Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is working on a $180 million expansion. Yesterday it announced the addition of a new 10,000 square-foot underground gallery to the project. “The new Graham Gund Gallery, which will sit under a new East Wing, will house major temporary exhibitions. The space, part of an expansion to be completed in 2009, isn’t expected to add to the $180 million price tag.”
Tag: 02.12.04
Carmen In The Round
The first Seville International Festival next September is offering a $28.5 million production of Carment staged in the actual places they’re set in the opera. “It will unfold in six hours and on three separate stages, all linked to the original sites described in what is hailed as the world’s most popular opera.”
Monuments In Virtual 3D
“A team at the University of Geneva have been using sophisticated 3D computer modelling technology to bring historical monuments to life. They have developed virtual reality models of two Turkish mosques dating from the Ottoman era of the 16th century which let you move around and explore the buildings in real-time.”
Finalists For WTC Cultural Center
New York City Opera is among the arts groups in consideration for a new cultural center at the World Trade Center site. “Other groups competing to relocate to the site include the Joyce Theater Foundation, the Signature Theatre Co., the Children’s Museum of the Arts, the Drawing Center, the Museum of Freedom and the New York Hall of Science, the agency said. The list released Tuesday was narrowed from 113 interested institutions who responded to a worldwide invitation last summer.”
Gypsy Decides To Hang Around
Ticket sales to Broadway’s “Gypsy” have surged since producers announced that the show would close. So it’s not going to…
Wolfe Leaving The Public
George C. Wolfe is leaving the helm of New York’s Public Theatre. “Mr. Wolfe has established something of a cult of personality at the Public, in the tradition of the legendary Joseph Papp. And as the leading black stage director in the country and an openly gay man, he embodied the Public’s determination to reach diverse artists and audiences.”
The Theatre Of Factual Fiction
On London stages, there are now plays devoted to true events. “The resurgence of the theatre of fact is perhaps suggestive of a deeper problem for writers, namely that modern life in its unimaginable complexity seems to defy invention itself. The convention-bound play, assembling representative characters in symbolic spaces to rehearse the concerns of the hour, looks as capable of capturing the zeitgeist as a fishing net is of landing a blue whale.”
Nazi Expose Suddenly Canceled By Publisher
“The latest novel of Germany’s hot young writer Thor Kunkel exposes the Nazis’ previously unknown trade in pornographic films. Sounds like a guaranteed bestseller. So why has the book’s publisher cancelled it and kicked up a literary storm?”
Surge In UK Preservationists
Britain’s National Trust heritage preservation organization is seeing a surge in membership. “New members joined the trust at a rate of one every 46 seconds last summer, faster than the British birth rate of one every 55 seconds. It now has 3.3 million members, making it the largest organisation in Europe.”