Category: today’s top story

“The next poet laureate could work from the heart of government to influence areas from literacy to public health, from roadbuilding policy to the Ministry of Defence. It’s a wide remit, but poets are wide thinkers. He or she could sit on those committees that decide what money goes where, and gently suggest that members of the civil service had workshops with a poet as part of their training.”

“When times get tough, as in America during the Great Depression and the Second World War, music gets soft. The times, surveys say, are once again tough, and they’re likely to stay that way. A sustained period of stylistic regression is thus a possibility. But there is no law that says history has to repeat itself in an endless loop.”

“Gary Garrels, the highly sought-after curator who has helped raise the profile of the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and beyond, is jumping ship. The Hammer snagged Garrels, 56, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York three years ago. But now he is moving to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as senior curator of painting and sculpture.”

“A 1976 triptych by Francis Bacon brought $86.3 million on Wednesday night at Sotheby’s, becoming the most expensive work of contemporary art ever sold at auction and a retort to doomsayers who had predicted that the art market would falter seriously this season because of broad economic anxieties.”

“A life-sized Lucian Freud painting of a sleeping, naked woman has set a new world record price for a work by a living artist. The 1995 portrait, titled Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, sold for $33.6m at Christie’s in New York.”

“A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.”

“Among those taking the recently offered buyouts are Bernard Holland, music critic; Jennifer Dunning, dance critic; Diane Nottle, deputy editor for classical music and dance; Gwen Smith, assignments coordinator for dance and art; and Lawrence Van Gelder, senior editor. That leaves Alastair Macaulay as the only full-time dance critic at the Times.”

Perhaps in few places on earth is music transforming the lives of a new generation more than in this remote low-land section of South America. The biennial baroque festival, which wrapped up last week, draws artists from across the globe who perform a repertoire of classical music that always includes at least one piece from the impressive, sacred archive, begun by the missionaries in the 17th century. It has spurred many of the region’s kids to gravitate toward the world of Bach and base clefs. In recent years, some 2,500 youths from area towns, many of them indigenous, have enrolled in music schools, choruses, and orchestras.”

“Iraqi singers, actors and artists are fleeing the country after dozens have been killed by Islamic radicals determined to eradicate all culture associated with the West. Cinemas, art galleries, theatres, and concert halls are being destroyed in grenade and mortar attacks in Basra and Baghdad.”

No one is shutting the door on the possibility that the Columbus Symphony could continue to exist beyond June 1, but the orchestra’s board has rejected the idea of backing off their huge proposed cuts, and the musicians appear unwilling to accept any such drastic cuts only three years after they accepted a 20% pay cut. The city’s mayor also says he won’t be stepping in to mediate…