“Art exhibitions without exhibits are nothing new. Nothing has been a recognised art form for half a century. But the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris can claim a cultural first this week: a retrospective exhibition of 51 years of exhibitions without exhibits by nine different artists. How can a museum retrospectively exhibit nothing? With great care. The 500-page catalogue costs €39 (£34).”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Flemming Flindt, Dancer And Choreographer, Dies At 72
“Flindt was educated at Copenhagen’s Royal Ballet School and was appointed a solo dancer at the age of 21. He then went on to begin an international dancing career with the Paris Opera Ballet and the London Festival Ballet, returning to head the Danish Royal Ballet from 1966 to 1978. In 1981 he went on to become the artistic director of the Dallas Ballet until 1988.”
Bristol Old Vic May Be On The Road To Recovery
“‘Suspension’ would be a decent title for describing the period of confusion and hiatus that followed the hasty and injudicious 2007 ousting of artistic director Simon Reade. […] Ambitious dreams about renovated buildings are all very well – but you need a strong and well-supported artistic director in place if they’re to come to meaningful fruition.” Such a director may just have been found.
Is England People Very Nice Offensive? Good!
“[W]henever I hear of any play causing protests, I rejoice. Offending the audience is part of the function of theatre, as is its ability to test the limits of freedom in general and free speech in particular. […] The play’s deliberately crude, Carry On-style of humour has also offended some… Vulgar raucousness is very much a part of the British character, however.”
UN’s Art Collection To Be Shown In Disposable Building During Renovation
“As the United Nations complex in New York undergoes a $1.9bn renovation, the international body’s extensive, eclectic art collection is to go on view in a temporary structure [assembled] to accommodate the UN during the makeover process.”
Ottawa’s Small Orchestra To Tackle Some Very Large Mahler
“Going big took on a whole new meaning at the National Arts Centre Tuesday, where the Ottawa centre’s 57-member chamber orchestra revealed that it will perform two mammoth Mahler symphonies next season, including the so-called “Symphony of a Thousand.” Mahler’s first (“Titan”) and eighth symphonies are both on the bill for the first time next year, along with another large Germanic piece, Richard Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan.”
Pinchas Zukerman On Music And Money Troubles
This season the veteran violinist and conductor “has been marking his 60th birthday with 100 concerts in 17 countries. Yet he says that his own income is more or less back where it was 15 years ago. Zukerman sees these same stark facts everywhere in classical music – from the recording industry to non-profit arts groups… [He] even wonders whether there’s enough of an audience to support classical music 52 weeks a year.”
America’s Bustling Religious Marketplace
“Even if the American mania for shopping extends to our spiritual lives, church shopping still doesn’t get much respect. But while it may be frequently derided as an example of rampant spiritual consumerism, shopping around can be one of the good things about the way religion is practiced in America.”
Why Reading The Entire Bible Is Good For You (Yes, Really)
“I’ve read the word shibboleth a hundred times, written it a few, and probably even said it myself, but I had never understood it until then [reading the story in the book of Judges]. It was a tiny but thrilling moment when my world came alive, when a word that had just been a word suddenly meant something to me. And something like that happened to me five, 10, 50 times a day when I was Bible-reading.”
A Smorgasbord Of Arab Arts
“This month, the Kennedy Center hosts hundreds of musicians, dancers, artists, writers and thinkers from the Arab world in a three-week arts festival called Arabesque. Representatives say there has never been such a gathering.” The festival, five years in the making, features artists, performers and writers from 22 countries covering an area as large as the United States.