“One of the most vaunted private art collections in Los Angeles, highlighted by a prized Picasso nude and including works by Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, Georges Braque, Edgar Degas and Edouard Vuillard, is expected to fetch more than $150 million at auction when it goes on sale in May, Christie’s announced Tuesday.”
Tag: 03.10.10
Animals Commit Suicide, Too (And Not Just Lemmings)
“Whether it’s a grieving dog, a depressed horse or even a whale mysteriously beaching itself, there is a long history of animals behaving suicidally, behavior that can help explain human suicide, says newly published research.”
Choreographed Slam-Dancing
“During a recent rehearsal on the Lower East Side, the choreographer and dancer Jody Oberfelder came tearing across a small studio like a downtown banshee. Her bright magenta hair was tucked under a striped crash helmet … She was soon joined by similarly dressed dancers, pushing and banging into one another with abandon as if in a mosh pit at a punk concert.”
Critics, ‘The Dung Beetles Of Culture’
David Cote: “We consume excrement, enriching the soil and protecting livestock from bacterial infection in the process. We are intrinsic to the theatre ecology. Eliminate us at your peril. … [If] this trend continues, only the stupidest among us will believe a critical rave. We’ll know that reviews are just part of the marketing …”
It’s 2010 And Charles McNulty Has Just Seen ‘Cats’ For The First Time
“But how could I have missed this feline phenomenon? Me, an honest-to goodness cat-person, always bunking with a few lovable rescues and unable to resist preparing a wet-and-dry banquet for any stray sneaking into my backyard. More to point, how could I have turned a blind eye to a show that set the touristy tone for Broadway for more than a generation?”
Panel Names Fifty UK Women To Watch In The Arts
“The list includes directors, producers and curators who make a contribution to cultural life across the UK. … The women to watch are expected to lead the way in design, libraries, literature, museums, heritage, music, performing and visual arts, the historic environment and creative businesses.”
B’way’s God of Carnage Seeks Starry, All-Black Cast
“Yasmina Reza, zee French lady who wrote zee play, has OK’d the idea, and so the search is on for four major stars. … Broadway shows with black stars can be box-office gold — and, in many cases, the productions are critic-proof.”
The Boston Public Objects, Loudly, To Library-Closing Plan
“One man said that he was a prison librarian while serving time in Walpole and that closing any library branches would be far worse than any of his crimes. ‘I may have robbed a bank, but I have never burned a book,’ said the man, John McGrath. ‘And that’s what you do when you close a library branch, because they are never going to reopen.'”
NYT’s Bruce Graham Obit Pictures Wrong Hancock Building
Chicago architect, Chicago skyscraper — but the Times’ national edition “runs a picture of Boston’s John Hancock Tower … not Chicago’s John Hancock Center, which was Graham’s greatest skyscraper.”
Back In Samuel Barber’s Day, He Was No Critics’ Favorite
“In particular, critic and composer Virgil Thomson dismissed Barber as a composer for ‘high middlebrow taste.’ And Barber’s music does sound conservative next to the atonal, modernist style in vogue in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. If the scathing reviews bothered Barber, he tried not to show it.”