“The [Peter] Zumthor project is about six months behind schedule. The process, including building permits and entitlements, is taking longer than expected, [museum director Michael] Govan says. And the museum’s $650-million fundraising campaign, he adds, is ‘in pace with the project.’ Which is to say: going slowly.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Sascha Radetsky Named Artistic Director Of ABT Studio Company
“[American Ballet Theatre] made the announcement yesterday, and it makes sense — Radetsky has served as a ballet master for the group since 2016, as well as a teacher for the main company. He succeeds Kate Lydon, who is leaving her post to direct the dance program at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire.”
Philippe De Baleine, Journalist And Inspiration For Character In ‘Tintin’, Dead At 96
In an astoundingly prolific career, de Baleine wrote some 50 books, ranging from reportage from West Africa and Southeast Asia to detective novels published under a pseudonym, and was editor-in-chief of several magazines including Paris Match, Marie Claire, and Sciences et Vie.
Kentucky Opera Has A New General Director
“Barbara Lynne Jamison will take charge Aug. 15, coming to Louisville from Seattle where she is Director of Programs and Partnerships for the opera there and part of the senior management team.”
How Much Will It Cost To Repair The Tretyakov’s Vandalized Ivan The Terrible Portrait? Nearly $8,000 Or Nearly Half A Million?
“An estimate last month to restore Ilya Repin’s painting Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on November 16, 1581 (1885), damaged by a metal-pole-wielding assailant at Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery, was Rb30m ($474,000). This is 60 times the sum reported immediately after the incident on 25 May.”
Elena Ferrante Explains Why She Will No Longer Use Ellipses
“I used to use them freely; now I don’t use them at all. And yet I like them: in other people’s writing they don’t bother me, even if instead of three dots I find 10 in a row. But at a certain point, my eyes started to fly over those dots, moving on to grab hold of the words as quickly as possible. And in my own writing I began to feel they were flirtatious, like someone batting her eyelashes, mouth slightly open in feigned wonder. Too many graceful winking suspensions, in short.”
The 21st-Century Americans Trying To Revive The Medieval Knights Templar
“It is Memorial Day weekend and we are in a hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, where about 350 members of the autonomous Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem have gathered to mark the 900th birthday of the Knights Templar. Members of the charitable organization, known by the unwieldy abbreviation SMOTJ, regard themselves as spiritual descendants of the original Templars.”
The Elusive, Enigmatic, Entirely Indispensable Véra Nabokov
As the great illustrator Saul Steinber once put it, “It would be difficult to write about Véra without mentioning Vladimir. But it would impossible to write about Vladimir without mentioning Véra.” Miranda Popkey looks at how and Véra remains so fascinating, despite her strenuous attempts to erase herself.
Why Does It Take So Long For Memorials To Get Built In D.C.?
“It took more than three years for the leaders behind a proposed Desert Storm memorial to secure the plot of federal land they want to build their project. The World War I memorial has a site and a winner of a national design competition, but its officials are still tweaking and adjusting their plans to get clearance to build. And then there’s the cautionary tale of the 20 years it will have taken the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial to move from authorization to opening in 2021.” Peggy McGlone looks into the challenges and obstacles.
When This Dealer Alerted Poland That He Had Some Nazi-Looted Art, Poland Tried To Prosecute *Him*. Now He’s Suing Poland
“As the old saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.” David D’Arcy recounts the aggravating story of Russian-born American art dealer Alexander Khochinsky, who reported to Poland that his father, a World War II veteran, had left him an 18th-century portrait that had belonged to Poland’s National Museum in Poznan, was stolen by German troops in 1943, and then seized (and kept) by Soviet troops as the Nazis retreated.