“Most of the brand talk around 9/11 this year was about marketers doing it wrong. But DDB New York and the New York City Ballet quietly did it right with a wonderful tribute called ‘New Beginnings,’ intended as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and a tribute to the future of the city.”
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Eli Broad’s L.A. Museum Will Have Free Admission
“Besides stocking the museum with their nearly 2,000-piece collection of art from the 1950s to the present at the museum, the Broads are providing at least $395 million to build and endow it.”
A Fake Van Gogh In The Attic Turns Out To Be The Real Thing
“Sunset at Montmajour – which depicts trees, bushes and sky – had spent years in a Norwegian private collector’s attic after he had been told the work was not by the Dutch master. [The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam] said the painting was authenticated by letters, style and the physical materials used.”
Ballet’s First Screen Star
“Ellen Price, the early-20th-century Danish ballerina, has two claims to immortality. Firstly as the model for Edvard Eriksen’s statue of The Little Mermaid, the tourist face of Copenhagen; and secondly as one of the very first ballerinas whose dancing has been preserved on film.”
The Most Embarrassing, Most Influential Piece of American Theater History
“The first nationally popular American play” – if a property with so many wildly differing adaptations can be thought of a one play – “was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, transformed onstage from an anti-slavery text into a racist spectacle whose influence survives till today.”
Minnesota Orchestra CEO: Well, Of Course We Want Osmo To Stay, But …
Michael Henson: “Ultimately, if Osmo decides to go, that is his decision. We want him to stay through to the end of his contract. However, in the longer term, we have to look after the health and well-being of this orchestra. … [We] cannot let two concerts at Carnegie Hall determine the future of the organization.”
FunnyOrDie Crossed With The Onion, But In Portuguese: Brazil’s YouTube Comedy Guerrillas
“New Internet ventures are challenging established companies in various industries in Brazil, but few here have captured audiences and ruffled feathers like Porta dos Fundos, whose satirical videos are challenging – and influencing – how Brazilian society ponders thorny subjects like religion, drug use, politics, sexuality and, of course, corruption.”
The Onion‘s Editor On Walking The Tightrope
Editor-in-Chief Will Tracy: “What you have to be really careful about is what the target of the joke is. And if the target of the joke is wrong, if you’re targeting the victim or someone who doesn’t deserve our ire, then it doesn’t feel right and it also doesn’t feel funny.” (As in the paper’s notorious Oscars tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis.)
Re-Illuminating The Shahnameh
A detailed Q&A with Hamid Rahmanian, the “visual DJ” who gathered together thousands of colorful manuscript illustrations and layered and arranged them for a sumptuous new English-language publication of the medieval Iranian epic.
‘Pussy Riot Opera’ Wins Major Composition Prize
Ilya Demutsky’s The Closing Statement of the Accused, a monodrama based on the speech Pussy Riot member Marua Alyokhina made at the end of her trial, “won first prize at the prestigious 2 Agosto composing competition in Bologna, Italy.”