Salman “Rushdie’s new honor raises the same question now that his work raised when Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a fatwah against him in 1989. Do we choose to live in a world that honors writers or in a world that kills them?”
Tag: 06.26.07
To Kenya, A Voluntary Return Of Stolen Statues
“For some two decades the nine carved statues were displayed in the Park Avenue apartment of the producer Lewis M. Allen and the screenwriter Jay Presson Allen. … Ranging from four to six feet tall, the objects, known as vigango, were looted in recent decades from the burial sites of the rural Mijikenda people on the Kenyan coast.” Now Kenya is getting the objects back from Brooke Allen, the couple’s daughter.
Getty Still Buying Antiquities, True’s Successor Says
However much scrutiny other museums face over their acquisition of antiquities, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles probably faces more. But newly appointed antiquities curator Karol Wight — a protegee of her predecessor, Marion True, who remains on trial in Rome on looting charges — “declared that despite the pressures, she did not intend to play a passive role in the international antiquities trade. ‘We do intend to be active in the market,’ she said. ‘This still is a growing collection.'”
South Korea Excels At Dance Competition
“South Korean dancers dominated the field at the New York International Ballet Competition’s closing gala, winning or sharing a majority of the medals and other honors awarded on Sunday night at the Rose Theater. But the programming made it hard to get a clear picture of the skills of any of the contestants in the biennial competition, which this year drew dancers from 19 nations.”
Rebirth For Dance Theatre Of Harlem?
“Dance Theater has whittled down its deficit by about two-thirds, to $800,000, and… its budget next year will be $4.3 million. Following the precepts of Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook, who, like practical French cooks, used all the ingredients at hand, the company is working with Mustang Marketing, a feisty young consulting group based at Southern Methodist University, to help chart the way ahead.”