Striking writers have had to get creative to keep their plight in the public eye during the months-long work stoppage. “Yesterday, you had writers from ‘The Daily Show coming to [Capitol Hill] to face off against scribes from ‘The Colbert Report’ in a kind of meta-debate about the two-month-long strike.”
Tag: 01.24.08
Beecroft’s Way
“A global art phenomenon, [Vanessa] Beecroft is best known as the bard of bulimia (she has serious food issues) and for her infamous performance pieces in which she assembles dozens of naked women, accessorized in wigs or chains or Gucci, and displays them before an audience of elites, who sip champagne and stare.” Her latest project has taken her to Sudan, where she’s stirred up new controversies.
Hadid Design Favored For Broad Museum
Architect Zaha Hadid has been tapped to design the new Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. “Ms. Hadid, known for bold, unconventional forms, was selected last week in a competition that began in June, when the Broads gave $26 million toward the $40 million museum, which will house modern and contemporary art.”
Best To Keep Your Pranks Non-Nuclear These Days
Six members of a Czech art collective are facing years of jail time for an incident in which the group broadcast what appeared to be a nuclear explosion in the Czech countryside on a major TV channel. But the public doesn’t seem terribly upset by the prank. “The incident instead has highlighted an old Czech tradition of tomfoolery that is a particular matter of national cultural pride.”
Fingering The Musicians
Could the relative length of two of your fingers determine whether you’d be a good musician or not? Scientists say it’s possible, and the same finger length ratio could be linked to athletic skill, hormone exposure, and osteoarthritis risk.
New World Gets $5m For High-Tech Projects
“The New World Symphony, which broke ground in Miami Beach Wednesday on a new $200 million hall designed by architect Frank Gehry, is getting more than a new home. The orchestra also received a $5 million grant, from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, to advance its use of digital technology and transform the way audiences experience classical music.”
Any Chance Of An Inter-Orchestra Rumble?
The Royal Philharmonic is on a 21-city tour of North America, and the San Diego stop is promising to be a memorable one. There, the Philharmonic will share the stage with the San Diego Symphony, first in a sort of “battle of the bands” first half, then as a combined mega-orchestra after intermission.
Did Michelangelo Really Paint The Sistine Chapel?
“if three eminent German scholars are to be believed, the methods by which Michelangelo prepared for the epic struggle of painting the 300 figures on the chapel ceiling remains a mystery, and the drawings that are said to explain it merely mystify it. In a beautiful and weighty new book, Michelangelo: Complete Works, they insist that only a small minority of the drawings currently attributed to the master are definitely by him.”
Zaha Hadid Steps Up To Design Broad’s Michigan Museum
The museum, which is expected to open in 2010, will be Ms. Hadid’s first university building and only her second project in the United States, after the 2003 Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati.
Met Opera Cancels Opera On Demand Plan
The Met is scheduled to transmit eight operas live to movie theaters worldwide this season. Thirty days after each broadcast, the performance was to have been made available through on-demand services provided by cable television companies.