Tag Archive: Arts

  1. School of Architecture alums win national award

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    Two alumni of the School of Architecture are among this year’s winners of the American Academy of Arts and Letters award.

    One of five firms to receive a distinction in architecture, the New-Haven based practice Gray Organschi Architecture — run by Elizabeth Gray ’82 ARC ’87 and Alan Organschi ARC ’88 — accepted the $7500 prize on March 20.

    Since 1991, the Arts and Letters Awards have honored American architects “whose work is characterized by strong personal direction.” They’re are selected by a committee of architects and architecture critics. Gray Organschi will display their work along with the other 2012 winners on the Audobon Terrace in New York City from May 17 to June 10.

    In honoring Gray and Organschi, the Academy described them as “teachers, architects, and fabricators whose New-Haven based practice has explored the intersection of environmental constraint, social need, and available resources to produce architecture that is environmentally sensitive as well as culturally and physically durable.”

    The Academy also commended the firm’s skill at transforming everyday structures into “elegantly, exactingly detailed buildings that are as spare and as astonishingly rich as a poem.” Nice. Read more here.

  2. Nemerov might leave for Stanford next year

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    Alexander Nemerov GRD ’92, an esteemed art historian and chair of Yale’s History of Art Department, may leave for Stanford after this school year, he said in a Monday interview.

    Nemerov, whose “Introduction to the History of Art: Renaissance to the Present” was the most popular class on campus this semester, has not yet accepted or rejected a recent offer from Stanford. The professor declined to comment about when he needs to act on the offer, which he said he received during or after Shopping Period.

    The chair of Stanford’s Art History department could not be reached for comment on Monday.

  3. YUAG adds local art to collection

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    Do you like Degas, Monet and really old paintings? Do you value the Rothkos and the Van Goghs? Do you also like local artists?

    The Yale University Art Gallery has added nine porcelain pieces by New Fairfield artist Jean Mann to its permanent collection, the Danbury News Times reported. Though Mann, 84, already had one of her pieces in the YUAG 20 years ago, the museum decided to expand its collection of her works after gallery curators visited her home. Her porcelain pieces are scattered across 12 museums internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

    Many of Mann’s pieces “evoke Asian culture,” according to YUAG’s Department of Asian Art. A number of her pieces are tiny and made out of white porcelain — a piece titled “Dragon Boat,” can fit in the palm of your hand.

  4. Believe in People hits classroom in LC

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    Believe in People has left his mark inside a Yale building.

    New Haven’s favorite anonymous graffiti artist went to work this weekend in Room 211 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall. By the morning he had produced an image on the room’s back wall of a young person struggling with his decision to pursue a career in finance. The young man in the image has repeatedly written that he will only work in finance for one year. Seven lines in, the writer changes his tone, and says he will only work finance for two years.

    A tipster said a graffiti stencil outline was in place in the room by 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. According to a 3 a.m. tweet from Believe in People himself, several Yale students stumbled across the artist at work this morning — and encouraged him to keep going.

    Though Yale administrators have taken a firm stand against BiP’s graffitti in the past, the art had not been removed as of 1:00 p.m. today.

  5. Whiffs to sing for Obama

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    Forget Mory’s. This is big.

    After receiving an invitation from the White House in late October, The Whiffenpoofs — Yale’s oldest a cappella group — will sing for the First Family and their guests at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. on Tuesday to reign in the holiday season.

    “We will be singing a series of holiday songs woven in with our traditional mixed-genre repertoire,” said Whiffenpoof business manager Alexander Oki in a Friday press release.

    In the past the Whiffs have performed for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush ’48, Bill Clinton LAW ’73 and George W. Bush ’68.

    CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this article referred to the Whiffenpoofs as Yale’s “poofiest” a cappella group. It was intended as a play on the latter half of their name. We apologize for failing to realize its offensive connotations and thank commenter penny_lane for highlighting our oversight.

  6. ‘Lightweb’ comes to Stiles

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    Ezra Stiles just got a little more modern.

    Construction workers have installed a new sculpture outside the residential college’s front gate between Thali Too and the “jock walk” where there was once only concrete.

    Known as “Lightweb,” the tangle of steel white ovals was made in the early 1980’s by Russian artist Alexander Liberman. It is part of the Yale University Art Gallery’s collection and was previously in storage, a worker at the site said.

    Ezra Stiles Master Stephen Pitti ’91 announced the arrival of the sculpture in an e-mail to Stiles students this afternoon. “It’ll be wonderful to have this major piece so close to our library, front gate, and student rooms,” he wrote. “I hope you enjoy it in the coming months and years!”

  7. Gwathmey ‘poured his heart and soul’ into A&A, Goldberger says

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    In an interview with the News yesterday, the dean of the School of Architecture, Robert A.M. Stern ARC ’65, argued that criticism of the Loria Center for the History of Art, the recent work of his late friend Charles Gwathmey ARC ’62, will lessen over time. In an essay posted to the Web site of The New Yorker, Paul Goldberger ’72, the magazine’s architecture critic, also weighs in:

    Toward the end of his career, he poured his heart and soul into a non-residential commission he cherished, the restoration and expansion of the Art and Architecture Building at Yale, by his teacher Paul Rudolph. The Rudolph building is an impossibly difficult neo-Brutalist masterpiece from 1963, and Gwathmey made it look better than it has in forty years. His addition is smart and well planned on the inside, and too complex and overwrought on the outside. It tells you all you need to know about its architect, who couldn’t bring himself to sit quietly beside his mentor. Gwathmey paid loving homage to Rudolph in the restoration, and then he wanted to get into the ring with him. I don’t think he was trying to show his teacher up. He just worried about what it would look like if he didn’t assert himself. He never wanted anyone to think that he didn’t have the right stuff.

    Read the full appraisal — in which Goldberger calls Gwathmey “the architecture world’s Norman Mailer, with the same bravado, the same raw talent, and the same career-long anxiety about whether he could continue to equal his spectacular first performance” — by clicking here.

    (Photo: Yale University)

  8. It’s official: Emma Watson is going to Brown

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    It’s official: Emma Watson is going to Brown University.

    Pity.

    Watson has been quiet about what school she will attend in the fall, although her “Harry Potter” co-star, Daniel Radcliffe, let slip earlier this month in an interview with The Guardian that the actress had decided on Brown. Watson herself confirmed the decision in an interview with Paste Magazine, saying she will study literature at the school.

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  9. Better them than Sean Kingston…

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    The alternative rock band Sister Hazel, which performed alongside T.I. and The Format at Spring Fling in 2007, is coming back to New Haven as part of the annual Music on the Green concert series.

    Officials at Market New Haven announced Thursday the full lineup for the free summer concerts, which begin at 6 p.m. with the headliners taking the stage at 7 p.m. on three Saturdays in July. The New Haven Symphony Orchestra will play on July 11, followed by Sister Hazel on July 18 and the R&B artist Jeffrey Osbourne on July 25 (with Ward 22 Alderman Greg Morehead and his band, DangerZone, as the opening act).

    The concerts are sponsored by the Smilow Cancer Hospital.

  10. Festival’s opening weekend features a little of everything

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    Over 50 kids munched popcorn on Saturday afternoon, crowding the portico of the Yale Center for British Art. Sprawled on petite mats, their faces stared rapt with enthusiasm at the red velvet curtains of a puppet booth.

    The silly humor of “The Punch and Judy Comedy” show — just one of several events lined up for New Haven’s 14th annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas — was a crowd-pleasing kickoff for the two-week-long festival. All events, which over the weekend included film screenings, a dance party, a concert on the Green by They Must Be Giants, walking tours and even a circus, are free of charge.

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  11. New Haven’s own tennis-themed ‘American Idol’

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    Last week, all that stood between ambitious kids and a spot on center court at the Pilot Pen tennis tournament was the singer JoJo.

    At the second annual Pilot Pen Tennis Casting Call, kids 12 and younger nervously vied for the gig to sing “America the Beautiful” at the tennis tournament held annually in August.

    As I watched the kids stroll into the Shubert Theater to audition late Wednesday afternoon, I couldn’t help but remember watching the national spelling bee on ESPN: young kids, numbered, scrutinized, photographed, videotaped. Kids completely nervous. Kids spoken to as if they would cry at any moment, seemingly forced to hold their composure.

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