“We’ve been loving our janitor to death. A do-not-molest sign near the popular lifelike sculpture at the Milwaukee Art Museum has helped a lot, but we can’t seem to keep our hands off the guy.” All that pawing — which is down an estimated 90 percent since the sign went up — has done some damage to Duane Hanson’s “Janitor,” slouched against the wall for the past 36 years.
Tag: 01.13.09
Nine-Film Shortlist For Foreign Language Oscar
The five nominees for the Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award will be chosen from a list of nine released this week. Included are Israel’s Waltz With Bashir, France’s The Class and Turkey’s Three Monkeys, but movie-maven bloggers are fuming over the snub of the Italian Mafia drama Gomorrah.
Times Square Virgin Megastore To Close In April
The largest music store in the US by sales volume, the Times Square flagship is still profitable, but the Manhattan real estate gods are unforgiving: “Virgin pays only $54 per square-foot when the market rent in the area is about $700 a square foot.”
Having Won His Battle, Salzburg Festival’s Theater Director Decides To Stay
Last fall, Thomas Oberender, tired of fighting for funding and prestige for his programming in a festival dominated by opera and classical music, announced that he was leaving Salzburg after this summer. But now that his nemesis, artistic director Jürgen Flimm, is moving on to Berlin, Oberender has changed his mind.
Italy Foils Major Art Theft
“Italian police have recovered 10 masterpieces, including a painting attributed to an artist who worked on the Sistine Chapel, that were stolen in 2004 from an ancient religious complex in Rome, officials said Tuesday… The works were wrapped in newspapers and hidden in the trailer of a suspected art smuggler, police said.”
Chicago Tribune Goes Tabloid
“The financially struggling Chicago Tribune will undergo yet another metamorphosis, announcing Tuesday that it will launch a smaller, tabloid-size version in an apparent bid to deliver a blow to the rival Chicago Sun-Times.” The new version, intended for newsstand sales, will carry the same content as the broadsheet edition, which will be available for home delivery only.
Monet’s Muse, Even In Death
As the painter sat at the deathbed of his wife and model, Camille Doncieux, he later wrote, “I was surprised… by the colors that death brought to her immobile face… [and] “found myself desiring to reproduce the last image of she who would leave us forever.” The result was his last major figure painting.
Why On The Transmigration of Souls Succeeds As 9/11 Memorial
“Acclaimed composers such as Joseph Schwantner, Richard Danielpour and Michael Gordon have written substantive opuses on 9/11, but none that have had the popularity of [John] Adams’ composition… Mr. Adams himself first thought that ‘you couldn’t do this unless it was in the worst possible taste.’ But he composed a tactful, quiet piece – detached rather than the in-your-face nature of some other responses.”
Reports Of Reading’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
Responding to a new NEA study reporting an increase in “literary reading,” David L. Ulin says: “I’m not so sure reading really was in crisis – any more than it ever has been. Laments over the death of reading are as old as mass literacy; ever since we began to consider culture as a social value, we’ve fixated on the way it falls apart. But what is it exactly we’re lamenting?”
Mansour Rahbani, 83, One-Half Of Lebanon’s Rodgers & Hammerstein
“Lebanese composer Mansour Rahbani, well-known in the Arab world along with his brother Assi for their role in musical and theatrical revival, died on Tuesday following a bout of pneumonia… Assi Rahbani was married to legendary Lebanese singing diva Fairuz, for whom the two men composed many songs and plays… Mansour and Assi, who became known as the Rahbani Brothers, also wrote several acclaimed musicals.”