New York City Ballet is, like every other dance company on Earth, marking George Balanchine’s centenary with a series of special performances highlighting the master’s work. Unfortunately, says Robert Gottlieb, City Ballet chose to cast a decidedly washed-up ballerina in two of Balanchine’s most beloved roles, and to allow “echt Broadway” star Susan Stroman to stumble through “a two-and-a-half-hour piece with barely a step in it beyond the most rudimentary. There’s so little dance content, you can hardly even call it pastiche; it’s a show, it’s a hit, but it’s not a ballet.”
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Why Johnny Can’t Choose
People want more choices in life, or so they say. But a new study suggests that people presented with more than a few choices have a much harder time making decisions, and may choose to make no decision at all, rather than cope with the stress of multiple options. So perhaps it follows that, when it comes to matters of public policy, our government needs to stop giving us so many options, and make a few well-reasoned decisions on our behalf. So said a psychology professor in a New York Times op-ed last week. But Ronald Bailey isn’t buying that argument: “One suspects that his unspoken converse is that sound public policy consists of the government restricting options and forcing Americans to do what people like Professor Schwartz think is good for them.”
Janet Frame, 79
“New Zealand writer Janet Frame, who was reportedly short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature last year and drew on her experiences in mental hospitals for her fiction, has died aged 79. Frame, who had leukemia, was regarded internationally as New Zealand’s finest writer since Katherine Mansfield, who died in 1923. A recluse for much of her life, she was wrongly diagnosed as schizophrenic when young and spent eight years in mental hospitals, where she was reportedly given shock treatment 200 times. She was saved from a scheduled lobotomy in 1951 when a hospital superintendent learned that her first book, The Lagoon And Other Stories, had won New Zealand’s leading award for fiction.”
Saving The Whitney, Holistically
When Adam Weinberg was announced as the new head of the Whitney Museum of American Art, observers could only wonder at the task ahead of the soft-spoken man who had just accepted the top job at one of the world’s most tumultuous museums. “After more than a decade of crises and turmoil… the Whitney has entered what Mr. Weinberg said was a ‘period of healing.’ And while he said he did not want to appear to be a ‘New Age director,’ curators say his two favorite words are holistic and synergy.” Still, Weinberg can’t play Mr. Nice Guy forever, and most expect that some major personnel changes are in the offing.
The Whitney Biennial: Now With Sunshine!
“When the 2004 Biennial opens this spring, the often controversial survey of contemporary art will extend well beyond the walls of the Whitney Museum of American Art. There will be art from one end of Central Park to the other, including grotesque sculptures of werewolf heads, a ferocious life-size tiger, a bronze bust of Michael Jackson and a 50-foot-tall inflatable pink rubber ketchup bottle topped with a snowmanlike head.”
Construction Delays Force ENO Cancellation
“At a cost of £282,000 in lost ticket sales, English National Opera was forced yesterday to swallow its pride and cancel all performances of its re-opening show, Nixon in China. The Coliseum, its London base, will now open after its £41m rebuild on February 21, a date already postponed by a fortnight, for an as yet undefined ‘special event’ – which may just be a grand party with a few songs from the stage. The theatre will then close again and the first performances of The Rhinegold, the opening of the first new production in English of Wagner’s Ring cycle in 30 years, will probably not happen until early March.”
Please Hand Cancel This Art
The Post Office is generally not considered a federal agency to be trifled with. But Chicago artists Michael Thompson and Michael Hernandez de Luna just couldn’t resist, after reading about Doonesbury readers who had been trying to mail letters with fake stamps published in the famous comic strip attached, and frequently succeeding. Thompson began cranking out his own satirical stamps a decade ago, and his works have included such classics as a May Day stamp with a picture of an airline crash, and a portrait of Abraham Lincoln with a gun visible behind him. But the game turned serious two years ago, when Hernandez de Luna tried to use a stamp emblazoned with a skull and crossbones and a single word: “anthrax.”
Dollar’s Woes Helping US Art Market
“The US dollar’s decline has boosted the US art market, with collectors increasingly inclined to buy at the big New York auctions where they can pick up pieces more cheaply… Because of the strong euro, works from European collections that would normally fuel the US market are now more costly for a New York investor. On top of this, insurance costs have rocketed. Both factors are tending to choke off the transfer of artworks to the US, although demand there remains strong.”
When Art Attacks (Or Is Attacked)
The Swedish prime minister’s office has been deluged with thousands of e-mails protesting a Stockholm art exhibition which includes an installation piece the e-mailers view as anti-Semitic. The work, which features a photo of a Palestinian suicide bomber floating in a sea of blood, was vandalized by the Israeli ambassador to Sweden last week, and ever since, Israeli organizations around the world have been blasting the Swedish government for allowing the exhibition to proceed. The latest group to join the fray is the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization which has been urging its supporters to send the protest e-mails.
100 Years of Trumpets, Trills, and Turmoil
The London Symphony Orchestra turns 100 this year, a good long run for an ensemble with the LSO’s lively history. “The orchestra was founded as Britain’s first self-ruling symphonic institution, and its players, who choose their principal conductor and guest conductors, have been notorious for a snarkiness that has caused more than one eminent maestro to turn tail and run.” The LSO has always been ranked among the top orchestras in the world, but Charles Michener believes that they never truly ascended to greatness until just recently, when they chose Sir Colin Davis as their latest principal conductor.