The 54-year-old founder of the wildly successful choir The Sixteen wants to bring America’s oldest performing arts organization back to its roots. “The Handel and Haydn Society is a great brand name. You’ve got two of the great composers of Baroque and Classical music. Let’s concentrate on those two people. We don’t really need to go beyond those boundaries.”
Tag: 09.26.08
Stolen Renoir Found After 33 Years
Last week Italy’s Carabinieri recovered the painting of a nude woman which had been stolen from a private collector in Milan back in 1975. (And who tipped off the police? An art critic.)
Congress Passes New Law Creating ‘Copyright Czar’
The new Cabinet-level official “will oversee government anti-piracy crackdowns and, among other things, train other countries about [intellectual property law] enforcement. The legislation also creates an FBI piracy unit and allows for the forfeiture of equipment used in large pirating operations.”
Sarah Palin, the ‘Sexy Puritan’
The vice-presidential candidate “represents the state-of-the-art version of a particular type of woman… that’s become a familiar and potent figure in the culture war in recent years.” Sexy Puritans attract attention “not simply by advocating conservative positions on hot-button social issues but by embodying nonthreatening mainstream standards of female beauty and behavior at the same time. The net result is a paradox… You get a little thrill along with your traditional values, a wink along with the wagging finger. Somehow, you don’t feel quite as much like a prig as you expected to.”
Cultural Policy Shut Out Of Presidential Politics
Whether or not tonight’s presidential debate in Mississippi goes forward as scheduled, there’s no chance that cultural policy will be even a blip on the radar screen of the participants. “The reason these questions won’t be asked is not because they are trivial. Quite the contrary. The debates, which aren’t really debates but elaborately scripted reality television shows, are designed to be trivial.”
Could Hip-Hop Celebrity Be Coming To Broadway?
Hip-hop star Jay-Z may be on the verge of investing in a new Broadway production in a big way. Fela! – which is based on the life of Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti – is a creation of choreographer Bill T. Jones, and is currently running off-Broadway.
D.C. Gallery To Auction Off Part Of Its Collection
“The Corcoran Gallery of Art plans to sell 10 paintings from its permanent collection at a public auction in December as a first step toward refining the museum’s focus and providing funds for purchasing future works. The sale is an extremely rare move for a Washington museum, but not surprising for the Corcoran, which has grappled with its direction and finances for several years.”
Venerable Editor Charlotte Kohler Dies At 99
“Charlotte Kohler, who as a longtime editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review was a quiet influence on the course of 20th-century American writing, died at her home in Charlottesville, Va., on Sept. 15. She was 99.”
The Year Of The Crypto-Doc?
“The 46th New York Film Festival includes a striking number of features — among them some of the strongest and freshest films likely to be shown on Manhattan screens this year — that might be called semi- or quasi- or crypto-documentaries.” Which is to say, they’re hard films to pin down.
Ouroussoff Slams Columbus Circle Redesign
The critics aren’t pulling any punches with the controversial redesign of 2 Columbus Circle in New York. “This is not the bold architectural statement that might have justified the destruction of an important piece of New York history. Poorly detailed and lacking in confidence, the project is a victory only for people who favor the safe and inoffensive and have always been squeamish about the frictions that give this city its vitality.”