Bernard Holland wants so much to like John Harbison’s “Great Gatsby” at the Met, you almost feel sorry for him. It has everything going for it, he writes. So why does it seem so small? – New York Times
Blog
INTERNET GUITAR
Log in and tune up. New internet site offers interactive group guitar lessons over the internet. – Seattle Post-Intelligencer
RETHINKING THE 20TH CENTURY
The Royal Academy’s fascinating new show looking at what was happening in art at the turn of 1900 recreates the famed Exposition Universelle, that most glamorous of art fairs in Paris. “The idea is to show what was happening in Tokyo and Melbourne, Helsinki and New York at the very moment when Monet was painting Charing Cross Bridge and Picasso was exploring the dives and dance halls of Montmartre.” – The Telegraph (UK)
AUCTIONING THE CONSTITUTION
Sotheby’s will auction off one of 25 original 1776 copies of the US constitution on its website. The document is expected to bring $4-6 million. – Baltimore Sun (AP)
- See the document online and read about this copy. – Sotheby’s
EURO-TRASHING
- Charles Saatchi’s at it again, reaching across the Channel for artists for the next big Sensation. – The Times (UK)
TOO HOT TO PUBLISH?
The libel suit between Penguin books and David Irving, the controversial second world war historian, over his version of the Holocaust, began on Tuesday in the High Court in London. “The case raises a number of questions: When are the ideas of historians or academics so appalling that their work should be forever banned from public consumption? What limits do you place on free speech? And what makes a good historian anyway, especially when their subject is that most emotive one in 20th century history?” –Financial Times
HE SAID, SHE SAID
The New Yorker is 75 in February and no fewer than seven books about the legendary magazine are about to grace the world. Who didn’t like someone’s writing, who cut another one’s article…these people keep their grudges. – New York Times
- “I’m one of the bad guys,” Robert Gottleib discovers in Renata Adler’s New Yorker book. – New York Observer
- Review of the Adler book. – New York Observer
NOVELIST ARUNDHATI ROY is arrested, —
— then released after leading 500 demonstrators protesting the building of a dam in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. – BBC
AS A COMPOSER, —
— Andrew Lloyd Webber certainly has his detractors in the theater world. But reviews of his purchase of ten of London’s West End theaters have pretty much everyone cheering. “Indeed, it is Lloyd Webber’s standing in London’s creative theater community that makes his victory so welcome. Under Lloyd Webber’s influence, it is widely believed, the West End will be more open to productions with an element of edge and commercial risk.” – Los Angeles Times
A “HEDLEY” FOR THE 80s:
August Wilson makes it to the 80s with his “King Hedley II” the latest in his decade-by-decade tracing of the black American 20th Century experience “True to form, Mr. Wilson has endowed his struggling souls with a metaphysical grandeur and a titanic vigor of language that is like no other dramatist’s.” – New York Times