“The ‘chicken cup’, so-called because it is decorated with a rooster and hen tending to their chicks, was bought by a Shanghai collector. It is eight centimetres (3.1 inches) in diameter and is 500 years old.”
Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum Gets A New Director
“Beatrix Ruf, who is German born, has led the Kunsthalle Zurich for the past 13 years. Ruff has been instrumental in putting Zurich on the contemporary art map.”
Shakespeare As Literature (It’s Better As Theatre)
“Shakespeare’s plays are for seeing in performance. Reading them, even for an experienced performer, is heavy going. To read any play with a large cast, it’s hard to keep track of who is who and their relationships with each other. Harder still to remember who is in the scene and not saying much.”
Sound and Fury Begin Contract Negotiations at Met Opera
“The latest labor talks at the Met have gotten off to their most contentious start in decades, replete with colorfully threatening emails and emotions running nearly as high offstage as on.”
A Critic Revisits the Bolshoi After 30 Years
Alastair Macaulay: “The Russian nation and its capital city have greatly changed; Russia’s dealings with the West – and its presentation of its own history – have been transformed; and the Bolshoi Theater itself has been completely renovated and partly rebuilt … [and] visually, in its auditorium and its public spaces, [it] may well now be the world’s most splendid theater.”