Miami City Ballet Board Fires Executive Director

“Executive Director Nicholas Goldsborough, hired last fall to improve fundraising and management, is out as of Saturday. … ‘Apparently that is correct,’ Goldsborough said upon being told of a Thursday email announcing his resignation. … And staff at the company and its school have been told they will receive pay cuts and unpaid furloughs in the face of serious financial troubles.”

150 Years Of The Search For The Great American Novel

“Since its inception, the GAN has been a remarkably enduring concept, staying stubbornly put in critical and popular discourse alike despite numerous – some, almost successful – murder attempts. But though the GAN as such seems here to stay, the way we think about it has evolved significantly from its original conception to the present day. And that evolution is as inevitable as it is profound.”

More Than A Concept (Is Kowloon Asia’s Next Cultural Center?)

“The HK$21.6bn (£1.8bn) West Kowloon project has provoked the kind of scepticism from onlookers that seems to greet any grandiose cultural initiative. The championing of artistic excellence and cultural enlightenment can be an awkward conversation-stopper when the hard talk is of a world dipping in and out of recession and the need for belt-tightening. But finally Norman Foster’s elegant master plan is moving beyond the conceptual stage.”

The Olympics Of Poetry

“The relationship between poetry and the Olympics goes back to the very origins of the Games. In ancient Greece, literary events were an indispensable part of athletic festivals, where fully clothed writers could be as popular with the crowd as the buff athletes who strutted about in the nude, gleaming with olive oil.”