The Cleveland Museum of Art has filled a key curatorial post from within its existing staff. “Anita Chung, formerly an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the museum, has been appointed associate curator of Chinese art. She is assuming responsibility for the Chinese collection, overseen for the past 6½ years by Ju-hsi Chou, who retired in June.” The Mellon Foundation has made a challenge grant to permanently endow the position of curator of Chinese art, which has yet to be filled.
Tag: 10.02.04
Art That Travels
“What do you buy just before you board a plane? Most frequent fliers take what they can get: tabloids, Godiva chocolates, $5 paperbacks, duty-free liquor and cigarettes. But the brand-new Airport Gift Shop at [New York’s JFK Airport] has turned shopping into an art – literally. Designed and curated by New York artist Tobias Wong, the Airport Gift Shop is part of a just-opened art installation called Terminal 5 – which uses all the space in Eero Saarinen’s landmark (and defunct) TWA Terminal 5.”
Madison’s New PAC Good Enough For Chicago
Madison’s new Overture Center for the Arts, designed by Cesar Pelli and built at a cost of $205 million (all of which was paid by a single donor,) has opened its main concert hall with a performance by the Chicago Symphony, and if musician reaction is any indication, the little university town in Wisconsin has constructed one of the country’s great concert halls. “Several CSO players reported that they could hear themselves and each other with greater clarity than at perhaps any hall they have played… Pelli and Chicago-based acousticians Kirkegaard Associates have created a beautiful, bright and open auditorium with a feel of intimacy far exceeding that of the much smaller 1,500-seat Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Chicago’s Millennium Park.”
Dave Eggers Wants You To Vote
Ohio is widely considered to be one of the three or four most important states in any presidential election, and presidential candidates sink millions of advertising dollars into the state’s television markets. And yet, voter turnout in the Buckeye State is no better than in any other part of the country. Enter Operation Ohio, a touring group of big-name authors holding get-out-the-vote efforts at colleges and universities across the state. The events are billed as non-partisan, but there is a distinct anti-Bush ring to the speeches.
Up Next, Valkyries Fired Out Of Cannons!
Wagner’s Ring cycle, as imagined by the Lyric Opera of Chicago, is a challenge in ways that go far beyond the musical complexities of the score. Some scenes, for instance, take place underwater, which many companies are content to leave as an implied setting, but which the Lyric has decided requires its Rhinemaidens to perform while suspended from bungee cords. The resulting midair dance is a wonderful sight to behold, but behind the scenes, it is one of the more complex staging endeavors ever mounted on the operatic stage, requiring not only split-second timing, but serious teamwork.
Richard Avedon, 81
Noted portrait photographer Richard Avedon has died in Texas of complications from a brain hemorrhage. Avedon’s pictures were sometimes controversial, sometimes difficult to look at, but they were always uniquely memorable, and his work “revolutionized the 20th-century art of fashion photography, imbuing it with touches of both gritty realism and outrageous fantasy and instilling it with a relentlessly experimental drive.”
Stark Glamour, Ruthless Reality
Avedon’s legacy is one of unbending realism cloaked in the language of high fashion: he once described his work as a “series of no’s leading to a yes.. I have a white background. I have the person I’m interested in and the thing that happens between us.” His portraits were sophisticated but brutal, and over time, they became a barometer of social importance to those who posed. “An Avedon portrait brought an instant aura of importance and legitimacy to its subject; the picture said you matter now, because you’re news, or because you’re something people either like to stare at or talk about, but quietly so. If Avedon was taking your portrait, then you’d arrived. Even if you milked cows for a living.”