Category: today’s top story

“As much Tilson Thomas’ handiwork as Gehry’s, the $160 million New World Center, which opens this week with a series of galas and concerts, bears their shared trademarks of edgy experimentation, intellectual rigor and artistic ambition tempered by unabashedly populist impulses.”

Cuts include elimination of (among others) the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“Anyone who struggles with Shakespeare in English will next year be able to see if it is any easier in Lithuanian. Or Portuguese, Italian or Spanish, perhaps. … In fact, there will be 38 different ways to experience it, as Shakespeare’s Globe presents all of the Bard’s plays, each in a different language, as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.”

“Over the past few years,” WNO president Kenneth R. Feinberg said Wednesday, “the financial uncertainty surrounding the opera has threatened not only its viability but its ability to … maintain a level of artistic excellence. This is a critical step designed to assure the long-term artistic and financial success of the company.”

“The financially troubled Washington National Opera is merging administrative functions with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the two organizations announced this morning. The move is intended to stabilize the opera company, which in recent years has reduced its season and borrowed against its endowment.”

“The Stuart and Sons grand piano has 14 more keys than most, which means its lowest and highest notes live very much on the edge. … The extra notes might lend themselves to great feats of acrobatics, but they’re not exactly musical. So why have them. For color, Stuart says, and resonance.”

“Floods in the Queensland capital of Brisbane have surrounded the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, damaging front of house areas but leaving works of art unscathed. As floodwaters rose, staff at the QAG moved exhibitions … to higher levels.”

“[By] largely diverting taxpayers’ money away from the arts, in favour of its replacement by this putative largesse from grateful, recently unburdened multi-millionaires, the final outcome of this policy is a shift from the arts being something of which we as a country could be proud, to something for which we-as-arts-goers must thank some rich people.”

Originally a dress designer, Stewart – as an African-American woman in the early 1960s, no less – created and ran for five decades an experimental theater center that became as influential as Joe Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival. Harvey Fierstein, one person on an astonishing list of La MaMa alumni, has said, “Eighty percent of what is now considered the American theater originated at La MaMa.”

“Fairey agreed to not use another AP photograph in his work without obtaining a license from the news cooperative, and the two sides agreed to share the profits of posters and merchandise bearing the “HOPE” image. The two sides also reached a financial settlement; terms weren’t disclosed.”