Last Christmas Day, two men unbolted and carried away a 330-pound bronze gnome from outside an Auckland art gallery. When the extensive media coverage made things a little too hot, they dropped off the statue at a Salvation Army post with a “please return to” note taped to its head. The gnome-nappers have now been apprehended. — Artsy
Author: Matthew Westphal
How An Out-Of-Work Ballerina In The Great Depression Became One Of America’s Most Famous Women
The young lady née Helen Gould Beck found herself stranded in Chicago when the ballet company she was touring with collapsed, and the only job she could get was as a stripper at a nightclub in the Loop. She ended up as a star attraction at the 1939 World’s Fair, known for her fan dance and her “bubble dance” with a 65-inch balloon (and nothing else) — an act she toured with for years afterward as Sally Rand. — The Oregonian
Bang on a Can composer Julia Wolfe ignites the New York Philharmonic
The new Julia Wolfe multi-media oratorio Fire in my mouth commemorates the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in a spirit that can make critics cringe preemptively. How many socially responsible pieces have implored us to weep, pray and feel guilty to what amounts to a pathos-laden film score? Instead, this piece was a breakthrough, something perfectly in step with 2019, with smartly-channeled passion that carries the promise of speaking to listeners well beyond our time. — David Patrick Stearns
Monet In Series — A Love Story
When it comes to paintings by Monet, there are many to love. But I especially appreciate his series (poplars and Rouen cathedral are probably my favorites). — Judith H. Dobrzynski
How Good is the Hood? Dartmouth’s Expanded Art Museum Reopens
After a much delayed $50-million renovation and expansion, Dartmouth College’s 65,000-object Hood Museum of Art at last reopened on Jan. 26 with six new art galleries, three new study galleries and three classrooms equipped with “the latest object-study technology.” — Lee Rosenbaum
9 Deformed Sonnets for My Old Friend
The artist Norman Ogue Mustill was an extreme dissenter. Nothing pleased him more than reaming out the human race. His collages stopped you dead with their vicious satire.. But Mustill is little known, his work unseen, his praise unsung. — Jan Herman
Organ Pipes And Pizza Pies (Yes, This Was A Thing, And It Still Is In A Few Places)
“Believe it or not, this used to be a fairly common dining experience, offered by more than 100 such establishments in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.” There are still three left in the U.S., and CityLab visits the one in Mesa, Arizona, which has a Wurlitzer bigger than the organ at Radio City Music Hall. — CityLab
Why Michael Chabon Loves Forewords And Prefaces
“Some forewords are transitive: acts of seduction that are at the same time documents of earlier seductions. … Other forewords are parasitical; like cuckoos’ eggs laid in crows’ nests they hatch and flourish at the expense of their hosts. … As for prefaces (and afterwords), these may be explanatory, apologetic, triumphal, tendentious, rueful, score-settling, spiteful, bibliographic, theoretical (as is the case with Chandler’s), or gently embarrassed (as is the case with Cheever’s) but the best of them — like Cheever’s — are also what I would call restorative.” — The Paris Review
Why Joel Grey Decided To Direct Yiddish ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ Without Speaking A Word Of Yiddish
“I was having lunch in a restaurant above the theatre at the Museum of Jewish Heritage and I saw the Statue of Liberty in the harbor, and I thought, O.K., there’s a Yiddish word I do know — beshert [destiny]. And I said yes, I’m going to do this. … I listened to a couple of the songs from the recording of the Yiddish version that was done more than 50 years ago in Israel, and I liked the sound of it. It seemed to me to be exactly right.” — Playbill
At Age 98, This Artist Is Getting Her Big Break
She was friends with Frida Kahlo and Isamu Noguchi, posed for Man Ray, and married Mexican surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, yet she made her own work for decades without promoting it. But she was a standout of last summer’s “Made in L.A.” at the Hammer; this year she has huge shows at Hauser & Wirth and the Serpentine Gallery; for her 100th birthday in 2020, she’ll get a retrospective in Mexico City that will later tour the U.S. Meet Luchita Hurtado. — T — The New York Times Style Magazine