“A group of Spanish architects and art world types has savagely denounced the continuing work to complete Gaudí’s religious masterpiece the Sagrada Familia. Should work on this vast church – often mistaken, with good reason, for Barcelona’s cathedral – have been carried on, after his death in 1926 left it unfinished? The grumpy intellectuals say no. Gaudí, they complain, is being banalised in the name of tourism.”
Tag: 12.08.08
In Denver & San Francisco, Contrasting Views Of Libeskind
“Two American museums designed by one world-famous architect have evoked two very different reactions from visitors and critics alike. The Denver Art Museum and San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum were both designed by Daniel Libeskind. … Both Libeskind museums are seen as architectural standouts. But in buildings designed to showcase art, can form impede function?”
Granta Appoints John Freeman American Editor
“Former president of the National Book Critics Circle and prolific book reviewer John Freeman has been appointed American editor of Granta magazine. Freeman, who will remain in New York, will collaborate with Granta’s headquarters in London to develop author events, and provide a connection between the magazine, writers who live in the U.S., and Granta’s North American and Canadian readership.”
African Art Museum Founder Warren M. Robbins Dies At 85
“Warren M. Robbins, founder of the Museum of African Art, forerunner to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, died Dec. 4 at George Washington University Hospital of complications from a fall at his home last month. … When he started the Museum of African Art in 1964, Robbins had never been to Africa, never worked in a museum, never been involved with the arts and never raised money.”
Filling The House: Met To Offer Subsidized $25 Tickets
“New York’s Metropolitan Opera, with ticket sales lagging and the economy in recession, said it will offer some of its priciest seats for weekend evening performances at $25 each for the rest of the season. Starting today, the opera company will hold a weekly drawing on its Web site, Metopera.org, for orchestra and grand tier seats that usually sell for $140 to $295, Met General Manager Peter Gelb said.”
Casting Stars Is Still A Good Investment On Broadway
“Confirming the selling power of well-known actors in classic drama, the producers of Broadway’s ‘All My Sons’ and ‘The Seagull’ announced today that they made their investors whole. The two shows are the first of the 2008-09 season to recoup their costs.” “All My Sons” stars Katie Holmes, John Lithgow, and Dianne Wiest, while “The Seagull” stars Kristin Scott Thomas and Peter Sarsgaard.
Looking To Past, Critic Steven Winn Pens His Final Column
“Working as a critic is a curious, paradoxical thing to do. It begins with a deeply personal experience, as you bring your head and heart, your flawed knowledge and particular past into an engagement that’s as full and immediate as possible with some work of art. What follows is a cooly analytical act of objectification.”
Actress Nina Foch, 84
Foch is probably best remembered by moviegoers as the rich, manipulative socialite who tries to buy Gene Kelly’s character, as well as his artwork, in Vincente Minnelli’s 1951 musical, “An American in Paris.” Or as Bithia, the pharaoh’s daughter, who finds and adopts the baby Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic, “The Ten Commandments.”
Broadway Musicals Dropping Like Flies
The list of shows facing their final curtains in January has hit the double digits.
What Paris Lost, What Havana Saved
Of Paris: “The modern world has sucked out some essence, leaving a film-set perfection hollowed out behind the five-story facades. The past has been anaesthetized. It has been packaged.” But Havana? “What has been preserved with it, thanks to socialist economic disaster, is that very pungent texture Paris has lost to modernity.”