“[He] funneled the proceeds from the sale of his father’s five-story town house on Gramercy Park into Grand Street, a journal conceived in the spirit of high-minded but nonacademic magazines like The Dial and Horizon. … A dandy, boulevardier and self-educated litterateur, Mr. Sonnenberg consulted only his own taste, backing it with substantial paychecks to his writers, some well known and others not.”
Tag: 06.26.10
East Asians, Portuguese Dominate USA Int’l Ballet Competition Medals
“Dancers from China, Portugal and South Korea received top awards Friday at the two-week USA International Ballet Competition in Mississippi. … The 13 jurors – each from a different country – did not award a gold medal in the senior men’s division.”
The Met Museum’s New Director On A ‘Fundamental Shift’ In Presentation
Thomas P Campbell: “We assume people know who Rembrandt is, for example … and, frankly, considering our international audience, I doubt whether many of them do know who [he] was, or the significance of a particular period room, in a broader context. What I’m trying to do is to get the museum rethinking the visitor experience from the moment that people arrive at the museum: the signage they encounter, the bits of paper they pick up, all the way through to the way we deliver information in the galleries.”
In The Current Art Market, What A Piece Is Matters More Than How It Looks
“Future historians peering at the outcome of art sales this year may conclude that the early 21st century was the time when abstract notions took precedence over visual perception. … This new cerebral approach to art that ignores the visual aspect has gone a long way toward erasing the distinction between supreme artistic achievement and moderately successful art.”
Looting Of Antiquities In Iraq Flares Up Anew
“This time it is not a result of the ‘stuff happens’ chaos that followed the American invasion in 2003, but rather the bureaucratic indifference of Iraq’s newly sovereign government. … A new antiquities police force, created in 2008 to replace withdrawing American troops, was supposed to have more than 5,000 officers by now. It has 106.”
Setting Philip Levine’s Poetry To Music Is Not Easy
In their plainspoken-ness and length, Levine’s poems hardly seem like promising material for choral composers. “[I]magery based on the smell of gasoline – and witty lines about how TVs seem to talk to themselves – ‘is not something you’d put in Debussy’,” says one composer who has taken on the Levine challenge for a commission from the Philadelphia choir called The Crossing.
Cirque Du Soleil Copes With Something New: A Box-Office Flop
“[T]he show was supposed to be another milestone: a production that could compete artistically and commercially with Broadway, blending signature Cirque acrobatics and clowns with elements of vaudeville, dance and musical theater. Instead Banana Shpeel will go down as one of the most frustrating failures in Cirque’s history.”
Australians, The Most Nimble, Most Mischievous TV Advertisers On Earth
“Australians wasted no time cashing in on the shock ouster of Kevin Rudd as prime minister, businesses launching a series of cheeky adverts to run alongside stories about the party coup.”
What If Kinky Friedman Were Actually Elected Texas Governor? Reykjavik Tries Something Similar
In the wake of Iceland’s financial collapse, punk rocker/comedian Jón Gnarr founded “the Best Party” (that’s its real name) and promised voters things like a Disneyland at the airport and “a drug-free Parliament by 2020.” Gnarr has just become mayor of Reykjavík, and he’s taking the job quite seriously.