Category: today’s top story

“One of the most powerful women in the modern art world, d’Harnoncourt had spent more than half of her lifetime at the Philadelphia Museum. She joined the PMA staff in 1972, became director in 1982, and succeeded Robert Montgomery Scott in 1996 as the museum’s chief executive. Over the years, she has overseen any number of internationally recognized exhibitions.”

“While its home is closed for renovations, New York City Opera will shrink its main dramatic offerings next season to one lonely opera, [for] two performances. Unstaged… The truncated 2008-9 season is even more reduced than expected.”

“When the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman bought a series of paintings by Adolf Hitler for £115,000, many questioned the morality of paying for works produced by one of history’s most brutal dictators. Yesterday, the brothers unveiled 13 of the watercolours, on which they had added psychedelic rainbows, stars and love hearts, and placed them back on the market for £685,000.”

“The union said early Wednesday that the deal establishes fees for content streamed and downloaded over the Internet and preserves actors’ rights of consent on the use of their voices and images in online clips.”

A new Indiana law — due to take effect July 1 — would force any bookstore that sold even one book that could be broadly described as “sexually explicit” to pay a $250 license fee and be classified as an “adult bookstore.”

The company has “cut staff, with the goal of putting more of its resources into its artistic product. Artistic Director Christine Meneer remains as the only paid staff member at the company she founded as Children’s Ballet Theatre 15 years ago.”

We’ll resume posting Monday night.

“A pair of vandals attacked Stonehenge earlier this month and managed to chisel off a piece of the ancient monument, British authorities announced on Thursday. It is the first such incident of vandalism at the UNESCO World Heritage site in decades, English Heritage officials said.”

The management of the Columbus Symphony, which is threatening to shut down operations on June 1, has agreed to reopen contract talks after musicians proposed $500,000 of salary concessions at a press conference. The CSO management has been seeking to cut 22 musicians from the orchestra and reduce the season by 12 weeks.

“If I don’t play for a couple of days,” said Dr. Claudius Conrad, a third-year surgical resident at Harvard Medical School who also holds doctorates in stem cell biology and music philosophy, “I cannot feel things as well in surgery. My hands are not as tender with the tissue. They are not as sensitive to the feedback that the tissue gives you.”