It took 144 years, but the central tower of Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia is finally complete (ART News) — a milestone for a building that has outlasted every assumption about how long art should take. Meanwhile, the Vatican is cleaning human sweat off Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, a chalky residue left by the millions of bodies that have pressed into the Sistine Chapel over the centuries (Associated Press). The things we make endure; the cost of our attention to them is more literal than we think.
San Francisco Ballet has pulled out of its Kennedy Center performances, the latest arts organization to step back from Washington’s political weather (San Francisco Chronicle). In Portland, a different kind of institutional crisis: protesters are fighting city council over the fate of the earthquake-unsafe Keller Auditorium, warning that abandoning its 3,000 seats would leave a hole in the heart of downtown (Oregon ArtsWatch). And at 30, Klaus Mäkelä takes over the Chicago Symphony with a curiosity that extends well beyond music (Chicago Sun-Times).
Neil Sedaka has died at 86 — a classical prodigy who became a pop fixture across seven decades (The New York Times). And the Library of Congress has surfaced what may be the first robot ever filmed — a 45-second Méliès short from 1897 that feels remarkably timely (NPR).
All of our stories below.
