“Irritated cross talk and loud quarrels, whether between couples or random filmgoers, was such a mainstay of the Lincoln Plaza experience that last fall, my wife and I made a point of going there to see The Meyerowitz Stories, with Dustin Hoffman playing an ill-tempered sculptor and bad father, because we knew it would be like seeing the film in Sensurround.” And, found Bruce Handy, it was – even at a weekday matinee.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Wendell Castle, Who Made Furniture Art (And Vice Versa), Dead At 85
“Over more than a half-century, Mr. Castle helped establish a creative genre, the studio crafts, that blended furniture-making and sculpture. He was a designer whose chairs, tables and coat racks were works of art, and an artist whose oeuvre could be used as well as admired.”
How A Small Appalachian Town Made Itself Into An Arts Destination – By Raising Its Taxes
“City officials [in Berea, Kentucky] count 40 galleries in total, and three new restaurants and a gallery-cafe have opened in the past two years – not a bad showing of entrepreneurship in a city of fewer than 20,000 people. … But it wasn’t always like this.” Ivy Brashear reports on how it got to be like this.
Portland’s Small Theatres Band Together To Cope With Soaring Rents
As with just about any cool city these days, real estate costs in the City of Roses have been rising faster than cash-strapped arts organizations can keep up with – especially for the clear-space buildings that theatres need. As several of Portland’s smaller companies lost their spaces at around the same time, they got creative.
U.S. Commercial Airlines Give Millions For Renovation At National Air And Space Museum
Nine of the country’s ten largest passenger carriers have donated a total of $28 million for a makeover of the exhibition on the history of commercial aviation at the Smithsonian’s most popular museum.
Met Opera Fires Stage Director For ‘Inappropriate Behavior In The Rehearsal Room’
“[John] Copley, 84, has been one of the opera world’s foremost directors for decades. He was at the Met directing a revival of his 1990 production of Rossini’s Semiramide when a member of the chorus reported that Mr. Copley had made him uncomfortable at a rehearsal on Monday with a sexually charged remark, according to two people familiar with the complaint.”
National Book Awards Add Prize For Works In Translation
“The new category marks a radical departure for awards, which began in 1950 ‘to celebrate the best of American literature.’ The prize will be given jointly to authors and translators, and will be limited to fiction and nonfiction works by living authors that are published in the United States. International authors who write in English won’t be eligible.”
Museum Takes Down Painting Of Naked Nymphs – To ‘Prompt Conversation’
“It is a painting that shows pubescent, naked nymphs tempting a handsome young man to his doom, but is it an erotic Victorian fantasy too far, and one which, in the current climate, is unsuitable and offensive to modern audiences? Manchester Art Gallery has asked the question after removing John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs” – and visitors are leaving their answers on Post-It notes on the wall.
This Museum Isn’t Canceling Its Chuck Close Show – Here’s What It’s Doing Instead
At the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, “there was some discussion of removing the Close show [in the wake of the sexual harassment allegations against him], but officials believed [the issues] would be better served by keeping the exhibition up and instead using it to create very pointed conversations … [by mounting] an additional exhibit exploring issues of gender and power in an accompanying gallery.”
ABT Strikes Labor Deal, Avoids Strike As Tour Begins
The dancers and stage managers of American Ballet Theater, who voted earlier this month to authorize a strike as contract talks grew tense, have reached a tentative agreement with the company … [The new contract] will raise the salaries of the lowest-paid dancers the most.”