The 1941 entrance of the Norton Museum of Art. WEST PALM BEACH — The Norton Museum of Art, which has been closed since May 30 to prepare for a three-year construction project, will reopen Tuesday, with admission free until late 2018. The Norton is undergoing a major overhaul and expansion under the direction of the eminent British architect Norman Foster. The museum’s … [Read more...]
Arts buzz: Brief notes in local arts
Flagler Museum director Blades retiring after 21 years PALM BEACH — John Blades, executive director of the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, will retire at the end of this month, the museum said. Blades has been the museum’s executive director since June 1995, and is credited with overseeing the revitalization of the museum, which began life as Henry Flagler’s Whitehall mansion. … [Read more...]
News briefs: WLRN launches classical channel; Harid gets $250K grant; Kravis to install organ
MIAMI — Radio station WLRN will launch a 24-hour classical music station on its HD-2 radio channel Aug. 10, officials said Friday. The “Classical 24” station will replace the current “Alternative News and Talk” station at WLRN’s HD-2 channel, and is being started to fill the gap left by the departure last month of Classical South Florida from the airwaves. “We understand the … [Read more...]
News briefs: Rudin winner, WPB initiative, Broadway babies, and PB Symphony
Israel’s Maymon wins Norton’s second Rudin Prize Israeli photographer Rami Maymon has won the second Rudin Prize for Emerging Photographers at the Norton Museum of Art. “Rami’s photographs are elegant and complicated, and engage the viewer with their intellectual rigor and stunning visual layers,” said Tim B. Wride, the Norton’s William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of … [Read more...]
News briefs: An opera startup, a new director, an education grant
Bartók for Halloween: New opera company mounts ‘Bluebeard’ If you’re not really in the mood for zombies on Halloween, a new arts group in West Palm Beach has something else you might be interested in: An operatic masterpiece. Opera Fusion, a startup founded by soprano Birgit Fioravante and bass Dean Peterson, will present Béla Bartók’s one-act Bluebeard’s Castle at the Lake … [Read more...]
Sundays: The mother of us all
By Myles Ludwig I’m musing about motherhood. The great Momenator hovers above us all like a sacred but impenetrable meme: Mother Russia, mama grizzly, mother of all battles, mothers who eat their young, mother of dragons, Mother Teresa, tiger mom, Monica Lewinsky’s mom, the anguished mothers of the stolen Nigerian schoolgirls and, of course, the heroic American mom and her … [Read more...]
Sundays: Ukrainian basketball
By Myles Ludwig Ukraine and basketball were the stories dominating the mainstream media this week, elbowing aside the tragedies of the sinking ferry in South Korea (“This is the end of me” was the heart-rending headline in the New York Times); the so-far failed search for the lost Malaysian airplane and apparent callousness of expelling the grieving families of those lost … [Read more...]
Sundays: The medium is the memory hole
By Myles Ludwig I was busy searching for the plane this week. I looked in the clouds of Google and Microsoft, but they were obscured by bad weather and massive hacker attacks. Nearly lost my identity. I sifted through the wreckage of the Washington state mudslide, pushed aside the giant snowballs of the Mt. Everest avalanche hoping for a sign, and stalked the rubble of the … [Read more...]
Sundays: Being and un-being
By Myles Ludwig The untimely passing of Peaches Geldof was the big news in Britain this week. It was the top-trending topic on the staid BBC and banner fodder for the tabloid-obsessed country in which Murdochian journalism has ensnared its own perpetrator in a messy matrimonial scandal. You may be forgiven for not knowing that Ms. Geldof was one of the three whimsically named … [Read more...]
Sundays: Looking for answers
By Myles Ludwig We seem to be sloshing through a media debris field. The globalization of media, the diversity of delivery platforms and their consequent overarching narratives of mystery, fear and grief involve us all within reach in news stories that seem so close, yet are so far. Those of us not directly affected by catastrophic events are nevertheless drawn into the … [Read more...]