerita Jayne Wrightsman (who died in April at 99) omits mention of a crucial way in which this windfall of some 375 objects, along with “substantial [but unspecified] additional funding,” is indeed “exceptional”. – Lee Rosenbaum
Amos Oz And The Challenges Of A Language Brought Back From The Dead
“To Oz, writing in Hebrew was like sculpting in solid rock and crusted sand at the same time. With one foot in the Hebrew of the Bible and the other in the mélange of linguistic influences that made up the vernacular in a young country of immigrants, the language could make a speaker prone to making missteps of word choice: ‘you don’t want to bring in Isaiah and Psalms and Mount Sinai’ to describe an argument over pocket change.” – The New Yorker
New Documentary Play Takes On Human Trafficking
“At a table reading of Live Bodies for Sale, a new docudrama about human trafficking in Northeast Ohio, playwright Christopher Johnston addresses the assembled cast and crew. ‘Everybody in this play is real,’ he says. ‘The characters, their monologues, are all taken from what these people have said to me in the time I’ve spent with them. We want to tell their stories.'” – American Theatre
How Do Movies Get Edited For Airlines To Show In-Flight? ‘Recklessly’
“As one editor who has been doing this type of work for 30 years and worked for nearly every major studio in Hollywood tells InsideHook, ‘The studios, outside of the creative groups, are full of people who have zero interest in or understanding of the creative process. They are pushing widgets. … Compromises are made in the name of cost. ‘The scene has nudity AND a key story element? Cut it!”” – InsideHook
Jan Erik Kongshaug, Revered Recording Engineer, Dead At 75
“[He] helped sculpt the rich and quietly splendorous sound of ECM Records, an influential label that has produced timeless jazz and contemporary classical recordings.” – The New York Times
Are Embassy Officials Using Diplomatic Immunity As Cover For Stealing Art?
Yes, scofflaw diplomats have been a problem for ages (ask any New Yorker who’s been clipped, or worse, by a UN delegate’s car), but over the past few years, artworks have been disappearing from certain embassies in Cairo, DC, Moscow, and other capitals. Some appear to have vanished without trace, and others have turned up at auction houses. – The Art Newspaper