The man who designed Brazil’s once-futuristic capital (“widely considered an architectural masterwork and an unparalleled urban catastrophe”) is still working at age 101, so he was invited to design a monument for the city’s 50th anniversary in 2010. But when he revealed his plan for a new plaza, architects and preservations cried that Niemeyer’s new design just wouldn’t fit with Niemeyer’s old design.
Tag: 02.09.09
Dayton Ballet Announces ‘Indefinite Furlough’
Due to worse-than-expected ticket sales, the company “is fighting for economic survival… administrative pay has been cut 10 percent, dancer contracts have been reduced by three weeks and, following the season’s final scheduled performance on March 22, ‘the entire staff will go on indefinite furlough.'”
An Oscar For The Reader Would Be A Disgrace
“If I hadn’t used the locution so recently, I would be certain to call The Reader ‘The Worst Holocaust Film Ever Made.’ … This is a film whose essential metaphorical thrust is to exculpate Nazi-era Germans from knowing complicity in the Final Solution. The fact that it was recently nominated for a best picture Oscar offers stunning proof that Hollywood seems to believe that if it’s a ‘Holocaust film,’ it must be worthy of approbation, end of story.”
Tea and Sympathy Playwright Robert Anderson Dies At 91
“Robert Anderson, the American playwright and screenwriter whose popular plays explored relationships between men and women and children and parents — in Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang for My Father and You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running — died Feb. 9 at his Manhattan home.”
Arts Are Education, Health Care And Infrastructure
“It is time for the American arts community to confront its stunning political ineptitude. … In less than 75 years, the arts have gone from the single largest priority in a government stimulus package to a toxic joke, with a popular special amendment keeping them out. It is a stunning turnaround. How did it happen? Somehow it has come to be broadly accepted that concrete, asphalt and medicine for the body (as distinct from the heart and soul) have greater moral worth.”
A Dispatch From The Fund-Raising Front Line
It’s not the society reporting we’re used to reading, but the Washington National Opera Midwinter Gala is hardly alone in deglamorizing itself this year. “After Wall Street tanked and corporations stopped writing checks, gala organizers were forced to scale back everything from ticket prices (slashed from $1,000 to $500) to decor and centerpieces: flickering lanterns and artful veggies — headed to a food bank at the end of the night — instead of fresh flowers.”
Five Random Things Congress Hates About The Arts
Christopher Knight channels Washington. At No. 4 on his list: “Culture is girlie, not manly.”
The Kindle 2: Where’d The Magical Sparkle Pixie Go??
Live blogging, via text, photos and video, with the new gadget in hand: “Hey, it’s downright iPod Touchy. Nice rounded aluminum back with a plastic top. Will it stay on the toilet seat?”
Shepard Fairey, Seizing His 15 Minutes, Sues The AP
“Shepard Fairey, the artist whose ‘Hope’ image of President Barack Obama was added to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, sued the Associated Press over the news company’s copyright challenge to the artwork. Fairey seeks to ‘vindicate’ himself after the AP earlier accused him of copying the AP photograph on which the artist’s red-white-and-blue image of Obama is based, according to a complaint filed today in federal court in New York.”
For All The Lincoln Hoopla, Ford’s Theatre Is Still A Theatre
“‘I have a simple programming principle,’ said the Theatre Society director Paul Tetreault. ‘I try to imagine what Lincoln would have enjoyed seeing.’ This spring brings, somewhat amusingly, ‘The Civil War,’ a musical.”