“Denise Bradley, executive director of the Museum of the African Diaspora, is reporting for work for the last time today. Bradley has been at the helm of the museum, which is devoted to the origins, dispersal and cultural legacy of African populations, since it opened two years ago. … Bradley said the museum’s financial health had nothing to do with her departure. Several sources said MoAD is having significant financial problems.”
Tag: 08.15.07
MLK Statue Draws Ire For Sculptor’s Nationality
Chinese artist Lei Yixin is sculpting a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. that’s bound for Washington, D.C. “For China’s artists, the selection of Lei as the lead sculptor for the project, to be unveiled in 2009 on the Mall, is a triumphant moment.” But some Americans object. “By awarding the contract to a Chinese artist, the foundation financing the project has touched on sensitivities at the core of U.S.-Sino relations: nationalism, racism and worries about what China’s emergence as an economic and cultural world power means for America.”
Possible Rove Book Stirs Publishers’ Interest
“Karl Rove has set imaginations ablaze with his recent comments that he plans to teach and write a book. Would Rove, the nation’s man of mystery who is legendary for his loyalty, actually write a book that revealed life behind the White House’s wrought-iron fence? That’s the question publishers are asking themselves and eager to take a chance on.”
Cultural Battleground: A School’s “Christmas Concert”
On Monday night in a Long Island town bordering Queens, “more than 250 people showed up to demand that the name of the annual Christmas Concert not be changed to Winter Concert. … The small school district is one of the few in the New York region that continues to call its December program the Christmas Concert. Almost all the others have switched to the term holiday or winter concert, both to avoid seeming to exclude non-Christian families and to move toward the ideal of a level cultural playing field for pupils of every possible background.”
Soviet Composer Tikhon Khrennikov Dies At 94
“Tikhon Khrennikov, a prolific Russian composer and pianist best known in the West as an official Soviet antagonist of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, died yesterday in Moscow. … Mr. Khrennikov, regarded as a promising young composer in the 1930s, was able to survive in the perilous currents of Soviet politics from the Stalin era on.”
At 50, “On The Road” Remains Culturally Relevant
Still selling briskly at 50, “On the Road” “has far outlasted many other cult classics. Part of the reason for the novel’s staying power is that popular artists keep referencing it. (A new movie version, directed by Walter Salles, who made ‘The Motorcycle Diaries,’ is scheduled to go into production early next year.) Everyone from Bob Dylan to the Beastie Boys has been inspired by Kerouac. … But keeping it on hand can be difficult: among book-world insiders, ‘On the Road’ is known to be a heavily shoplifted work….”
In This Corner, Representing The USA: Norman Mailer
After seeing both Alan Bennett and Norman Mailer at public events in Edinburgh (Mailer attending by video link), Sarah Crompton posits that “if you were searching for writers to represent their countries at some kind of authorial Olympics, Bennett and Mailer would be the perfect choice of contestants. … Both will be remembered and revered as long as people love books; but there could never be any mistaking which man was British and which American.”
At Last, Hit Iraq War Play To Get A London Stage
“After a year of frustration searching for a suitable space, Black Watch, last year’s Edinburgh festival hit play about the Scottish regiment and the lives of its soldiers in Iraq, is finally to be shown in England. It will be staged at the Barbican in London next June, nearly two years after its Edinburgh festival premiere.” Audiences in Los Angeles and New York will see it first, this fall….