Category: today’s top story

“Refining a technique, developed by Jackson Pollock, of pouring pigment directly onto canvas laid on the floor, Ms. Frankenthaler, heavily influencing the colorists Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, developed a method of painting best known as Color Field — although Clement Greenberg, the critic most identified with it, called it Post-Painterly Abstraction.”

Earlier this month it was revealed that Ballet San Jose’s board had taken over artistic director Dennis Nahat’s duties and that no ballets had been lined up for 2012. Now the board has announced that no new artistic director will be hired and that the company is now in a “partnership” (not a merger, they insist) with American Ballet Theater.

“With no advance warning that the city’s second-largest opera company was in trouble, board chair Winifred P. Gray and board president Gregory E. Bulger issued a statement this morning that Opera Boston faces ‘an insurmountable budget deficit’ and will cease operations on Jan. 1, 2012.”

“The plan changes the way the CSO does business, putting more emphasis on earned income rather than donations, working closely with educational groups and corporations to demonstrate its value beyond music-making. There will also be more chamber concerts in various smaller venues and possibly fewer main-stage orchestral programs.

DTH officials have “announced the start of auditions to create a new stripped down troupe of 18 dancers, which will begin rehearsing in August and touring in October and aims to return to a New York stage by April 2013.” The company shut down in 2004.

“As the economic crisis deepens across Europe, the European Commission plans to launch the world’s largest ever cultural funding programme, with €1.8bn allocated for visual and performing arts, film, music, literature and architecture.”

“The movies have created a stir in this country, where the filmmakers, who are both public faces of the youth-led democracy movement, are channeling a larger spirit of free expression. Though they never speak of national politics, their films’ characters have become metaphors for a generation that feels like its voice, too, has been silenced.”

“The National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities each will see a 5.6% budget reduction in fiscal 2012 under a spending bill passed Friday in the House that’s expected to prevent a feared government shutdown.”

“The House Judiciary Committee debated the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act for hours Thursday — and despite protracted criticism of the bill from the nation’s leading internet engineers and companies, lawmakers repeatedly rejected attempts to water-down the bill.”

The gifted polemicist, combative atheist and prolific author has lost his very public battle with esophageal cancer.