A BIENNIAL FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

For nearly a century Washington’s Corcoran Gallery has organized biennial exhibitions devoted to contemporary American painting. Even in recent years – when painting had long since ceased to be where the action was – the painting Biennials persisted. Now, after decades of floundering around, the Corcoran has stepped into the new millennium by confronting art as it really is. The result is a show focused on how painting, photography, video, computers and other electronic media have intersected and influenced one another. – Washington Post

THE ART OF CANCELLATION

“In the last three years alone, the Chinese government has closed at least 10 art exhibitions, offering in most cases no other excuse to exhibitors than an announcement that they failed to properly complete the official application process. The hitch is, the government has never really explained that process. An intriguing exhibition at the University of Chicago’s David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art takes a look at one such closing that occurred two years ago in Beijing.” – Chicago Tribune

FOCUS ON LATIN AMERICA

Thanks to a donor’s gift, the LA County Museum of Art opens a new center to showcase Latin American art. “Belated as this development may appear in a region with a large Latin American community, LACMA is in the forefront as “one of the first major public institutions in the United States to be fully committed to Latin American art.” – Los Angeles Times

CLEANING UP TIMES SQUARE

When the cleanup of Times Square was begun ten years ago, the street’s dilapidated theatres were seen as a liability. But in fact they became the key to the project. “Restoration of the theaters would be tied to construction of new buildings; every time a new tower went up, another theater would be saved. – New York Times

MORE THAN LIVE

“We all know that what makes theater irreplaceable (and, on dream nights, irresistible) is that it combines live performance and fakery in ways no other form of art or entertainment can match. Call it the unities of the primal, the artificial and the mythic.” New York Times

ALL ABOUT THE BUILDINGS

“Truth being stranger than cliché, the very notion of re-inventing theatre spaces – or, to borrow estate agent terminology, location, location, location – is spreading through theatre like wildfire for the simple reason that the biggest problem facing the allegedly dying art form is the buildings themselves.” – The Observer (UK)