This piece originally ran on Sept. 21, 2014. Last night, The Death of Klinghoffer opened at the Met and was met, as predicted with protesters outside the auditorium — including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani — and hecklers inside. Justin Davidson will have a full review of the opera later today. Will an opera about terrorists ever not be timely? Can The Death of Klinghoffer ever stop incandescing? John Adams’s work had its premiere in 1991, when the events it was based on — the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and the murder of an American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer — were still raw memories. In the years that followed, occasional new productions and weekly bursts of lethal fanaticism kept reactivating the arguments about the opera. Now that it’s finally coming to the Metropolitan Opera, Palestinian hijackers seem almost to belong to another era, before 9/11,...
- 10/21/2014
- by Justin Davidson
- Vulture
The word art barely came up. Maybe that's why midway through this excruciatingly verbose three-hour closed-door briefing about MoMA’s second major rebuilding in less than ten years, I felt my eyes tear up and my stomach turn. (The breaking news, as you may have read in my colleague Justin Davidson’s review earlier today, is that the American Folk Art Museum is going to be demolished. He and I disagree about this, but I say it’s a building that was regrettably useless for art.) Meanwhile, the namesakes of the starchitecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, joined by MoMA director Glenn Lowry, whirred on about accessibility, flow, institutional interfacing with the city, connectivity, navigational legibility, surgical interventions, gestures of variation on the white cube and the black box (don't ask), social and performative space, micro-galleries, auto-critique, and "a large new architecturally significant staircase." The more I heard and saw, the...
- 1/8/2014
- by Jerry Saltz
- Vulture
The Queens Museum, a sometime stepchild of New York’s cultural life, has just reopened after a $69 million renovation that doubled its space (to 105,000 square feet) and aims at doubling attendance (to 200,000 visitors a year). Art critic Jerry Saltz and architecture critic Justin Davidson toured it together.Justin Davidson: Jerry, I’ve driven by on the Grand Central Parkway hundreds of times, and I never paid much attention to the low, gray building lurking by the side of the road. Now it’s impossible to miss. That new polka-dot glass screen gleams even on a cloudy day, and at night it glows all different colors. Jerry Saltz: Those LEDs come off sort of mall-like. But that’s the sort of Learning From Las Vegas, we-wanna-look-vernacular style this building seems to be going for. Davidson: I know that artists will be able to program the façade, but really it...
- 11/17/2013
- by Justin Davidson,Jerry Saltz
- Vulture
When George Steel took over New York City Opera in 2009, he hoped to be the man who could rescue the tottering company. Instead, this week, he wound up being the one to shut down a beloved operatic institution that had been a fixture of the city’s cultural life for 70 years. Justin Davidson talked to him the day after the closure was announced. First of all, my condolences on the death of City Opera. I know you worked very hard to prevent this from happening. What are these days like for you? How do you actually wind down a 70-year-old opera company? There are really just a handful of people at our offices, and we’re packing stuff up and preserving business records, and communicating with artists and ticket buyers. I will only work through the end of this week, though. I’m not essential to the wrap-up.What’s...
- 10/3/2013
- by Justin Davidson
- Vulture
In 1968, Donald Judd — the artist known for his boxy, implacable sculptures and wall pieces — paid $68,000 for 101 Spring Street, a graceful but dilapidated five-story cast-iron building, and began his renovation by hauling out truckloads of trash. Over the years, he kept installing art and modifying the architecture in pursuit of an ideal balance. After his death in 1994, the building sat, stilled. Starting on June 3, after a three-year, $23 million restoration, the Judd Foundation will open 101 Spring to the public for guided tours in groups of eight by reservation. Art critic Jerry Saltz and architecture critic Justin Davidson walked through it together.Justin Davidson: This house feels like the total work of art. We get to see how Judd slept in a Judd bed, ate at a Judd table, washed his hands in a Judd sink, and enjoyed the art he and his friends made.
- 5/20/2013
- by Jerry Saltz,Justin Davidson
- Vulture
For the first time in eleven years, the hand on the tiller at Lincoln Center is changing. Reynold Levy, who raised staggering amounts of money and oversaw the $1.2 billion renovation of the campus, is retiring at the end of the year, and his successor, the Broadway impresario Jed Bernstein, now president of Above the Title Entertainment, inherits the next major construction project: the renovation of Avery Fisher Hall.* Bernstein spoke to Justin Davidson from the office that will become his on January 26, 2014.Many years ago, Jane Jacobs predicted that Lincoln Center would isolate the arts on its own acropolis and suck the energy out of venues like Carnegie Hall and the theater district. You’ve watched the center get built and evolve into a much more open and busy organization, active in every season, indoors and out, and you’ve seen the city change around it, too. How do you...
- 5/15/2013
- by Justin Davidson
- Vulture
Broadway's Peter and the Starcatcher has long been slated to close in January, after a relatively low 320 performances. Now the show will merely move to an Off Broadway house, New World Stages, where shows like Avenue Q and Million Dollar Quartet have relocated after their Broadway runs. Jan. 20 is your last chance to see the five-time Tony winner — featuring what New York's Justin Davidson dubbed "more storytelling than most oversize spectaculars can manage" — in its biggest form at the Brooks Atkinson Theater.
- 1/2/2013
- by Zach Dionne
- Vulture
As police and terrified neighbors searched for a 12-year-old New Jersey girl who vanished Saturday after leaving home on her beloved bike, one neighborhood mom went searching online. There, Justin Davidson's mother saw a Facebook message posted by her son that was both strange and suspicious. "Might be moving :(," it read, according to law enforcement sources speaking to the New York Post. Alarmed that her son might be involved, the mother contacted police, who searched the boy's home and found Autumn Pasquale's bicycle along with some of her belongings. On Monday night, authorities recovered Autumn's strangled body in...
- 10/24/2012
- by Jeff Truesdell
- PEOPLE.com
Is New York still the cultural capital? Find out at the Public Theater's forum discussion on May 7, where critics and experts from New York Magazine will join authors, composers, and dancers to explore the state of contemporary creative life, how it's changed in recent years, and whether the city still provides a nurturing environment for emerging artists. Our own Kurt Andersen, Jerry Saltz, Justin Davidson, and Amy Larocca will weigh in, and the event includes a performance from the upcoming musical February House. Tickets are on sale now.
- 4/17/2012
- Vulture
"If there's one thing on which we can constantly rely from Pedro Almodóvar, it's sumptuous home furnishings," suggests the Telegraph's Tim Robey. "Other things would include narrative switchbacks, tragic mothers, surprise sex and wigs. The Skin I Live In, Almodóvar's clinically bizarre new thriller, doesn't disappoint on any of these counts, but it's also the first of his films that you could define as a horror movie, in a smirking sort of way. It's constructed to induce kinky shudders, delivering them with the ghoulish technical flair of a purring master. He's pleased with his new game — perhaps a little too pleased…. I’ve heard the movie described as barking, but it’s like a very sophisticated wind-up toy, barking on command."
"The last time [Antonio] Banderas worked with Almodóvar was for Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! in 1990," notes Dave Calhoun, who also interviews the director for Time Out London. "21 years later,...
"The last time [Antonio] Banderas worked with Almodóvar was for Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! in 1990," notes Dave Calhoun, who also interviews the director for Time Out London. "21 years later,...
- 8/30/2011
- MUBI
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