Buffalo’s Knight-Albright Museum Reconsiders Its Controversial Expansion Plans

“The museum and its development team will re-examine an expansion option on the north and northwest side of the campus connected to the 1905 Building to determine whether this could meet the museum’s needs, while also minimizing impacts on the Albright-Knox’s historic buildings,” according to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, in a statement Friday afternoon.

Sometimes An Umbrella Is Just An Umbrella, But Not In British Literature

Now, we’re all going to reread literally every Dickens novel, not to mention J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and, of course, Mary Poppins: “In addition to a vast array of sexual clues and cues, John Bowen has found Dickensian brollies masquerading as ‘weapons and shields . . . birds, cabbages and leaves.’ And whether they’re in the right place or the wrong place (like the umbrella in Quilp’s eulogy), there is some intangible but undeniable facet of umbrellaness that has captured the human imagination for centuries.”

A Prizewinning Poet Who Wants People To Feel The Press And Urgency Of Her Language

Jennifer Tseng, whose The Passion of Woo and Isolde just won a poetry prize, on the urgency of writing under the current U.S. president: “This is an ongoing dilemma for me as a writer. How can I take pleasure in the beauty of language without obscuring meaning; can I allow myself to be dazzled by words without losing consciousness? How do I cultivate ambiguity and possibility without endorsing neutrality? Can I let my work be led by complexity without losing sight of simple, urgent messages?”

The Myth Of The (Male) Artistic Genius

Ugh: “A proclivity for reprehensible acts is built right into the mythos of the artistic genius — a designation rarely extended to women. This is what the historian Martin Jay calls ‘the aesthetic alibi’: The art excuses the crime. Mr. Jay writes that in the 19th century, artistic genius ‘was often construed as unbound by nonaesthetic considerations — cognitive, ethical, or whatever.’ And often the ethical lapses afforded to artists have concerned the mistreatment of women.”

A Court Has Blocked The Sale Of The Berkshire Museum’s Rockwells And Other Art

The court said that letting the sale go on would pose more of a risk than stopping it … for now. “The sale had been opposed by two groups of plaintiffs, including Rockwell’s sons, as well as the office of the Massachusetts attorney general, which said that it would violate various trusts and restrictions related to how the works must be handled. The attorney general, Maura Healey, who had been seeking additional time to examine the museum’s plan, asked the court on Friday for an injunction halting the sale.”

The Long, Gritty Legacy Of Kenneth MacMillan

Britain’s MacMillan “also effectively reinvented the 19th-century narrative ballet for an audience ready for tales of passion, drama and violence rather than those involving myths, swans and chivalry. He was — like Jerome Robbins and Antony Tudor in the United States — a bringer of neurosis, psychological drama and real-life grit to the rarefied world of ballet.”

Why Did The Tony Awards Suddenly Rule ‘1984’ Ineligible?

Well, we know why, but we don’t know why the show did what it did in the first place: “The production, whose lead producer is Scott Rudin, refused to provide tickets for one of the Tony nominators, Jose Antonio Vargas, and as a result, Tony officials pulled 1984’s eligibility. (Broadway sources, speaking on background because they weren’t authorized to comment, said the Tony Awards were also rebuffed in efforts to buy the tickets for Vargas.)”

How Should Hollywood Stop Abusers And The Culture Of Abuse?

Judd Apatow: “How are we going to decide who we shouldn’t work with? But in the most extreme cases, it seems pretty clear. We shouldn’t be making TV shows with Bill Cosby. We shouldn’t be putting on new shows with Bill O’Reilly. We shouldn’t be starring in movies produced by Harvey Weinstein. There are cases which are also complicated, and everybody has their own set of ethics about it, and those debates will continue. But there are very clear cases where people are getting hurt, and their lives are being ruined by people.”