The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s shift to having a single artistic director oversee all of its programs was a factor in the sudden departure last year of James Houghton, the head of the prestigious O’Neill Playwrights Conference. Following the abrupt resignation last summer of J Ranelli, the center’s first overall artistic director, the O’Neill is now looking not for someone to fill that spot but simply for an artistic director for the playwrights conference. (Second item.)
Tag: 10.14.04
Is A Harvard Rembrandt A Fake?
“In a forthcoming biography of the colorful Hollywood artist, bon vivant, and art forger John Decker, Stephen Jordan includes an account of how Decker and his friend Will Fowler forged a Rembrandt ‘Bust of Christ’ for actor (‘Stagecoach,’ ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘Lost Horizon’) Thomas Mitchell, an amateur art collector. ‘Not long after Mitchell passed away,’ Jordan writes, ‘the painting fetched $35,000 as an early Rembrandt. Today, the painting hangs at Harvard University’s prestigious Fogg Art Museum — hailed as a true Rembrandt.'”
Hemingway Home Restoration Held Up By Politics
“In what architects describe as a preservation emergency, [Ernest Hemingway’s Havana] house, known as Finca Vigía or Lookout Farm, is tumbling down. An effort to save the finca, an American cultural treasure and an important Cuban tourist attraction, seems threatened by a storm of politics.” An American foundation has offered millions to fund the restoration of the house, but the U.S. government has refused to allow the project to go forward, claiming that it would promote tourism in Cuba, thereby helping the economy of the Communist nation.
Choosing The Conductor Of The People
North Carolina’s Asheville Symphony is looking for a new music director for the first time in 22 years, and it has narrowed its search to three candidates. Nothing unusual there, but the orchestra’s method of evaluating the finalists is something quite different from the usual behind-closed-doors insider review. “After their performances, the conductors will each be rated by the 12-member search committee and an informal board of consultants of about two dozen people in the community who are reasonably knowledgeable about music and the symphony.” In other words, the audience gets a quantifiable voice in the hiring process.
It’s Just A Memoir, People
It was big news when the first volume of legendary singer Bob Dylan’s memoirs were released earlier this week. But the way some readers (and reviewers) are reacting, you’d think that a deity had descended from the clouds and chiseled the book onto stone tablets. “Dylan is, beyond question, a seriously remarkable songwriter. He brought – not alone, but with unique success – the seriousness and jokiness of a poet to popular music… [But the] Dylan priesthood serves a cult of worshippers obsessed with every scratchy bootleg; every relic; every word, or touch, or bit of blood, or piece of his hair or his clothes. Honestly. They’re worse than Grateful Dead fans.”
Australia To Get New Portrait Gallery
Australia’s National Portrait Gallery has been short on exhibition space for a long time, but this year, “arguing that 90 per cent of its 1000-plus collection was acquired without government money, the gallery successfully lobbied the Howard Government for a campaign promise of $56.5 million to build a new place to show them. At its current home in the former parliamentary library in Old Parliament House, the NPG can display only about 100 works in its permanent hang.” The new building will likely be near Australia’s High Court building in Canberra.
Rothko, In His Own Words
A new collection of writings by Mark Rothko is casting new light on the professional life and personal tragedy of the artist. “It reflects the author’s intense intellectual curiosity and ambition, as well as a polemical streak. Though Rothko never directly refers to his own art, or even acknowledges that he is a painter, the book reveals something of his life at the time.”
What Really Made Mozart Tic
According to a new documentary, Mozart may have suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome. Researchers believe that the composer “self-medicated” his condition with his music, able to control his tics so long as he was absorbed in his art. The documentary highlights Mozart’s “inability to rein in impulses, the sudden boredom, his sense of mischief and his scatalogical obsession, which all point to Tourette’s.”
Bidding War Over The Next Big Children’s Author
For a high-school dropout, children’s author Stuart Hill was garnering an awful lot of attention from the intellectual set last week. “His book was at the centre of a bidding frenzy last week at the Frankfurt Book Fair, when 20 European publishing houses fought for its rights. It has already been bought by Scholastic, which publishes J K Rowling’s work in the US, and a film rights deal is in discussion.” Why all the fuss? Hill seems to be the consensus choice of publishers as the “next big thing” in kidlit, and everyone wants a piece.
Gay Chic Comes To The Opera
The English National Opera will take the unusual step of launching its 2005-06 season with a potentially controversial new opera by Irish composer Gerald Barry. The work, entitled The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, concerns “lesbian love, passion and jealousy set against the backdrop of a fashion studio,” and will feature an all-female cast. The ENO’s new artistic director, Seán Doran, has made it clear that he intends to put his own stamp on the troubled company, and plans to mount at least two new works each season.