Two men walked into the Rodin Room at the Ny Carlsberg Glypoteket museum in Copenhagen, walked right up to The Man with the Broken Nose, put it in a bag, and left – apparently unnoticed by guards and other museum-goers.
Fire Destroys Portion Of One Of Europe’s Largest Science Museums
Firefighters battled the blaze at the Cité des Sciences in Paris for more than five hours. “Smoke and flames damaged an area of 10,000 square metres (107,000 square feet), ravaging a 110-million-euro ($122 million) scheme to turn the [auxiliary] building into an area for shops.” None of the museum’s exhibits were damaged.
Why Marion True Should Definitely Write Her Memoir
Christopher Knight: “Her hesitation is understandable, given the relentless, often inflammatory media glare that accompanied her unprecedented 2005 indictment by an Italian court on charges of being part of a stolen-art ring. … Settling history is more important. A central irony in the case remains unresolved.”
Why Sticking A Pair Of Eyeballs On A Sign Actually Changes Behavior
“One American security sign company, MySecuritySign.com, has even made it a standard feature on their sign templates … This isn’t simply a way for sign companies to make a quick extra buck. There’s actually science to back it up.”
The Expert Art Forger Who Can’t Be Prosecuted Because He Gives His Fakes Away
Over two decades, Mark Landis traveled the country posing as a philanthropist and donating his copied artworks without arousing much suspicion. “I didn’t think I’d get into trouble,” Landis explains, “I just thought they’d get mad and send stiff letters — and I’d be long gone by that time.”
First African-American Composer To Win A Pulitzer Is Still Writing Symphonies At 93
George Walker: “I don’t know what relaxation is.” He keeps working because “I want more people to hear my work. I want people to get acquainted with my music.” (includes serious dis of Elliott Carter)
Can David Foster Wallace Be Reclaimed From The Litbros?
“The more we talk about Wallace without talking about his work—which, of course, is the whole reason we’re here, talking about him—the more we aid in this false image of him as bro-lord. His fiction is thoughtful and daring and adventurous and sad and fun and difficult and complex.”
Can Anything Fix The Hollywood Director Gender Imbalance?
“The challenges are daunting, the statistics are depressing, but rather than sit around complaining, the idea behind Film Fatales is that we can change things. And I think real progress will take this bottom-up, grass-roots approach as well as a top-down approach.”
Manhattan Theatre Club Attacked For Lack Of Diversity
The season, announced piecemeal since December, includes Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love,” David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Ripcord,” Richard Greenberg’s “Our Mother’s Brief Affair,” John Patrick Shanley’s “Prodigal Son,” Nick Payne’s “Incognito,” Nick Jones’s “Important Hats of the Twentieth Century” and Florian Zeller’s “The Father.” But anger about the choices didn’t bubble up until this week, after American Theatre magazine noted the roster in a straightforward post on its website.
Ballet Down On The Farm
“You’ve heard of farm-to-table, surely. Vermont is now one step ahead, with Farm to Ballet, a series of performances across the state this month. It’s the brainchild of Natch Pregger, a professional dancer who has performed with the Boston, Washington, D.C. and Houston ballets. As a native Vermonter, he wanted to create a performance piece around the state’s bucolic rhythms.”
HarperCollins Closes Peer-Review Site For Budding Authors
“Described as an ‘open slush pile’ by Cory Doctorow when it launched in 2008, Authonomy allowed users to submit their manuscripts for discussion, critique and ranking by fellow site members. The top five each month were read by HarperCollins editors, with 47 going on to be picked up for publication, including works by Miranda Dickinson, Steven Dunne and Kat French.”
Joseph Scafidi, 94, Longtime Executive Director Of San Francisco Symphony
“Over the course of his long career, the Symphony’s activities grew from an 18-week season to its current year-round schedule, and the annual budget grew from $200,000 to more than $4 million. [He] worked closely with no fewer than five music directors, beginning with the legendary French conductor Pierre Monteux in the 1940s and continuing with Enrique Jordá, Josef Krips, Seiji Ozawa and Edo de Waart.”
Ballet San Antonio’s Artistic And Executive Directors Suddenly Resign
“[The company] on Thursday announced the resignation of its executive director, Courtney Mauro Barker, and the departure of its artistic director, Gabriel Zertuche. … A spokeswoman for the ballet said the organization would have no further comment beyond its announcement, which gives no reasons for the departures.”
Banksy Has Designed A Dystopian Theme Park – ‘Dismaland’
“Once you get past Dismaland’s eerily institutional security checkpoint, the castle looks like it’s one breeze away from collapsing. But wait, there’s more: A dead princess backdrop for prime photo ops, a whale jumping out of a toilet and through a hula hoop, and a sculpture of a woman getting viciously attacked by sea gulls. But at least the food at this park is affordable – free hot dogs, to whomever can guess what meat is in them. Welcome to Dismaland: Everything is awful.”
Cirque Du Soleil Plans $25 Million Broadway Show
“The company, which has been acquired by a group of private equity investors, said that the production, to be called Paramour, represented one step in a broader effort to expand its presence in New York and in the world of theater. … [They also] said it would run indefinitely after opening next spring.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.20.15
True-isms: Marion True, the Getty’s Sacrificial Ex-Curator, Vents Again
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-08-20
Guest Review. Jan Lundgren: A Retrospective
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-08-20
Desmond’s Later Years Revisited
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-08-19<
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It Costs $100,000 To Train A Ballerina
“To understand what it takes to become a professional ballerina, I wanted to find out how much the required ballet training really costs. There are many factors that go into the cost of training, and when I totaled the core expenses, I found that a pre-professional ballet education for girls can easily amount to a total of more than a hundred thousand dollars.”
Former National Theatre Bosses Nicholas Hytner And Nick Starr To Open London’s First New Theatre In 20 Years
“While there are 17 other theatres of comparable size (800-1,099 seats) in greater London, with 15 of those in inner London, the new building would be the first large-scale theatre in the heart of the capital since the erection of Shakespeare’s Globe in 1997, and the first large-scale commercial playhouse to be built since the New London was created in Drury Lane in 1973.”
How You Dismantle A Giant Mark di Suvero Sculpture (Time Lapse)
“Proverb was officially on loan from the artist, Mark di Suvero (through the cooperation of the Nasher Sculpture Center). It may not have been the tallest of his famous steel girder sculptures — they grace some 55 cities around the world — but it was certainly way up there.”
How A Podcast About “Gilmore Girls” Made Two Nobodies Famous
“Nearly a year after they began “Gilmore Guys,” these two 20-something dudes are getting famous for chatting about a show that was semi-famous to teenage girls and their moms a decade ago. It’s a lesson, they say, in what it means to try and make it in 2015.”
America’s Theatres Are Looking At Leadership Changes
“Leadership turnover is coming to America’s regional theaters. When Theater Communications Group — a service organization for the country’s nonprofit theaters — recently surveyed its members, 30 percent of the respondents indicated that their artistic leaders had been in place for two decades or more. About the same number said they anticipated a change in artistic leadership within the next five years.”
Study: Reasons People Listen To Music Are Different For Older People Than For Younger Listeners
An exploratory study finds emotion regulation may be “a secondary outcome of music listening. Rather, the “fundamental drivers” of our thirst for music appear to be the intense emotions a given melody produces, the way it facilitates reminiscing, and—as we age—its ability to produce transcendent experiences.