Category: today’s top story

“I didn’t think that would happen at all; who’s going to do something with all these people around?” said one of the performer-participants in the show, titled The Artist Is Present. Alas, even in a museum, when there are naked people in a place where strangers can get close to them, some of those strangers will do inappropriate things. (And it’s not just groping.)

“The author’s unlikely success story is rooted in a series of personal interactions between publishers, booksellers, and reviewers that launched a book the old-fashioned way. … [T]he success of ‘Tinkers’ can be linked to a handful of people who were so moved by the richly lyrical story of an old man facing his final days that they had to tell others about it.”

The director “has apparently been given permission to film inside the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave, a site in the Ardèche department of southern France that contains the earliest known cave paintings, dating back at least 30,000 years. Even more intriguingly, Herzog is planning to shoot much of the film in 3D.”

“[F]ootball and Texas go together; Texas and money go together; money and art go together. Voilà: Football and art go together.” No wonder, then, that the new and “spectacular Cowboys Stadium” includes “big, bold displays of site-specific, privately commissioned and funded pieces, mostly abstract, by 14 living artists.”

Why did the committee that awards the Pulitzer Prizes ignore the recommendations of its drama jury in favor of a rock-musical about bipolar disorder? Well, it’s playing in New York, and most of the board went to see it the night before the vote. (Okay, it’s not quite that simple …)

“It’s a familiar story, but as chair of this year’s jury … I can’t help being ticked off. Two points, in particular, rankle: the blinkered New York mentality and the failure to appreciate new directions in playwriting. The board had an opportunity to correct these long-standing shortcomings, and it blew it.”

“A group of the UK theatre world’s leading industry bodies – The Society of London Theatre, Theatrical Management Association and Independent Theatre Council – have recently come up with what they believe is a completely new way of measuring the effectiveness (or otherwise) of a theatre production.”

A report from the bond rating firm Moody’s Investors Service says that the ambitious plan, which includes an acoustical and physical overhaul of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a redesign of the plaza between the Chandler and the Mark Taper Forum, and construction of new office space, could require the Music Center to incur $100 million to $150 million of additional debt.

“Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces From the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales” closed yesterday, more than two weeks early. “According to museum officials, the three galleries housing the half-billion-dollar collection did not open Wednesday after the staff decided that air-handling issues for the space needed to be corrected immediately.”

The new Darwin Center (“the Cocoon”) at London’s Natural History Museum includes the offices and labs for more than 200 researchers along with plenty of exhibition space. Indeed, the “research facilities and scientists are part of the exhibition; they are glimpsed through windows, framed by explanations. They even become the subject of the show. The Cocoon’s displays are not really about botany and bugs; they are about the collection and study of botany and bugs.”