“The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum reopened after a refurbishment with paintings lent by the Mauritshuis … [that] attracted 10,573 visitors a day … It was a different story in the leading museums of New York, London and Paris, where contemporary and Modern art dominated the city’s top shows.”
Tag: 03.28.13
New Islamic Wings Lead Louvre, Met To Top Of Best-Attended List
“One interesting factor that emerged for researchers was that the top two venues of 2012” – the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum in New York – “had unveiled much-anticipated gallery spaces devoted to Islamic art during the year.”
Are Museums Now Trapped In The Exhibition-Industrial Complex?
Blake Gopnik: “In Tokyo, 758,266 people rush to see the treasures of Holland’s Mauritshuis museum; in New York, 605,586 people view the photos of Cindy Sherman, by Cindy Sherman … these are just a few of the staggering attendance figures for recent exhibitions. Could there be any better sign of the health of our museums? Unless we’re seeing symptoms of florid illness.”
In La Scala’s Shadow, Rome Opera Transforms Itself
First, the Teatro dell’Opera engaged Riccardo Muti as its “honorary director for life”. “But the opera house has gone further, starting a school for young musicians and dancers, developing programs for younger audiences and planning to expand use of its summertime venue, the spectacular Baths of Caracalla.”
Opera Gets Its Own Version Of The Oscars
The International Opera Awards, whose inaugural ceremony will be in London on April 22, “are global in scope and come in 21 categories, offering a chance to compare achievements in opera like never before” – for instance, a Norma from Leeds vs. a Lulu from Brussels and a Peter Grimes from La Scala.
Faulkner’s Past Isn’t Dead; You Can Buy It At Auction
An early, unpublished story, “along with a stack of hand-corrected manuscripts, letters, a hand-bound poetry book and Faulkner’s Nobel medal, are headed to Sotheby’s for auction in June.”
Was Ancient Egypt A Proto-Feminist Society?
“As independent citizens equal to men under the law, Egyptian women could own their own property, buy and sell it, keep hold of it despite marriage … They did work in the public sphere alongside men at every level of society, … [and] surviving accounts also reveal they received the same pay as male colleagues for undertaking the same work.”
Who Was Mary Magdalene?
“Was she, as depicted in the Four Gospels, the most favoured friend and closest disciple of Jesus Christ, forever graced by being the person he first met after his resurrection? Or was she the fallen woman so brilliantly reconstructed by Pope Gregory in the sixth century as a superb and effective act of misogynist propaganda?”
Virgin Mary Appears On Broadway; Conservative Catholic Group Is Predictably Outraged
“The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property published a lengthy statement on its website in which it called the play” – Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary – ‘blasphemous’. … The group also noted that the play is written by ‘an avowed homosexual’ and ‘is being performed and directed by open lesbians, namely, Irish actress Fiona Shaw and Deborah Warner’.”
Theatre’s Great Special Effect: The Quick Change (It Always Gets ‘Em)
“After all, actors on screen have been changing shape before our eyes – whether from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, or from Lon Chaney Jr. into the Werewolf – for almost as long as there have been moving pictures. … In theater, on the other hand, something as rudimentary as an instant change of costume makes grown-ups gasp.”