Painter and installation artist Subodh Kerkar is about to open an exhibition in a beach resort town in Goa featuring images of the elephant-headed god Ganesh in various guises: as Rodin’s Thinker, performing a Maori war dance, as an Oscar statuette, and so on. Several militant Hindu groups are threatening demonstrations and violence against the show and the artist; Kerkar protests that he is himself a devotee of Ganesh.
Tag: 08.18.09
Texas’s Metropolitan Classical Ballet Cuts Entire Season Except For Nutcracker
“Metropolitan Classical Ballet, the Arlington-based dance company that has been a fixture on the [Dallas-Fort Worth] Metroplex’s dance scene for more than a decade, announced Tuesday that it will severely curtail its upcoming season, including eliminating all three scheduled repertory shows at Bass Performance Hall.”
Coming Home: Neeme Järvi To Return To Estonian National SO
“[T]he Estonian-born music director emeritus of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra” and conductor laureate of the New Jersey Symphony “is returning to his hometown of Tallinn to become the music director of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, the ensemble that launched his career nearly 50 years ago.”
Another Issue About LACMA’s Director: He Spends A Lot Of Time, And Per Diem Money, In New York
Michael Govan receives a per diem of “$1,000 a night to stay in his own New York condominium, while there on museum business,” to a maximum of $36,000 a year. Says Christopher Knight: “It’s about time, not money. Do the math: The payment means that out of 1,095 days total, the director was paid for working 103 days in New York. On a six- or even seven-day work week, that’s 10% of his time.”
So People Really Do Think They Can Dance (Or At Least Learn How)
The popularity of television series like Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance and America’s Best Dance Crew is leading to a surge of enrollment in dance classes.
Book Your Tickets Now, Fanboys: Monty Python Reunion Set For This Fall
“The Pythons will meet again to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the creation of the troupe on Oct. 15 at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City. While the event will feature no cows being flung by catapult … the reunion will involve the complete troupe” – including, we are told, the late Graham Chapman. The gathering is to launch the new documentary Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut).
Unknown Works By Villa-Lobos Discovered In Rio
“Unpublished scores by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) were found at the Rio de Janeiro School of Music library, according to the school’s director. … [T]he handwritten scores were dated 1921.”
Cultural Critic And Publisher Richard Poirier Dies At 83
He was “a prolific and populist cultural critic who founded a literary journal, Raritan: A Quarterly Review, and … a founder of Library of America, the nonprofit publisher of American classics.”
The Book Doctors Can’t Put Down
“It was a raunchy, troubling and hilarious novel that turned into a cult phenomenon devoured by a legion of medical students, interns, residents and doctors. It introduced characters like ‘Fat Man’ – the all-knowing but crude senior resident – and medical slang like Gomer, for Get Out of My Emergency Room.”
Leibovitz Creditor Goldman Sachs Says It Wants To Help
“Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said it owns part of the $24 million loan to photographer Annie Leibovitz that led to the breach-of-contract lawsuit she faces, and offered to work with her to ‘resolve her financing needs.'” It said it has “proposed to Art Capital,” the creditor pursuing the suit, “that we terminate the current loan agreement with their affiliate so that we can work directly with Ms. Leibovitz.” Art Capital denied that Goldman Sachs had made such a proposal.