The Museum of Russian Icons, tucked away in an old Massachusetts mill town, is doubling its exhibition space and preparing to host a show featuring rare loans from the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Quadrophenia The Musical?
“Roger Daltrey wants to turn his cult movie Quadrophenia into a West End musical – and would love Carl Barat and Amy Winehouse to star in it.”
Observers Left Breathless as 2008 Giller Prize Finalists Revealed
“Gasps of surprise were heard all-round as Margaret Atwood, a past Giller winner and three-time jury member, stood next to former Ontario premier Bob Rae and revealed the names of the five nominees at a morning press conference.”
Friends Don’t Let Friends E-Mail Drunk
“Google’s Gmail Labs has a new experimental featured dubbed ‘Mail Goggles’ which will attempt to prevent you from sending out those ill-advised late night e-mails.”
Former Funeral Parlor Becomes Paris’s New Modern Art Mecca
“The former state funeral parlour at 104 rue d’Aubervilliers in north-east Paris will reopen this weekend after being transformed into the city’s most daring modern arts centre. […] Not only are Parisians attracted by the macabre past of the building – known only by its street number, Centquatre – the centre will also bring artists and tourists into the 19th arrondissement best known for its high-rises, poverty and gang culture.”
It’s Not Dancing About Architecture, Exactly…
… it’s dancing about aviation. This weekend at “Breaking Ground: A Dance Charrette,” five choreographers presented site-specific works made for Floyd Bennett Field, New York’s first municipal airport.
Is the Kol Nidre Really a Get-Out-of-Agreements-Free Card?
The most famous prayer in the Yom Kippur liturgy asks the Almighty that all vows and oaths taken during the year be lifted. Does that really mean that Jews can break their word? As usual, context is everything – and rabbis and thinkers have been arguing over the Kol Nidre for centuries.
Vladimir Ashkenazy Knows It Don’t Come Easy
“His earliest memories go back to Tashkent and the railway truck he and his family lived in after evacuation to the Urals in 1941, when he was four. When they went back to Moscow, it was to a single room. Their old Bechstein occupied the only space not taken up by beds.”
Diet Coke as Spermicide, Jumping Fleas, Problem-Solving Mold – It’s the Ig Nobels!
Yes, these are among the 2008 winners of “the Ig Nobel prize, the annual award given by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine to oddball but often surprisingly practical scientific achievements.”
Fiona Shaw on Playing Beckett’s Winnie
“The writing reared up and resisted what normally happens when I make friends with a text… Beckett has taken phrases that sound like real speech, yet they disintegrate just as the images form. The effect on the hearer is genius: instead of frustrating the audience, he keeps them on tenterhooks hoping that the launch of the next phrase will make sense of what has gone before.”