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Putting the brutality of a prize fight on the Met Opera stage
NEW YORK, NY.- Emile Griffith fought Benny Paret on March 24, 1962, in a highly anticipated welterweight championship bout at Madison Square Garden. In the 12th round, Griffith knocked Paret into the ropes and pounded him with more than a dozen unanswered blows. As The New York Times put it the next day, The only reason Paret still was on his feet was that Griffiths pile-driving fists were keeping him there, pinned against the post. Paret never regained consciousness and died 10 days later. The fight and its terrible aftermath were high drama. One might even call the story operatic. There has been little overlap between the high drama of sports and the high drama of opera, beyond the bullfighting in Carmen or perhaps that odd singing competition in Die Meistersinger von NÃ¼rnberg ... More

Josh Kline's survival art for 21st-century America
NEW YORK, NY.- Since 2011, with his breakout show at the downtown gallery 47 Canal, Josh Kline has been an artist of American extremes. He promised a new art made with new technologies, from 3D printing to deepfake software, but his view of the 2010s was hardly rosy. In sarcastic spoofs of celebrity interviews and fashion campaigns, Kline lambasted the era of social media as an eddy of corporate pseudo-individuality. Soon after, his view turned from disapproving to downright apocalyptic in sculptures and installations of Teletubbies dressed in riot gear, of human heads and hands bundled into shopping carts, of Manhattan half-drowned by rising seas. Now, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents Josh Kline: Project for a New American Century, a wide and antagonistic retrospective of t ... More

6 British castles where you can stay like royalty on a commoner's budget
LONDON.- When King Charles III is crowned on May 6, the world will witness, for the first time since his mothers coronation in 1953, a ceremony that packs more than 1,000 years of British pomp and pageantry into a single day. But for some people, one day might not be enough. Britain teems with castles that offer travelers a chance to walk the same halls and sleep in the same quarters as monarchs of days gone by. Those who revel in the grand spectacle unfolding in Westminster Abbey may also want to soak in the noble lore in the old stone walls of some of those castles. The sheer drama of the past thousand years of royal history in Great Britain is like a long-running soap opera, said Tracy Borman, a London-based royal historian and the author of Crown & Sceptre, a history of the British monarchy ... More

Gost Books to release 'Water' by Ian Berry, with an essay by Kathie Webber
LONDON.- Over the course of 15 years, Magnum photojournalist Ian Berry travelled the globe to document the inextricable links between landscape, life and water. This new book presented by Gost brings together a selection of the resulting images which collectively tell the story of mans complex relationship with waterat a time when climate change demonstrates just how precariously water and life are intertwined. I have gradually become aware through the years of my gathering images that something extraordinary was happening to our worldthis year has shown above all others that the planet is struggling. There is too much water in some places, too little in others. Ice is melting at an unprecedented pace and its so very easy to dismiss what is happening when we see it briefly on TV and then its gone. ... More

'Harmony,' a Manilow musical set under Nazis, is Broadway-bound
NEW YORK, NY.- Harmony, a musical about a German singing group upended by the rise of Nazism, will finally open on Broadway this fall with songs by Barry Manilow and his longtime collaborator, Bruce Sussman. The show, which Manilow and Sussman have been developing for more than 25 years, tells the true story of a sextet that ran afoul of the Nazi regime because the group featured both Jewish and non-Jewish members. The ensemble was called the Comedian Harmonists. They represent everything I love theyre a combination of The Manhattan Transfer and the Marx Brothers, with complicated harmonies and funny as hell, said Manilow, who wrote the shows music. When we dug into it, it just killed me: Why dont we know about them? Sussman, who wrote the book a ... More

Inside New York's 'most bizarre' secret penthouse
NEW YORK, NY.- On a recent Wednesday afternoon, as the sun turned the stained-glass skylight of a midtown penthouse into a dazzling display of jewel tones, prosecco was poured into flutes. A saxophonist and a violinist who had met moments earlier decided to play a Charlie Parker tune together. When they finished, a small, international and impeccably dressed crowd cheered. In another part of the room, a hat designer was showing off his one-of-a-kind creations, involving emeralds, snakeskin and feathers from Peru. Nearby, a pink-haired painter from Cyprus was explaining her most recent work, hung on the wall behind her. For the past year and a half, Luxuny the atelier occupying this penthouse high above Bryant Park has been the setting for various live performances, trunk shows and chef tastings. Pa ... More

London's other royals, the 'Pearlies,' keep alive Cockney customs
LONDON.- The kings and queens of Londons lesser-known royal family gathered outside a church in Covent Garden on a recent Sunday afternoon dressed in their sparkly finery. But their jewels of choice were not diamonds or rubies. They were buttons made of mother-of-pearl that covered their jet-black suits and hats in intricate patterns, sewn by hand into elaborate designs that glitter in the sunlight. These are the Pearly Kings and Queens of London keepers of a tradition that began in the Victorian era, was passed down through generations of families and became a symbol of the citys working-class, Cockney culture. They see themselves as custodians of a waning way of life, which they carry on by singing Cockney songs, sharing Cockney stories and, crucially, collecting money for good causes. M ... More

Nearing 100, he finally speaks of his world war
NEW YORK, NY.- The nightmare shook the old man, who was now in his late 90s. He dreamed of falling from the sky. He awoke feeling helpless and afraid. John Wenzel, a veteran, automotive executive, father and grandfather, had recently moved into a senior living apartment in Brooklyn Heights, the Watermark on Clark Street, a new, frills-and-all building with a Manhattan skyline view. He would soon turn 99 and become the oldest resident there. Since his wife, Alice, died more than 10 years earlier, he had settled into a quiet rhythm, alone with his jazz records and his painting. And suddenly, out of nowhere, these nightmares. He feared he had suffered a seizure, but his vital signs were normal. His adult daughters, Emily and Abby, were also worried. Their father had always been so steady and predictable and w ... More

Buffalo remakes its museum in its own image
BUFFALO, NY.- After three and a half years and $230 million, a transformed museum here is about to open amid hopes that it will meet the expectations of a population far different from the one that greeted the original more than 160 years ago. Founded in 1862 by artists and so-called Buffalo boosters, the institution known as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery has been renamed the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and expanded and renovated by Shohei Shigematsu of the architectural firm OMA. It plans to welcome the public beginning June 12. Since receiving its first painting in 1863, a landscape by Hudson River painter Albert Bierstadt donated by the artist, the institution has been early to acquire works by Henry Moore, Joan MirÃ³, Mark Rothko, Frida Kahlo, Willem de Kooning, Marisol, Andy Warhol and Mar ... More

A photographer whose subject is everyday life
BETHLEHEM, PA.- To hear photographer Judith Joy Ross tell it, her life and career are riddled with nonstarters. Her stint in graduate school? Complete failure, she said. Her teaching career? Utter failure. In her photography archive on the second floor of her yellow house here, there is a box marked downers, containing what she considers bad prints of good images. Ross, who has been taking pictures for nearly 60 years, has never been much of a self-promoter. I have a problem with authority figures, she said on a gray day in February. Despite all that, Ross, 76, is the subject of a large retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with about 200 of her photographs on ... More