Newspapers are dropping their movie critics. So why does that matter? “Fewer movie critics may lead to homogenized movie criticism. Most of the movie critics for the major wire services and national publications live in New York and Los Angeles. Now, I know and admire a great many critics who live in those cities – but their perspective doesn’t always match that of the people where I live.”
Tag: 05.12.07
Shorter Classics Are Still Classics
So England’s Orion Books is publishing shortened versions of classic literature. And what’s the harm? “Of course great art deserves to be experienced on its own uncompromising terms, flaws and all. But the older I get, the more I appreciate those artists who say what they have to say, then shut up. Is there a more powerfully moving novel than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 56,000-word ‘The Great Gatsby’? Or a funnier film than Buster Keaton’s 44-minute ‘Sherlock Jr.’?”
Michael Govan’s New LA County Museum
“On the job just more than a year, Govan has rejiggered an ambitious expansion and renovation project designed by architect Renzo Piano, recruited high-powered trustees and shaken up the exhibition program. He has envisioned a museum that views its history through Latin America and Asia, and its future through contemporary artists. But his perception of LACMA as a snoozing Goliath hasn’t changed.”
Museum Kerfuffle Envelopes Bath
A controversial new museum extension in the UK city of Bath has residents and architecture buffs in an uproar. “The fact that the scheme contravenes the one sine qua non of building in Bath – all projects have to be in Bath stone – has proved a particular source of outrage to its opponents. The material homogeneity of Bath’s architecture is undoubtedly one of the city’s great glories, and should not be sacrificed lightly.”
Art Bonding: The Sino-Canadian Connection
“Museums from the Louvre to the Guggenheim are currently engaged in exchanges with the Chinese.” But Canada is way ahead of the curve on Chinese art, and various Canadian museums have spent years building mutually beneficial relationships with Chinese art institutions.
WNO Gets In On Opera Simulcasting
“Washington National Opera will present a live simulcast of a matinee performance of Puccini’s La Boheme to at least 16 colleges, universities and high schools across the nation Sept. 23. The troupe will also present its free simulcast to the Mall… The simulcast will be offered to the schools free of charge, with the cost — about $15,000 per institution — borne by WNO trustees.”
A Slap Carries Quite An Echo
A small firestorm has erupted in the New York dance world over a slap to the face added to a City Ballet production of Romeo & Juliet. “For many viewers this moment blights the choreographer Peter Martins’s City Ballet production. For some, moreover, it connects to other recent presentations of violence against women onstage.”
Getty May Return Italian Goddess Statue
“The J. Paul Getty Museum inched a step closer to relinquishing ownership of one of its most prized artifacts, a 2,400-year-old statue of a goddess claimed by Italy, at a conference of international experts to discuss the artifact this week.”
An Octogenarian Musician For All Seasons
By age 80, most musicians have long since stopped performing in public, but Charles Rosen remains not only an active pianist and scholar, he is one of New York’s more influential musical figures. “His curiosity and passion remain insatiable when he is engaged with the many composers he does like… The rhythm of Mr. Rosen’s brain, meanwhile, is still so fast that a fly on the wall of his mind would beg for mercy.”
Auburn Housing Project Expands Its Influence
Auburn University’s Rural Studio, which began as a group of devoted and socially conscious architecture students building highly creative low-income housing, has become something much more dramatic in the five years since the death of its founder. “The students, most of them undergraduates, still design and build private homes for people below the poverty line, but they have increasingly shifted into large-scale public projects.”