“The VAG will move into a new building on land occupied until now by the Plaza of Nations in Vancouver near BC Place. The gallery will double in size in its new home to 320,000 square feet. A call for designs for the new VAG will go out to architects in the fall, and construction is expected to start in 2011. The move won’t happen for several years — probably in 2013.”
Tag: 05.20.08
Fire Strikes Berlin Philharmonic Home
The blaze broke out beneath the roof of the building directly over the main concert hall, which seats 2,500 and is famed for its extraordinary acoustics. The cause was not immediately clear.
Musical On Nelson Mandela To Play Broadway
“Storyline will mix historical events with anecdotes from a forthcoming memoir by Zindzi Mandela about growing up in the apartheid era as the daughter of Nelson Mandela, the Nobel Peace Prize winner whose efforts played a major role in ending the South African policy of racial segregation.”
Israeli Cities Ban Sex In The City Ads
Municipal officials there asked to have the word “sex” removed from the posters. “We told them, the way you don’t remove the word “Coca” from “Coca-Cola” and just leave “Cola,” we can’t do it in this case. It’s ludicrous.”
Chicago Lyric Opera Posts Comfortable Surplus
“The company has posted a budget surplus of more than $800,000 for its 2007-08 season, on an operating budget of $51.6 million. This marked the fifth consecutive fiscal year Lyric has recorded an excess of income over expenses.”
Performers’ Union Says It Won’t Challenge UK Smoking Ban
“Performers have warned that the legislation, which came into force last June, is causing pubs and clubs – one of light entertainment’s biggest employers – to close at an alarming rate. This has had a knock-on effect for artists, and they claim that work opportunities have fallen by as much as 50%.”
NEA Presses US Literature Into Diplomatic Service
“The Big Read Egypt/US will involve reciprocal promotions of three celebrated American writers in Egypt, and just the one Egyptian writer in the States. Naguib Mahfouz’s The Thief and the Dogs will be America’s reading book, while Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath will be the focus of reading groups and other events in Cairo and Alexandria.”
America’s Endangered Historic Sites
“Today the National Trust for Historic Preservation will issue its annual list of 11 sites around the U.S. that it considers to be the ones most threatened by development, neglect or whatever other forces devour the past. Their hope is that by calling attention to places in jeopardy they can mobilize people to protect them.”
Minority Theatres Complain Of Poor Media Coverage
“For Emanuel Moran, artistic director of Teatro Sea in Manhattan, Latino theatres face a twofold disadvantage when gaining media coverage: being a low-budget minority theatre, and featuring bilingual and Spanish language productions.”
For Sale – A Surrealist Manifesto
“The only known complete manuscript of Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 – one of the most influential documents in modern art – will be sold by Sotheby’s in Paris tomorrow. To the annoyance of art critics, the document is to be sold separately from eight other Breton manuscripts which are associated with the first published version of the manifesto.”