“Eartha Kitt, who purred and pounced her way across Broadway stages, recording studios and movie and television screens in a show-business career that lasted more than six decades, died on Thursday. She was 81 and lived in Connecticut.”
Category: today’s top story
Harold Pinter, 78
“Harold Pinter, the British playwright whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation, died on Wednesday. He was 78 and lived in London. The cause was cancer, his wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, said on Thursday.”
MOCA Chooses Broad’s $30M Bailout; Strick Gone, CEO In
“After weeks of conjecture, the board of the financially strapped Museum of Contemporary Art has voted to accept a $30-million bailout offer from billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, a founder and life trustee of the museum and the city’s largest arts patron. In addition, MOCA’s beleaguered director, Jeremy Strick, has resigned and MOCA has appointed UCLA Chancellor Emeritus Charles E. Young as the museum’s first chief executive.”
Funding Freeze May Mean No More Artists In LA Schools
“Los Angeles schoolchildren learning drama from a professional actor or ballet from a skilled dancer might lose their teachers next semester if the Los Angeles Unified School District continues to freeze funding for programs employing outside contractors. District officials say the freeze will hold at least until the California Legislature reconvenes in mid-January.”
Conor Cruise O’Brien, 91
He “was the leading Irish intellectual of his generation, though he assumed so many guises – diplomatist, historian, literary critic, proconsul, professor, playwright, government minister, columnist and editor – that he defies further categorisation.”
MOCA Director May Be Out; Broad Deal Close?
The museum is officially denying it, but one trustee tells the LA Times that MOCA director Jeremy Strick resigned at an emotional board meeting yesterday. There are also reports that MOCA’s board is leaning towards accepting a $30m donation from Eli Broad which would allow it to stay open without merging with another institution.
Unmasking An Incompetent Conductor
Critics seem to love Gilbert Kaplan, the wealthy businessman-turned conductor who specializes in leading Mahler’s 2nd Symphony (and ONLY Mahler’s 2nd Symphony.) But you can count the New York Philharmonic unimpressed: “The day of the concert, the players demanded a meeting with Zarin Mehta, the orchestra’s president, and complained about Mr. Kaplan’s conducting for an hour.” And one trombonist wrote a blistering blog post blasting Kaplan’s weak skills.
LACMA Formally Proposes Merger With MOCA
“Confirming weeks of rumors, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art… has presented a plan to the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art for a proposed merger with the financially troubled MOCA.” The proposal names the locations at which MOCA’s collections and programs would be housed.
Has The Newbery Medal Lost Sight Of Young Readers?
“The Newbery Medal has been the gold standard in children’s literature for more than eight decades. … Now the literary world is debating the Newbery’s value, asking whether the books that have won recently are so complicated and inaccessible to most children that they are effectively turning off kids to reading.”
Au Naturel, En Plein Air, Paris’s Life Models Go On Strike
“Paris is now being accused of showing such philistine ingratitude to its life models that scores went on strike yesterday, taking to the streets to pose naked in freezing temperatures to shame the state. In front of the tastefully decorated Christmas trees outside Paris city hall’s culture department, the naked and goose-pimpled models demanded a pay increase, proper contracts and, most of all, respect for their craft….”