“The first scholarly survey of the drawings collection of the New York Historical Society has brought to light previously unknown or misattributed works by John Singer Sargent, Louis Comfort Tiffany, David Wilkie and others.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Mortier Pulls Out Of NY City Opera
Gérard Mortier has withdrawn from his contract to be New York City Opera’s artistic director beginning next season, saying that the company’s board did not come up with the budget he had been promised. His move leaves City Opera without artistic leadership and with only a skeleton staff.
We Can Save Ugly Old Buildings, Too
“English Heritage yesterday announced a grant to save arguably the most horrible building it has ever attempted to rescue, the sprawling Victorian hulk of Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, which housed the equally ramshackle geniuses who broke Germany’s second world war codes.”
And How Did Italy Get So Ugly?
“The Veneto is one great construction site that has produced monstrosity after monstrosity over the past 50 years… On the one hand, you have a region of outstanding natural beauty and extraordinary architecture; on the other, an ugly urban sprawl that has obliterated the countryside.”
For Russell Crowe, Acting Is Not Complicated
“The process is learning a lot of dialogue and jumping up and down on the furniture.” How did he prepare for his role in Body of Lies (besides gaining a lot of weight)? “Preparation? I picked up a bag, I put a pair of underwear in it and I got on a plane. There you go – preparation done.” And by the way, “I can assure you that I’m not an angry man.”
Ben-Hur Live!
A £5 million arena production of the epic will open next September at London’s O2 Arena (formerly the Millennium Dome), “complete with live chariot race, massed gladiatorial combat, sea battle, heaving bazaar, crucifixion and, for good measure, an orgy.”
Considering Crichton – And Where He Went Wrong
“The boy-novelist who engineered a tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park and mysterious pathogens from outer space in The Andromeda Strain ha[d] become a political pamphleteer, a right-wing noodge. […] Crichton’s early novels were escapist fantasies that happened to be instructive. His political books are hectoring screeds that incidentally turn out to be thrillers.”
Critic Extraordinaire John Leonard, 69
The writer whom Kurt Vonnegut called “the smartest man who ever lived” died Wednesday night of lung cancer. He began his career monitoring the left-wing press for National Review; he gave Pauline Kael her start at Pacifica Radio; from 1971-75 he served as editor of The New York Times Book Review, where he was an early champion of Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston and Gabriel García Marquez; he wrote about books for The New Republic, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly and Salon.com, among “countless other publications”; he was even a television critic for CBS and New York magazine.
Fort Worth Opera to Premiere Before Night Falls
“The Fort Worth Opera has announced it will stage the world premiere of Before Night Falls, a new opera by Cuban American composer Jorge Martin, as the centerpiece of its 2010 Opera Festival. Before Night Falls is based on the autobiography of Cuban dissident poet Reinaldo Arenas, whose memoir by the same name was made into a 2000 film starring Javier Bardem.”
The World’s Poshest Squat
A group of artists and anarchists called the Da! collective have started squatting in an unoccupied six-story townhouse in London’s exclusive Mayfair district. What’s more, the new inhabitants can’t be evicted without a complaint by the building’s owners – and they don’t appear to have noticed.