Something has been pestering me about the news coverage of Uriel Landeros, the alleged “artist†who last year defaced Picasso’s Woman in a Red Armchair at The Menil Collection. I’d forgotten about him until last week, when Whitney Radley covered his guilty plea for Culturemap. She wrote an excellent brief story, probably what I would have written if I’d received the … [Read more...] about Vandal in a Red Armchair
The Menil Collection
A Town Without Critics
Many years ago in Cambridge, I had the pleasure of meeting the esteemed former New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff. The lecture she’d delivered that night at Harvard was so inspiring that I decided I was going to become a critic as well. In a hopelessly naïve gesture, I went up to her after the talk and asked if she could explain my next move. “Well,†she said … [Read more...] about A Town Without Critics
à la recherche d’une musique perdue
Every so often, a pianist comes along who changes my life. This happened in D.C., when I listened to Peter Serkin juxtapose Beethoven and Stefan Wolpe. It happened one night in a faded Victorian living room in Hartford, when Edmund Niemann played John Adams' Phrygian Gates, only a few years after the piece had premiered in San Francisco. It certainly was the case for … [Read more...] about à la recherche d’une musique perdue
Looking Up in Texas
“Looking up suggests hope, and hope has no significance on stage except as a function of narrative,†said the legendary Deborah Hay in a recent lecture at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. One of the greatest thinkers, choreographers, and performers in American dance, in 1970 Hay left New York and moved to Vermont. Six years later, she settled permanently in Austin, … [Read more...] about Looking Up in Texas