Tag: 11.16.06

Sarah Kane: Brilliant Or Overrated?

Sarah Kane is a polarizing playwright. Some call her great, while others link her high posthumous profile more or less directly to her suicide. In any case, there is “the creeping correlation of Kane’s suffering with her talent (pace Plath). … There are kinds of plays you can’t say you find lethal without people assuming that you loathed them because they were too visceral, too truthful for you. And I suspect critics are increasingly afraid of being thought uncool if they express disgust with brutality on stage.”

University Gets Lost Poem By Canadian Rebel Leader

“In the weeks leading up to his hanging for high treason 121 years ago today, Louis Riel struck up a friendship with his jailer. This week, a poem the Métis leader wrote for Robert Gordon becomes a prized part of the archives at the University of Saskatchewan. …” Written in English “in Riel’s flowing script, the poem was apparently penned at Mr. Gordon’s request. The loose pages, now yellowed with time, are dated Oct. 27, 1885. Riel was hanged about three weeks later on Nov. 16.”

Bill Blass As Radical, By Way Of Paul Rudnick

Fashion is not only invading television and museums; it’s on the New York stage, too, in the form of Paul Rudnick’s play, “Regrets Only,” whose central character is based on the late designer, Bill Blass. Rudnick says he’s surprised by the public’s fashion savvy — but should Rudnick have been a little more savvy about who Blass was? Cathy Horyn, who edited Blass’s memoir, seems to think so.

Fashion As Art (And Where Does It Belong?)

The fashion exhibition at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is surprisingly substantial, but the expected question remains: Are such exhibitions a sign of the coming apocalypse? “I want people to ask questions while they are walking through the gallery,” MFA curator Pamela Parmal explained. “Is this reflective of the time? Is this art? Is this marketing? Are these people crazy?”

So Much For The ‘New South’

Actors Delta Burke and Leslie Jordan were scheduled to appear on a local TV talk show in Nashville this week to promote the plays they are starring in. But once the show’s producers realized that the plays (both of which have won several prestigious drama awards) contained gay themes, the stars were told not to bother showing up. The station explained that its viewers are “very conservative,” and it didn’t want to risk offending them.

Met Still Running In The Red

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art ran a $3.2 million deficit for fiscal 2006, the museum’s fifth straight year in the red. In a clear effort to bring its budget under control, the Met hiked its admission fee to $20, and made good strides in boosting its endowment. The museum also sold off nearly $27 million worth of the art in its collection this year (compared to just over half a million the year before,) and spent only $34 million on new art (a third of what it spent in fiscal ’05.)

Now That The Dust Has Settled At MoMA…

New York’s Museum of Modern Art has finally completed its $850 million expansion, and is now hoping to maintain the public interest that has been stirred up by its dramatic new digs and perceived upgrade in status. In a new interview, MoMA director Glenn Lowry responds to criticism of his supposed top-down management style, and insists that he has no intention of following other museums like the Tate and the Pompidou in creating branch museums in other cities and countries.

Eschenbach Says He’s Out Because Musicians Hated Him

At a closed rehearsal with the musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra, outgoing music director Christoph Eschenbach revealed that his decision to leave was sparked by a conversation with the orchestra’s CEO in which Eschenbach was told that “80 percent of the musicians did not agree with his artistic interpretations; that 80 percent of the musicians left concerts feeling great anger; and that the orchestra was a ‘ticking time bomb.'”