Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:01:17 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Kate Taylor :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Kate+Taylor istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/gioia-leaves-nea-after-changing-debate-over-arts/85697/ Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST In the midst of a deeply contentious election, in which the major parties are divided on almost all of the issues, from abortion to health care to Iraq, one old rallying cry — that of the so-called culture wars — has hardly been heard at all. That one no longer hears Republican candidates calling for the abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts is a credit to the effectiveness of the NEA's chairman since 2003, the poet Dana Gioia, in changing the terms of the debate around government... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/metropolitan-museum-chooses-a-young-insider-as/85487/ Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Thomas Campbell, a curator in the department of European sculpture and decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be the next director and CEO of the museum, the Met announced yesterday. Mr. Campbell, 46, who curated two highly praised exhibitions of Renaissance and Baroque tapestries, will succeed Philippe de Montebello, who has served as director for 30 years. Mr. Campbell will take office January 1. The choice of Mr. Campbell is bold, since he has never run so much as a... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/laying-claim-to-an-outsiders-art/86769/ Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The term "outsider artist" is out of fashion these days, replaced by the more strictly factual "self-taught artist." But in some cases the older phrase still seems more fitting, such as when describing someone who not only worked outside the established art world but also lived outside of mainstream society. Henry Darger, whose thousands of drawings and watercolors were discovered by his landlord only at his death in 1973, was that kind of outsider. So was Martín Ramírez. A Mexican immigrant... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/warming-up-for-frieze/86537/ Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST London's Frieze Art Fair may last only four days in October, but as with many fairs, the activities spill over into more than a week. Here, a lineup of exhibits to catch and things to do in London from Tuesday, October 14, to Thursday, October 23. On October 14, two major exhibitions open at the Tate Modern. The first is an installation by the French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Part of the Unilever Series, which commissions artists to create installations in Turbine Hall — previous... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/new-york/whitney-nears-approval-for-expansion-but-funding/86495/ Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The Whitney Museum of American Art is expected to get final city approval today for its downtown expansion plan, just as the economic turmoil has made the museum's $680 million fund-raising goal more daunting than ever. The City Council is set to vote today to approve the Whitney's plan to construct an 185,000-square-foot building, designed by Renzo Piano, on Gansevoort Street next to the High Line. The design has already been approved by the council's Land Use Committee; the city Planning... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/new-york/culture-groups-seeking-aid-for-emergencies/86388/ Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Representatives of New York City cultural organizations and members of city government are questioning whether these organizations have access to sufficient information and funding to adequately prepare for terrorist attacks, natural disasters, or other emergencies. During a City Council hearing yesterday, the general manager of operations at the newly opened Museum of Arts and Design at 2 Columbus Circle, Linda Clous, said she knew of "no one public source available" to New York City... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/mamet-versus-mamet/86283/ Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST As a connoisseur of pissing matches large and small, David Mamet must be amused by the offstage drama that surrounds the two dueling Mamet revivals opening on Broadway this fall. Producers of the two shows — "Speed-the-Plow," which opens October 23, and "American Buffalo," which opens November 17 — both went after the same theater, the Ethel Barrymore on West 47th Street, after it was made available by the cancellation of "Godspell." When "American Buffalo" lost out, the New York Post described... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/new-york/wall-street-woes-endanger-funding-for-the-arts/85935/ Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The turmoil on Wall Street will affect a wide swath of New York City's cultural institutions, hurting corporate and individual donations at a time when these organizations are facing what one philanthropist called a "perfect storm" of economic pressures. "It's a very challenging time for not-for-profits," the chief executive officer of CIT and a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and New York City Ballet, Jeffrey Peek, said. "It's a little bit of a perfect storm." Among the other... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/levy-looks-left-in-manhattan/85785/ Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy thinks that the political left is in trouble. Simultaneously hobbled by cultural relativism and haunted by its own forms of intolerance — most particularly, anti-Semitism — the left is, to Mr. Lévy, a body diseased. Mr. Lévy will deliver this message and propose a solution — a recommitment to universal values and human rights — in two appearances in New York this week. On Tuesday, he will face off at the New York Public Library with another leftist... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/park-avenue-gets-a-mao/85310/ Mon, 8 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The final piece of the Asia Society's exhibition "Art and China's Revolution" was installed over the weekend: a 10-foot-tall sculpture of a Mao jacket, by the artist Sui Jianguo, which will stand on a median in the middle of Park Avenue at 70th Street until mid-November. The sculpture, called "Mao Suit," is made of corroded steel and weighs 5-and-a-half tons. It is part of a series of Mao jackets — shown without the head or hands of their famous wearer — that the artist, who is in his 50s... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/an-artists-play-on-priced-to-sell-in-east-hampton/85308/ Mon, 8 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST A cheeky art installation is stirring up Hamptonites' anxieties about the economy and the local real estate market. As part of an exhibition at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, on Newtown Lane in East Hampton, the artist Adam McEwen soaped up the store's front window and hung two signs: one saying "FORECLOSURE," and the other a hand-painted facsimile of a Century 21 realty sign, complete with a 631 number to call about the property. Mr. McEwen also added some graffiti in the soap, making the effect... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/new-guggenheim-director-expected-to-come-from/85041/ Wed, 3 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is expected to name as its next director the outgoing director of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Richard Armstrong, sources have told The New York Sun. Through a spokeswoman at the Carnegie, Mr. Armstrong confirmed last evening that he is in final negotiations with the Guggenheim. He would replace Thomas Krens, who stepped down in February to become a senior adviser to the foundation on international affairs, with leadership over the creation of a... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/museum-of-arts-design-thinks-outside-the-box/84966/ Tue, 2 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST When the Museum of Arts and Design opens in its new home on September 27, it will be the end of one journey for the institution and the beginning of another. It's the end of a period of institutional soul-searching, and of a years-long battle over the site, at 2 Columbus Circle, and the museum's construction plans. Today, only the exterior shape and a few of the so-called lollipops of the windowless Edward Durell Stone building, which was constructed there in 1964, are still visible. Brad... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/rubin-museum-finds-a-new-focus/84898/ Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The new chief curator of the Rubin Museum of Art, Martin Brauen, arrived at the museum this past June, at an important moment for the institution. The museum, founded by Donald and Shelley Rubin and dedicated to art of the Himalayas, has been open for four years. It has been praised for its exhibitions, focusing on such subjects as Sikh art and images of siddhas, or holy madmen, in India and Tibet. But the museum has taken a while to find a management structure that works. It started out with a... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/hirst-in-the-hamptons/84827/ Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST In a goodbye to summer and a kickoff to the fall art season, Sotheby's is hosting a party tonight at the Bridge, a golf club in Bridgehampton, to preview the works in Damien Hirst's upcoming auction, "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever." The sale, which will take place in London on September 15 and 16, includes 223 works, all made specifically for the auction. There are numerous works from each of Mr. Hirst's most popular series, including spin paintings, butterfly paintings, pharmaceutical... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/lawsuit-over-disputed-warhol-will-go-forward/84574/ Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST A suit involving the artist John Chamberlain and a work that may or may not be by Andy Warhol will go forward, after a judge denied Mr. Chamberlain's attorney's request for summary judgment. The dispute is between Mr. Chamberlain and a former Warhol assistant, Gerard Malanga. Mr. Malanga claims that Mr. Chamberlain misappropriated and then misrepresented a work, titled "315 Johns," as a Warhol, when actually it was created by Mr. Malanga in 1971, with the help of two other artists, Jim Jacobs... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/new-york-historical-society-clears-the-stage/84406/ Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST In order to be able to welcome more visitors and to offer them a compelling narrative of American history, the New-York Historical Society is embarking on a three-year, $55-million renovation of its galleries, entrance, and façade. The renovation will allow for easier traffic flow into and out of the building and will create space for a new ground-floor permanent installation related to New York City and the Founders. The renovation will also create a restaurant, an updated auditorium, and a... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/everything-unbelievable-was-possible-koudelkas/84301/ Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST On the morning of August 21, 1968, as Soviet tanks rolled into Prague, a young photographer named Josef Koudelka began to take pictures, and he didn't stop for the next week, as the people of the city resisted the occupiers. Smuggled out of Czechoslovakia and published around the world — anonymously, in order to protect him and his family — Mr. Koudelka's photographs became indelible images of the invasion and the Czech people's bravery. Now, at a moment when the crisis in Georgia has drawn... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/tenors-in-training-the-next-generation/84037/ Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Luciano Pavarotti's death last year prompted much speculation about who will eventually replace the triumvirate of Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras. Most of the discussion has focused on stars in their 30s, such as Juan Diego Flórez and Rolando Villazón. But what about even younger tenors whose careers are developing? In New York, at least, the demands for talented opera singers will be greater than ever in the coming years. In 2009, Gérard Mortier will arrive to take the helm at... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/qatar-pursues-de-montebello/83989/ Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The outgoing director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello, may get more deeply involved in museum development projects in the Middle East. Mr. de Montebello, who will retire at the end of this year or when a successor is named, has already been appointed as a special adviser on NYU Abu Dhabi. He will be involved in visual arts programming and structuring an arts curriculum. But the new executive director of the Qatar Museums Authority, Roger Mandle, acknowledged in an... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/nea-expands-indemnity-program/83637/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The National Endowment for the Arts is expanding the 30-year-old Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Program, so that in the future it will cover domestic as well as international loans, the NEA announced. The program spares museums the cost of privately insuring against loss of or damage to art that they borrow, by extending indemnity agreements backed by the U.S. Treasury. In the past, the program has only applied to international loans of art. Now, art borrowed from American collections will also... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/rare-cello-expected-to-set-world-record-at-auction/83553/ Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Note: Correction appended. A rare Stradivarius cello is expected to set a world record when it goes to auction this fall. The cello, which was owned for decades by the British cellist Amaryllis Fleming, is being sold by the online instrument auction house Tarisio and carries an estimate of $1.75 million to $2.3 million. Made in 1717, the instrument is one of only 60 extant Stradivarius cellos. The current record for a cello at auction is $1.288 million, which was set by a Stradivarius cello at... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/three-friends-start-a-gallery-with-a-little-help/83433/ Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Most college students looking for a summer job in New York and interested in learning about the art market might try to get an internship at a gallery. But Genevieve Hudson-Price, Sabrina Blaichman, and Caroline Copley had a better idea: Instead of interning at a gallery, they decided to start one. Their gallery, called 7Eleven Gallery, in reference both to the address (711 Washington St.) and, Ms. Copley said, to "our society's consumerism," opened June 26 and will close in the fall. Their... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-serendipitous-art-space/83434/ Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The display in the window at 259-275 Tenth Ave. is intriguing but vexing: There is no clear way to enter the space and no indication of what's behind the glass, beyond a small card noting the artist's name (Denise Kupferschmidt), the title of the work, "This and That: My Grandmother's Cabinet, or Mary Jean in Maputo," and the date the installation made its debut. The window is curated by a former director of the Zach Feuer Gallery, Lumi Tan. The building's owner, Douglas Oliver, originally... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/adaa-gets-behind-tax-bill/83238/ Wed, 6 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST In the hope of spurring Congress to pass a bill allowing artists to take fair market-value tax deductions on works they donate to public institutions, the Art Dealers Association of America is promising to secure donations by 50 artists to museums in 50 states upon the bill's passage. The 50 artists in the program will be selected during the coming year by a committee chosen by the ADAA. Since 1969, artists, composers, and writers have only been able to deduct the value of the materials in a... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/antiques/rooms-preserved-in-watercolor-paintings/83256/ Wed, 6 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Henry James described his novel "The Spoils of Poynton" — in which a mother and a son fall out concerning the fate of the contents of the family home — as nothing less than a tragedy about furniture. It is "a story of cabinets and chairs and tables," he wrote in the preface to the 1908 edition, and of the "passions, the faculties, the forces [that] their beauty ... like that of antique Helen of Troy, set[s] in motion." If this sounds extreme, it was an extremism characteristic of the age. In... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/overlooked-at-christies/82729/ Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The Metropolitan Museum of Art's purchase of a previously unknown drawing by the Netherlandish artist Lucas van Leyden is a coup for the museum and its visitors, but something of an embarrassment for Christie's, whose specialists overlooked the drawing when it was sold there in 2005. The 16th-century drawing, depicting the Archangel Gabriel, was sold at a sale of "Maritime Pictures and Watercolours" at Christie's South Kensington in June 2005. It was included in an album of landscape sketches... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-persecuted-artists-call-for-help/82376/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST More than any other work from the 1930s, Max Beckmann's "Self-Portrait With Horn" encapsulates the position of the persecuted and exiled artist in fascist-dominated Europe. Executed in 1938, after Beckmann had fled Germany for Amsterdam, the painting shows Beckmann, wearing a bohemian robe and a grim expression, holding a horn. His pose suggests that he has just blown the horn — a call for help, a rallying cry for humanists around the world — and that he is waiting, perhaps in vain, for the... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/borrowing-with-fine-art-as-collateral/82333/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST With the stock market volatile and housing in a slump, many wealthy individuals are looking to tap another kind of equity — the kind hanging on their walls. Specialists at banks and auction houses say that more of their clients recently are interested in borrowing against their art collections. "We are seeing increased activity in art financing transactions," a senior vice president in structured lending at U.S. Trust, John Arena, said. Some of his clients are borrowing in order to purchase... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/new-york/donor-sought-for-visitor-center-to-be-built/82177/ Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST It's not quite the New York State Theater, but there's a new naming opportunity at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts: The arts complex is seeking a donor for its $22 million visitor center, which will be constructed in the next year in the public galleria formerly known as the Harmony Atrium. The visitor center will be a point of entry for thousands of visitors, from tourists to the young people who will no doubt flock to Lincoln Center's first centralized discount ticket facility. The... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/lang-lang-to-auction-red-piano/82038/ Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Starting today, you can bid on the red Steinway piano that Lang Lang played in his concert with the New York Philharmonic on Tuesday evening. The net proceeds of the auction will benefit the American Red Cross China Earthquake Relief fund. The opening bid is $165,000. The auction will end July 31. Lang Lang, who was in China at the time of the May 12 earthquake, has already participated in several benefit concerts, which have raised the equivalent of $3.3 million, he said in an interview. He... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/brooklyn-to-exhibit-fake-art/81900/ Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST While most major museums have some fakes in their collections, few like to advertise the fact. But in an unusual move, the Brooklyn Museum is planning an exhibition for 2009 that will call attention to a group of forgeries among its collection of Coptic sculptures. A third of the museum's collection of Coptic sculptures were actually made in the mid-20th century, the museum's curator of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art, Edna Russmann, recently told the Art Newspaper. Coptic... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/lincoln-centers-14-billion-makeover/81663/ Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The renovation of the New York State Theater — in the future to be called the David H. Koch Theater, after the oil-and-gas billionaire who has agreed to donate $100 million to the project — is just the latest addition to what is now an estimated $1.4 billion worth of construction projects either planned or under way at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The parent organization and landlord, Lincoln Center Inc., is paying for the transformation of all the public spaces on the 16-acre... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/insurance-for-art-collectors-covers-ownership/81553/ Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST It's a collector's nightmare: You buy a valuable painting from a reputable dealer and hang it on your wall. Years later, you learn that the painting was once stolen, decades before you bought it. The original owner sues you, and before you know it you've both lost your investment and racked up tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. You can sue your dealer to try to recover your loss, but that drags the legal mess out even longer. Disputes over ownership of artworks are common, often... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/bronx-museum-leads-boroughs-renaissance/81287/ Mon, 7 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST When Holly Block left the downtown arts venue Art in General to run the Bronx Museum of the Arts in 2006, many of her friends told her she was crazy. The museum was in serious trouble: It had almost no base of private support, had been running deficits for three years, and was about to open a new building that it didn't have the funds to operate. But Ms. Block, who had worked at the museum as a curator in the late 1980s, believed strongly in its mission of collecting Latin-American... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/hungarian-festival-in-the-works-for-2009/80893/ Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST BUDAPEST, Hungary — László Jakab Orsós, the charismatic director of the Hungarian Cultural Center, is not your typical cultural diplomat. In Budapest, he was a newspaper columnist, a lecturer in screenwriting at the Budapest Academy of Film, and half of a rather notorious pair of restaurant critics, who wrote under the pseudonym "The Wittman Brothers." It is easy to imagine Mr. Orsós, who goes by Jakab, relishing the mischief that the restaurant column occasionally got him and his newspaper... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/harvards-three-art-museums-will-share-one-name/80353/ Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST The students have packed up and left for the summer, and pretty soon Harvard's art museums will go on an extended hiatus, as well. After many years and many false starts, Harvard is finally launching a major expansion of its art museums. In the process, what have been three separate institutions — the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum — will be consolidated under one roof, and one name: the Harvard Art Museum. The Fogg and the Busch-Reisinger will... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/clark-art-institute-expands/80260/ Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Unlike an urban museum, which must scrounge for every last square foot of real estate, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., has room to breathe: 140 acres, to be exact, of bucolic fields and woodlands, which slope up from the museum's main buildings to a hillside that affords views of Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont. Still, like many museums, the Clark has recently found its facilities too cramped for its ambitions. It has embarked on a dramatic, two-phase... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/new-york/mixed-use-facility-planned-for-brooklyn-cultural/80055/ Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST In an adjustment to a worsening economic climate, a triangular parking lot in downtown Brooklyn that originally was slated to be an Enrique Norten-designed public library will be developed instead by Two Trees Management as a mixed-use facility. The city is expected to finalize the plan in the coming days. In addition to 180 housing units and 187,000 square feet of commercial space, the proposed 371,000-square-foot facility, to be designed by Mr. Norten, will include studios, offices, and... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/adding-yellow-and-green-to-the-brooklyn-childrens/80039/ Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Covered with 8 million banana-yellow tiles, the Rafael Vińoly-designed addition to the Brooklyn Children's Museum looks like a shimmery spaceship that has just touched down among the brick and brownstone buildings of Crown Heights. When the museum reopens in September, it will have doubled in size, to 102,000 square feet, and increased its annual capacity to 400,000 from 250,000. If all goes as planned, it will also be New York's first LEED-certified "green" museum, with a geothermal heating... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/met-narrows-search-for-new-director/79750/ Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST The search for the next director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is accelerating. The departing director, Philippe de Montebello, has said that he would like to leave the Met at the end of this year. Now, with summer looming as a probable two-month hiatus in the search committee's discussions, the committee is under pressure to narrow the field of candidates before its members leave town. Last month, the headhunters who are handling the search, Phillips Oppenheim's Sarah James and Laurie... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/travel/hotel-art-grows-up/79739/ Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Art has arrived — as a marketing tool. In the past, when a hotel or resort company such as Starwood wanted to enhance the brand of one of its chains, it turned to an advertising agency or a branding firm. Today, it hires a curator. A year and a half ago, Starwood Hotels hired Jérôme Sans — the founder of the contemporary art museum Le Palais de Tokyo in Paris and now the artistic director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing — to be the cultural curator of its Le Méridien line... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-pair-of-hit-makers-moving-to-the-west-side/79531/ Mon, 9 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST No matter what happens at next Sunday's Tony Awards, you can bet that Kevin McCollum and Jeffrey Seller will be back at work on Monday morning. They are among the busiest and most successful theatrical producers, with a knack for finding musicals that resonate with contemporary audiences. The two produced "Rent," which will close in September after 12 years on Broadway; "Avenue Q," which is still running after more than 2,000 performances; and, most recently, the ebullient hip-hop musical "In... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/new-york/artist-exhibits-were-fake-but-not-a-hoax/79474/ Fri, 6 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Being interrogated by the Secret Service was a real-world coda to Yazmany Arboleda's mostly fabricated art project. On Wednesday, Mr. Arboleda was questioned by the Secret Service and New York City police intelligence officers, after putting a sign in a Midtown storefront that read "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama." He was released without charges. As it turns out, Mr. Arboleda was more than prepared for the press attention that followed his run-in with... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/new-york/embattled-exhibition-may-be-hoax/79370/ Thu, 5 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST A New York-based artist was questioned by the New York City Police Department and the Secret Service yesterday over an exhibition that may have been at least partly a hoax. A spokesman for the police, Paul Browne, said that a woman called 911 yesterday morning reporting threatening signs in a storefront in midtown. The signs on the storefront, at 264 West 40th Street, said "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton & The Assassination of Barack Obama." The police alerted the Secret Service, who... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/obituaries/art-world-mourns-anne-dharnoncourt/79133/ Tue, 3 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Anne d'Harnoncourt, 64, who led the Philadelphia Museum of Art for 25 years, died on Sunday at her home in Philadelphia. She suffered a stroke while recuperating at home after a minor hospital procedure, the Philadelphia Daily News reported. D'Harnoncourt served as director of the museum since 1982 and as both director and CEO since 1997. Prior to that, she was for 10 years the museum's curator of 20th-century art. In a statement, the museum's chairman, Gerry Lenfest, called her death a severe... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/scaling-up-for-die-soldaten/79028/ Mon, 2 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST The opera "Die Soldaten," written in 1965 by the German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, is nearly impossible to perform. With its huge orchestra, its intensely difficult 12-tone score, and a narrative in which past, present, and future overlap — Zimmermann once imagined it being performed on 12 stages to distinguish the work's times and locales — the piece has intimidated many an artistic director. Next month, Lincoln Center Festival will present "Die Soldaten" at the Park Avenue Armory, in a... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-new-arts-scene-on-governors-island/78865/ Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 EST While New York has no shortage of distinguished museums and concert halls, it has limited venues for enjoying art en plein air. Apart from the Delacorte Theater in Central Park and the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, there are few permanent, large spaces for displaying and performing art outdoors in the city. In the coming years, though, New Yorkers will have a new center for outdoor art: Governors Island, the 172-acre island off the tip of southern Manhattan, which the federal... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/art-restoration-if-its-done-well-you-dont-see-it/78694/ Wed, 28 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Carol Stringari, the chief conservator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, admits that some people might consider her a little, well, compulsive. She has made a specialty of working on Minimalist and monochromatic paintings — works that are especially hard to conserve, because every little mark or variation on the surface shows. "We like it; it's a challenge," Ms. Stringari said. "But working six weeks on a little scuff? I imagine there's a bit of obsessiveness in that." The conservation of... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/hunt-is-on-for-museum-heads/76897/ Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 EST The next director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is likely to be young, to have already run a museum — though not a major one — and to have a history of good relationships with curators. The next museum director sought by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is likely to have an international background and a track record as a fund-raiser and cost-cutter. Not for a long time have two such powerful positions at New York museums been open at once, and, particularly now that the spring auctions...