More news items that require little or no comment — just a little underlining:
***The U.S. hosts the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24-25, and the Obama Administration has chosen the occasion to make another statement about the arts.
Most prominently, Michelle Obama is taking her counterparts (read: spouses of the leaders) to the city’s CAPA 6-12, which is a magnet school in downtown Pittsburgh for the arts (left). CAPA stands for Creative and Performing Arts; it has more than 800 students who major in dance, music, literary arts, theater and visual arts. The visitors will see the school’s “state of the art” technology and a performance by students. Mrs. Obama will also host a luncheon at the Andy Warhol Museum and the First Couple will welcome leaders at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden.
*** Another day, another deaccessioning controversy,” writes Daniel Grant in the August Maine Antiques Digest. This one, which took place in 2007, was at the St. Augustine Historical Society, which sold off, unannounced and uncompetitively, 24 oil sketches by Martin Johnson Heade. It reaped $1 million. “Theodore Stebbins Jr., curator of American art at the Fogg Museum, Harvard University, and an authority on Martin Johnson Heade, this collection of 24 works represents “the only substantial group of Heade’s oil sketches in existence. Perhaps there may be a stray sketch around somewhere, but this is the main group.” (more) My thanks to Donn Zaretsky for noticing that one.
***Zaha Hadid’s much-delayed pavilion in Chicago’s Millenium Park, built as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s Chicago Plan, has finally opened — today. It was set to open in mid-June. The Wall Street Journal has written about the delay and the design (here) and so has the Chicago Tribune (most recently, here). If the reality matches the rendering, it looks as if it were worth waiting for.
***UPDATED: The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is meeting this morning, and is set to approve has approved the confirmation of Jim Leach as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, without hearings. Given his GOP credentials and his endorsement of President Obama last August, this is all happening as expected. When the full Senate will vote to confirm, though, is unclear. Rocco Landeman’s nomination to head the NEA is not moving along as quickly.