Why Did The Bellevue Art Museum Suddenly Close? The Bellevue Art Museum, in a suburb of Seattle, had a signature architect and significant community support when it opened three years ago. So why did the $23-million museum suddenly close its doors this fall and its managers declare the organization was out of money? "The museum's unexpected closure left Bellevue leaders stunned and arts patrons baffled that a cultural institution serving some of the country's wealthiest communities could fold for lack of money. Even the timing of the closure was bizarre, announced just two days before a new exhibit opened." Seattle Times 11/16/03
Posted: 11/16/2003 10:45 am
Fighting Over How Things Look (Traditionally Speaking) Disputes between architects Daniel Libeskind and David Childs over the tower above the World Trade Center site are the latest chapter in a long history of architectural disputes. "The absence of knife play over the Freedom Tower does not guarantee that the intended partnership will run smoothly. A meeting between the architects last Monday was described as positive by both sides. History, however, suggests that the turmoil will continue. There is a long tradition, in New York, of architectural bargaining and bickering that has produced gems like Rockefeller Center, duds (let's be honest now) like the World Trade Center and compromises like Lincoln Center and the United Nations. Not only is the record a rancorous one, but Mr. Libeskind and Mr. Childs are navigating challenges unlike any faced by their predecessors." The New York Times 11/16/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 6:30 pm
Life Of Kahn American Architect Louis Kahn was a brilliant architect and a flawed man. Herbert Muschamp pronounces that a documentary of his life is a "wonder of a movie" That "should put a stop to the notion that architecture is a less creative form of practice than music, painting, literature or dance. I have never seen or read a more penetrating account of the inner life of an architect — or of architecture itself — than that presented in this movie." The New York Times 11/09/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 6:23 pm
- Kahn - Figuring Out The Mystery Even though he was one of the 20th Century's premiere architects, Louis Kahn was a remote presence. "Who was Kahn? A genius? A cad? A man whose accomplishments transcended such judgments? In the end, not even Kahn himself seemed to know. He was found dead in New York's Penn Station in 1974, his body unclaimed for three days because he'd crossed out his address in his passport. Why?" Philadelphia Inquirer 11/14/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 6:17 pm
- Louis Kahn - A Life In Pictures A new documentary about the life of architect Louis Kahn is one of the best movies of the year, writes Carrie Rickey. "The most penetrating insights into Kahn come not from the mandarins of modern architecture, nor the architect's fiercely intelligent mistresses Anne Tyng and Harriet Pattison (Nathaniel's mother), nor his children, but from the janitors in Dhaka who pray in the mosque of the capital building that a Jew built for Muslims. For these men who mistakenly call the architect Louis Farrakhan, the building is a vessel of the spirit." Philadelphia Inquirer 11/14/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 6:14 pm
- Kahn: One Of The Best "There is something about walking into a Louis Kahn building that makes analysis seem superfluous, if not silly. The best ones just succeed—not simply at keeping out the rain or the cold but at suggesting something important about our relationship with the built world. It may sound too basic, or too sappy, to say that the reason for Kahn's continuing appeal is that he sought an architecture that was more concerned with the timeless than the fashionable. But it's also the truth." Slate 11/14/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 6:09 pm
SPONSOR
From One Generation To The Next Some of the world's most distinguished artists gathered at Lincoln Center on November 10 to celebrate the completion of the inaugural year of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. www.rolexmentorprotege.com
Kennedy Center's Opera House Clean-up After a $20 million renovation, the Kennedy Center Opera House is about to reopen. "The Washington Opera will resume performances there in the spring. In a typical year, the Opera House has 225 performances, attended by a total of 500,000 people. The renovations included a top-to-bottom cleaning, from the sprawling Austrian chandelier to the expanded orchestra pit. New features include a maple floor on the orchestra level. The red seats have been redone throughout the hall, along with cherry trim and arm rests." Washington Post 11/16/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 7:40 pm
Year Of The Woman Singer Women singers seem to be dominating World Music this year. "Not all of them are young, but their average age must be about 30. Ten years ago, the idea of a compilation of women's music would have smacked of political correctness – now it's simply what's happening. It is of course a truism that pictures of attractive young women sell newspapers, CDs, books and films better than just about anything else. So, are Western record companies simply choosing the acts that are most marketable? Or does the phenomenon of the young world diva reflect deeper global upheavals? And what, if anything, does this sudden upsurge in female creativity add up to musically?" The Telegraph (UK) 11/15/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 7:20 pm
At Home With Pinchas Zukerman It's been five years since Pinchas Zukerman took over as music director of Ottawa's National Arts Center Orchestra. "Whatever the specific contributions of each of the current administrators, the National Arts Center Orchestra seems to be thriving, and this at a time when many Canadian orchestras are suffering much the same economic woes as their American counterparts. True, it operates on a relatively small scale. With 50 permanent members, it is about half the size of the largest North American orchestras." The New York Times 11/16/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 7:11 pm
Denver Post Pop Critic Resigns For "Using Language" Of Another Denver Post pop music critic G. Brown resigned from the paper Friday after editors discovered he had "used language" lifted from other reviews of a Simon and Garfu8nkle concert without attribution. "Post editors learned of the matter last week when a reader contacted the newspaper and pointed out similarities between language in Brown's Oct. 26 preview of a Simon and Garfunkel concert and phrases in an article that had appeared earlier on a website." Denver Post 11/15/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 5:52 pm
Netrebko - Top Of The Opera World "Having once scrubbed floors at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, the home of the celebrated Kirov Opera, Anna Netrebko (pronounced nuh-TREB-koh), 32, is now the company's biggest young star. Her luminous lyric soprano voice, impeccable technique and heartfelt acting have won raves from San Francisco to Vienna. Since the recent release of her debut solo recording of opera arias, she has been featured in classical music publications and fashionably photographed for glamour magazines." The New York Times 11/16/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 7:02 pm
Role Reversal - Michael Grandage On Top "Ten years ago, Michael Grandage was a struggling actor who could barely afford to go out for dinner with his friends. Today he has arguably the best job in British theatre, having last year succeeded Sam Mendes as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in London." The Telegraph (UK) 11/14/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 7:23 pm
Take This Mcjob And... So McDonald's protests the inclusion of "mcjob" in the new Mirriam-Webster Dictionary. "If McDonald's couldn't accept satire as the price of fame, though, why didn't it protest the McJob coinage long ago? The first use in the Nexis database, it's true, wouldn't have raised hackles: It was an innocent play on words in a 1985 UPI story on the labor shortage. 'Ronald McDonald has a mcjob for you,' it began, with no scorn intended. But McJob in the 'robotic, dumb' sense popped up in the Washington Post just a year later..." Boston Globe 11/16/03
Posted: 11/16/2003 11:16 am
In Search Of: Missing Books That Won Awards When Canada's Governor General Adrienne Clarkson first looked in the Governor General's library, she discovered that 150 of the 492 books that have won a Governor-General's Award since the inaugural prize in 1937 were missing from the collection. Scouring secondhand bookstores, Clarkson and her husband John Ralston Saul have reduced the number of missing books to only 11. "The problem is that the vanished volumes are now out of print and thus nearly impossible to find..." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/16/03
Posted: 11/16/2003 10:54 am
Morrison - A Difficult Read "In these early years of the new millennium, a new Toni Morrison novel is a seismic event. She is a Nobel laureate and, at 72, is considered one of the country's greatest living writers. Her always-ambitious novels, such as "Song of Solomon" and "Beloved," are written on a grand scale and she has become iconic.
Washington Post 11/15/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 7:37 pm
The Worst Of Stage On Screen A project from the 1970s to film some of the best stage productions and offer it as movies, hoped to offer the best of each medium. "Instead of combining the best of Hollywood and Broadway, it combined the worst. There were basically two ways of shooting theater before AFT came along (and after live television went the way of the horse-drawn carriage). The networks and public television would videotape a play in the theater or on a soundstage, hoping to capture the intimacy and general feel of live theater. Conversely, when the film industry shot a play or musical -- Mike Nichols's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" or Olivier's "Richard III" -- it would be "opened up" and shot on location to look less stagy." Boston Globe 11/16/03
Posted: 11/16/2003 11:04 am
Angelic Indictment Okay, so fans of Ronald Reagan got CBS to dump a biopic from its schedule. Frank Rich writes that an upcoming TV version of "Angels in America" is far more searing and controversial. "This epic is, among other things, a searing indictment of how the Reagan administration's long silence stoked the plague of AIDS in the 1980's. If "Angels" reaches an audience typical for HBO hits, it could detonate a debate bloody enough to make the fight over "The Reagans" look like an exhibition bout. That's not such a big if. "Angels" is the most powerful screen adaptation of a major American play since Elia Kazan's "Streetcar Named Desire" more than a half-century ago." The New York Times 11/16/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 6:45 pm
Proposal: Hard Time For File Traders A proposed law in the US Congress would punish those who distribute copyrighted movies or music ahead of their release dates with jail time of up to five years. "Unauthorized copies of movies often turn up in flea markets and online 'peer to peer' networks, such as Kazaa, shortly after they are released, thanks to audience members who smuggle camcorders into theaters. In other cases, industry insiders post movies and albums online before they are officially released, throwing promotional plans into disarray." Wired 11/14/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 6:05 pm
Post-Modernist De Keersmaeker Goes Inside Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her company Rosas have long inhabited the post-modernist world of alternative spaces. Buter her new work "Rain", writes Tobi Tobias, "makes them fit for an opera house—the venue, laden with tradition, on which postmodernism originally turned its back in contempt. Such a development is both ironic and inevitable—the mainstream is a magnet for the work of its rudest antagonists—and De Keersmaeker’s piece is very handsome indeed." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 11/14/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 7:55 pm
Ia LA Becoming A Dance Capital? "October represented something of a turnaround for Los Angeles, a city with a reputation for failing to support dance. In sheer numbers, there were more dance performances here last month than anyone could remember — more than 50. But such activity was not a lone anomaly; there is plenty more ahead, from an ever greater diversity of companies." The New York Times 11/16/03
Posted: 11/15/2003 7:14 pm
