Appreciating Ingmar Bergman

“Bergman’s ruthlessly honest investigation of his demons is what lends such images their crushing weight. However fictional, they are undeniably truthful expressions of one artist’s personal torment, redeemed by fleeting glimpses of eternity and redemption in a long, dark night of the soul.”

Who Will Be Next To Run Bayreuth?

“Tradition has it that the festival is always run by a Wagner, and this time round, the main candidates are again all in the family: Eva Wagner-Pasquier, 62, Wolfgang Wagner’s daughter from his first marriage; Katharina Wagner, 29, Wolfgang’s daughter from his second marriage; and Nike Wagner, 62, Wolfgang’s niece and Wieland’s daughter. At first glance, the choice appears to be between youth and experience.’

Dennison Quits Guggenheim For Sotheby’s

Lisa Dennison has resigned as director of the Guggenheim Museum and will take a job at Sotheby’s. “She is not the first museum director to join Sotheby’s. Over the years it has hired Richard E. Oldenburg, the former director of the Museum of Modern Art, and Charles S. Moffett, a director of the Phillips Collection in Washington, among others. Their connections to rich collectors and knowledge of art can make them highly desirable as business-getters for an auction house.”

Remembering Ingmar Bergman

“He will always be remembered first and foremost as one of the most influential of European auteurs, a filmmaker whose enthralling forays into characters’ interior darkness were unmatched in their psychological acuity and inward intensity. But Bergman, who died Monday at 89, will also go down in history as one of the greatest stage directors of the second half of the 20th century, a figure comparable to Britain’s Peter Brook, Italy’s Giorgio Strehler, France’s Ariane Mnouchkine and Germany’s Peter Stein.”