“After the Museum closed its doors for renovations in 2018, it would take seven years and a $300 million capital campaign that nearly doubled its original goal to finally set an opening date. With construction delays and fund-raising hurdles cleared, the museum will reopen to the public on Nov. 15.” - The New York Times
Said the former music director of Chicago Opera Theater, “I want to be sure that my children grow up feeling like they can always express themselves freely. I want my children to live in a society that really takes care of its people, ... that really values things like the arts (and) education.” - WBEZ (Chicago)
Following an open letter signed by nearly 200 staffers — a letter which explicitly referenced the house’s recent rental of its staging of Turandot to the same company — the Royal Ballet and Opera has cancelled the planned rental of its production of Tosca to the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv. - The Guardian
“It wasn’t so much that we’d failed to replicate (the study’s) famous longitudinal results. It was more that our study confirmed a nagging message that the field is still resistant to accepting: there are no childhood skills that are silver bullets.” - Psyche
Julia Whelan: “The only reason I was doing 70 books a year was because that’s how many books you have to do when you’re first starting out to keep your head above water. It would be OK if there were a kickback for success, but narrators don’t get royalties.” - AP
Christopher Guest: “I can do a voice, but Sellers was embedded in those characters, and that commitment made it very different.” Michael McKean: “I remember reading Being There and then seeing the film and thinking: he gets this character better than Jerzy Kosinski did.” - The Guardian
Lily Hyde: “They have appeared in contemporary ballets, such as Christopher Wheeldon’s Corybantic Games and Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works, but are by no means at the heart of the narrative. … I have concluded that there is not one problem responsible for this imbalance – there are several.” - Gramilano (Milan)
“While the whereabouts of these gold treasures — three Dracian bracelets dating from 50 B.C.E. and the 2,500-year-old Cotofenesti helmet — remain unknown, Dutch prosecutors say that evidence gathered from wiretapped conversations suggests they have not yet been melted down.” - Artnet
“The current crisis in China is a result of corporate backers tightening their budgets, consumers curtailing their discretionary spending, and rising costs, people working at the museums tell the Post.” - South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Ben Davis: “It’s smug provocation. And there’s no particular love for classic art here; the aesthetic sensibility is totally internet-brained. These specific paintings are picked because they are mildly to very cartoonish, so that holding them up as a sincere image of the past will get people riled up.” - Artnet
Constantine Orbelian, now both Music Director and Executive Director: “The main thing for me at this point is getting a home. ... I believe that without a home, it’s hard to put stuff here and there. And once we find it, one of my big focuses will be doing operas for children.” - OperaWire
“Through a complicated process, Three Bone Theatre received the remaining $13,000 from its three-year, $20,000 grant to help put on a trilogy of plays that retell classic Greek tragedies from a modern Latino and Chicano perspective. The group already had spent approximately $7,000 of the grant when the cuts came down.” - The Charlotte Observer (Yahoo!)
“The chandeliers are wood-and-metal spheres that have been called ‘sputniks’ ever since the Met opened in 1966. Legend has it that a prototype was constructed with toothpicks and a potato.” - The New York Times
But hey, one currently hard-up business might benefit: "If anything sends viewers back to the cineplex, it will be ads for depression meds in the middle of a rom-com or a sophisticated chase scene." - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
“Anderson’s seemingly ditsy, bombshell character was anything but, and her performance as Jennifer showed that looks and smarts could go together.” - The New York Times
