Austin’s new 100,000 square foot Blanton Museum is officially a hit, and it may be setting a new standard for university museums nationwide. “The sheer size of the completed building, with a huge atrium, allows the museum to show off its extensive 17,000-piece collection, including works by Durer, Rubens, Manet and Picasso… considering the small, dark gallery where its collection of Renaissance, Baroque, American and Latin American art used to hang, the new museum is a Texas-sized upgrade.”
Tag: 06.02.06
But Just Think What The Queer Eye Boys Could Do With His Costume!
As it turns out, gay people love Superman. Or, at least, an influential gay magazine says they do. And that brings up an interesting conundrum for Hollywood: in the aftermath of the national embrace of (and simultaneous backlash against) Brokeback Mountain, no one in the industry is quite sure whether a visible gay community embrace of a “straight” film will help or hurt the box office in the long run.
The Documentaries That Aren’t
“Message documentaries” have of late become the liberal answer to conservative talk radio – ideology-driven propaganda with an annoying habit of playing fast and loose with the facts. “The makers of such films today see their cinematic contributions as an antidote to media consolidation that, they say, restricts topics and voices to the bland and the commercial. As such, they feel little or no obligation to heed documentary-film traditions like point-by-point rebuttal or formal reality checks.”
Longtime Chicago Books Editor Retiring
“For more than 30 years, Henry Kisor has reigned supreme as a book editor and literary critic — the undisputed emperor of fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose, biography and memoir. Ever eloquent and fiercely incorruptible, his decrees have always been minimalist in style, and were generally drawn up on Post-It notes… Today is the last day that Henry will sit in the book maven’s catbird seat — a spot he first occupied at the old Chicago Daily News (from 1973-78) and has held at the Sun-Times ever since. When he leaves the building — and heads off into that great field of dreams known as retirement — he will carry away with him a great deal of history and authority, as well as a lifetime of achievement and wild adventure.”
It’s Been A Fun Three Decades; Now Get Out
An Off-Broadway theater is being evicted from its longtime home by the building’s owners, who have a deal in place to turn the property into a hotel. Lamb’s Theater Company, which has rented the space since 1978, is hoping to find a new home somewhere in Manhattan, and to rebuild its existing stage as is.
The Russians Are Coming Strong
The Russian art market is officially white-hot, and the latest evidence is the $52.1 million take from this week’s Russian art auction at Sotheby’s in London. “The sale set 25 record prices, and more than half were for contemporary Russian artists.”
Architect Of The Future, Available Now!
“Zaha Hadid is architecture’s diva, the most precocious talent in her profession… Ms. Hadid is not interested in emulating period styles, Modernist or otherwise. Yet her buildings are obviously deeply rooted in their context… For all the apparent radicalism of her forms, Ms. Hadid’s work forms a bridge from early Modernism to the digital age. By collecting such disparate strands into one vision, she defiantly embraces a cosmopolitanism that is hard put to assert itself in our dark age.”
August Wilson Alone Does Not A Theatrical Tradition Make
Black theatre is a scarce commodity in the U.S., outside of repetitive productions of the plays of a small, “commercially viable” group of playwrights. To actor/playwright Ted Lange, the struggle for African-American visability in the theatre world has never been fully engaged, and as part of his continuing effort to promote the genre, “he’s turned the 19 plays he’s written into a cottage industry for small black theaters across the country.”
Richard vs. The Ringtones
Actor Richard Griffiths reportedly stopped dead in the middle of a scene during a matinee performance of The History Boys on Broadway this week after several cell phones went off. Griffiths, who has a history of this kind of thing, gave the audience a thorough dressing-down, and threatened to stop the play for good if one more phone went off.
No One Cares What You Think, Anyway
“There’s no point debating anything online. You might as well hurl shoes in the air to knock clouds from the sky. The internet’s perfect for all manner of things, but productive discussion ain’t one of them. It provides scant room for debate and infinite opportunities for fruitless point-scoring: the heady combination of perceived anonymity, gestated responses, random heckling and a notional ‘live audience’ quickly conspire to create a ‘perfect storm’ of perpetual bickering. Stumble in, take umbrage with someone, trade a few blows, and within about two or three exchanges, the subject itself goes out the window. Suddenly you’re simply arguing about arguing.”