“Unlike Sotheby’s sale on Tuesday, where bidding was thin and buyers reluctant, Christie’s auction of postwar and contemporary art … was a buoyant hour and a half during which record prices were set for recognized artists like David Hockney.” Then again, the evening’s total was $93.7 million, down from $348.2 million a year ago.
Tag: 05.14.09
Obama’s NEA Surprise Is Greeted With Delight
The nomination of Broadway producer Rocco Landesman to lead the NEA “was immediately read as a way to re-energize the agency” and comes at a time when “the economic turmoil has hit the nonprofit arts world extremely hard. Landesman’s reputation as a fighter, if not always a diplomatic one, pleased arts supporters in very different worlds.”
Why Newspapers Aren’t Interviewing Elizabeth Edwards
“Elizabeth Edwards has been willing to talk about most anything in interviews about her new memoir that details her husband John’s affair, but only under one condition: Interviewers must agree not to mention the name of the other woman in their broadcasts or stories. … No newspaper has agreed to the restriction so far, according to David Drake, Edwards’s publicist.”
For Landesman, Big Expectations (And Questions, Too)
“Can a leader of the commercial theater shift to a job with a nonprofit constituency? And can someone used to being the boss — and a notably outspoken one in a world that often speaks in not-for-attribution, backstage whispers — be politic and diplomatic heading a government agency that answers to the Oval Office and Capitol Hill?”
Sans Rocco, Who’ll Be Public Face Of Broadway Business?
“Ever since the November death of Gerald Schoenfeld, the theater owner and the longtime public face of Broadway to New Yorkers and their mayors, governors and lawmakers, many people in the theater world thought one of his peers, Rocco Landesman, would succeed him as the next ambassador for Broadway.” With Landesman most likely NEA-bound, Broadway has to look elsewhere for that leadership.
Coal Mining Threatens South Africa’s Mapungubwe Ruins
“South Africa’s environment ministry may try block a coal project proposed by a company partly owned by ArcelorMittal because it jeopardizes the United Nations- recognized World Heritage Status of a set of historical ruins.” The ruins are “remnants of what was once southern Africa’s biggest kingdom…. Artifacts including a gold ornament, known as the Golden Rhinoceros, have been found at the site while the ruins include royal graves and stone walls.”
Renzo Piano’s Addition To Art Institute Of Chicago: ‘The Effect Is Magical’
Nicolai Ouroussoff: “He is not out to start a revolution. His designs are about tranquillity, not conflict. The serenity of his best buildings can almost make you believe that we live in a civilized world. The new $294 million Modern Wing … is the closest Mr. Piano has come in at least a decade to achieving this near-classical ideal.”
– And His Bridge To Millennium Park Is ‘Fun With A Capital F’
Blair Kamin: “Chicago, get ready for your latest joy ride. A new pedestrian bridge, which links Millennium Park and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing, is a walk through the treetops, a sidewalk soaring through the sky. Climb the Nichols Bridgeway, as this sloping, 620-foot-long span is called, and you’re hovering over Monroe Street, as though you are in a helicopter.”
All Of Graham’s Flaws And Virtues, In A Single Work
Alastair Macaulay: “The full-evening Clytemnestra was first presented 50 years ago. It’s been claimed as the ultimate Graham dance drama, as an overambitious and pretentious mess, as the climax of the choregrapher’s 1940s-50s era of dramatizing Greek myths in psychological terms, as a turgid collection of stylistic clichés … I find all these responses valid; and I’m glad I was there.”