“Where might you expect to find William Hogarth’s fine and recently restored portraits of William and Elizabeth James, or a lobby-filling Roman floor-mosaic from Antioch that depicts a lively lion and antelope hunt? Or Otto Dix’s painting of a pregnant woman, which has its own visitors book nearby, so that people can record their usually extreme reactions to it?” Worcester, Mass., that’s where. Says director Matthias Waschek, “The big problem we have is that the collection is outsizing its city.”
Tag: 03.31.18
Why Elena Ferrante Doesn’t Like Exclamation Points
“Mainly, this is because I’m afraid of excesses – mine and others’. Sometimes people make fun of me. They say: ‘You want a world without outbursts of joy, suffering, anger, hatred?’ Yes, I want precisely that, I answer. … But as the world isn’t going in that direction, I make an effort, at least in the artificial universe that is delineated by writing, never to exaggerate with an exclamation mark.”
After 75 Years, How Well Has Rodgers And Hammerstein’s ‘Oklahoma!’ Held Up?
“Said another way: Whose America did Oklahoma! depict?” (For one thing, the show is lily-white, and the state at the turn of the 20th century was decidedly not.) “And is the musical’s vision of the nation relevant today?”
Why Did Wes Anderson Set ‘Isle Of Dogs’ In Japan, Anyway?
Nina Li Coomes: “In the film, the country is a plot device that creates a vague sense of unfamiliarity to move the story forward and explain away bizarre narrative elements. … [In other words,] using Japan as a way to normalize outlandishness, thus creating the illusion of a cohesive story.”
Smithsonian Chief Supports Women’s History Programming, But Not A New Women’s History Museum
“We are half of America. Don’t we deserve a museum?”, said Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who has written legislation to establish a women’s history museum at the Smithsonian. (She claims to have 250 co-sponsors.) But Smithsonian Secretary David J. Skorton, who has just announced the launch of an institution-wide Women’s History Initiative, says, “We’re not in a position to initiate any new museums in the near future.”
After 18 Years, Bramwell Tovey Prepares For His Vancouver Symphony Exit
Today’s Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is in large measure Tovey’s creation, having brought in more than half the players and significantly raised performance standards, as anyone could testify who attended this year’s recently concluded Spring Festival.
After An Oscar Win, A Decade Of Bad Decisions And Flops, And Now, Perhaps, A Renaissance
Cuba Gooding Jr. says he had been preparing his entire life to win an Oscar, which he did in 1997 for Jerry Maguire – but he wasn’t prepared for what to do afterwards. Some very, very bad moves, and movies, followed. “But in recent years Gooding has been clawing his way back. In 2016, he returned to global attention with the acclaimed Ryan Murphy series The People v OJ Simpson; now he’s leading a London revival of the musical Chicago, playing the male lead, lawyer Billy Flynn.”
The Science Of Restoring Jackson Pollock
What else is there to say? (Quite a lot, but – ) “‘Everyone thinks anyone can replicate a Jackson Pollock painting,’ said private conservator Chris Stavroudis, recalling a Three Stooges bit in which they spit paint on a canvas. ‘There’s a lot more to the process.'”
Can Theatre In A Small City Recover From A Serious MeToo Accusation?
The Harlequin Theatre in Olympia, Washington, was hit hard a couple of weeks ago when a Seattle Times story revealed that one of its founders ignored harassment accusations because he was “starstruck” by playwright Israel Horovitz – and, after the story blew up, the founder resigned. One reaction, by someone who used to work for the Harlequin: “My biggest fear is that it’s going to tank a very important organization in this community. It would be a shame if they burned down the house.” But it’s not the first time in recent history that the Olympia theater world has been rocked by scandal.
A New Statue In Denmark Celebrates A Revolt Against Colonialism
The statue of a Black woman in a country where 98 percent of statues are of white men, is nearly 23 feet tall and was inspired by Mary Thomas, Queen Mary, a 19th-century rebel queen who led a revolt against Denmark’s colonial rule in the Caribbean.