“More than 10,000 items in the Walters Art Museum … can now be viewed and downloaded online for free, without copyright restrictions. The museum’s collection is ‘basically public domain,’ said [the Walters’s] manager of web and social media.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Why Is War Horse Such A Box-Office Hit?
Sure, it’s the genius of the horse puppets and the spectacle of the onstage tank. But Michael Billington suggests that there’s more: “I suspect it’s also to do with the way it taps into folk memories of the first world war” as well as the “potent myth … of a human’s passionate love for a horse.”
LACMA and Motion Picture Academy To Open Film Museum
“[The] city known as the epicenter of the move industry has always lacked a large-scale museum dedicated to the art of filmmaking. Now that absence is poised to be filled thanks to a new partnership announced late Tuesday between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.”
San Antonio Symphony Will Keep Playing Without Contract
“San Antonio Symphony musicians and management have agreed to start the 2011-12 performance season while continuing to negotiate a contract, the two sides said Tuesday.”
One Of Spain’s Shiny New Starchitect Museums Closes Its Doors
“A dazzling €44 million (£37.7m) arts centre” – designed by Oscar Niemeyer – “in the northern Spanish city of Avilés is to close [for at least 60 days] after six months amid political squabbling as the country asks itself what to do with a glut of glittering new museums.”
New Latino Cultural Center In Los Angeles Is Reeling
La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, the “ambitious downtown center created to celebrate the role of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles culture and history opened with great fanfare six months ago, … is staggering.” Attendance is low; fundraising is slow; contractors aren’t getting paid; the staff has been halved and the CEO fired.
Why Sigourney Weaver Likes Playing Roles Originally Written For Men
“I actually prefer the purity of a part that’s written for a man, because I find that when it’s written for a woman – usually by a man – it will always have some stupid breakdown scene, or some stupid thing that would never really happen.”
Aristotle, Marx, Planet Of The Vampires, And Other Unlikely Stage Properties
Having recently seen an adaptation of Aristotle’s Poetics and a play consisting entirely of Eugene O’Neill’s stage directions – and remembering a musical version of Das Kapital and the Wooster Group’s penchant for mash-ups of classic drama and B-movies – Alexis Soloski asks readers to suggest other unlikely candidates for the stage.
LA’s Murals Plagued By Graffiti
“As Los Angeles’ graffiti problem escalates, the city’s reputation as the mural capital of the world is in jeopardy as its famous wall pieces are disappearing under a sea of spray paint. They are being targeted by vandals who flout the long accepted code that they are off limits for tagging.”
Southern California’s First Great Modern Painter (You Probably Don’t Know Of Him)
Christopher Knight on John McLaughlin: “He was mostly self-taught, but [his] unprecedented work marks the beginning of great postwar art in Los Angeles. … [His] paintings are pure, clean abstractions. Forget fractured space, tortured figures and portentous gloom.”