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The article discusses the author's reaction regarding the 2008 Whitney Biennial art exhibition. The artists who were featured at the exhibition are discussed. According to the article, many of the artists who were involved with the exhibition were unknown. Comparisons are made in the article of Whitney Biennial art exhibitions which have been held over the years.

This article presents information regarding several theatrical productions. Seriousness, in the theater, is generally equated with tragedy, or with comedies of a nonrepresentational Beckettish cast, and by such a reckoning "Burn This" may not be serious. "Late Nite Comic" is a musical comedy about the romance of an aspiring standup comic who is never funny and an aspiring ballerina incapable of dancing. "Mort Sahi on Broadway!" represents another evening of mirthless stand-up comedy, but Mort Sahi, to his credit, involves no one else in his shame except his producers.

Cincinnati, Ohio has had its Playhouse in the Park since 1960, when a little pavilion in Eden Park was turned into a neat thrust-stage theatre: an indoor auditorium surrounded by porches and lawns that serve as lobbies. Located on top of a steep bill overlooking the city, the Playhouse is difficult to reach except by car; this tends, of course, to cut it off from poorer Cincinnatians, but nearly all resident theatres, however easy of access, are middle- and upper-class institutions (except for their student programs).

Among the postwar resident professional theatres, three in particular hacked out a path for the rest the Alley Theatre in Houston, the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and most admired, least imitated the Actor's Workshop in San Francisco. These three began early, when the going was hardest, and they survived by making perseverance and devotion the substitutes for more tangible resources, later, they were among the earliest recipients of Ford Foundation grants that enabled them to entrench themselves and to expand. The Cleveland Play House and one or two others had been in existence long before, but they were isolated phenomena, it took the Alley, the Arena and the Workshop to show that resident professional theatre was possible even in the U.S.

The article presents information on several socio-political developments. In a German newspaper, Jean Jaures, leader of the Unified Socialist party in the French Parliament, attempts an estimate of what has been accomplished by the three Socialist politicians who since 1899 have consented to assume ministerial positions. In another development, the new and interesting profession has been opened up through, the growth and creation of art museums, and the supply of curators falls far short of the demand. If anything, the dearth of this kind of talent is likely to increase for a time.

This article presents the author's experience about his visit to Paris, France, and his observation regarding the French press and theater. There are fifty-one theaters now presenting plays. Paris is seething with intellectual activity. It's the one thing of which there is no shortage. Even the paper shortage, which has recently halved the newsprint allotment of every periodical in France, doesn't dim the basic fact, there are more and better politico- literary weeklies now than before 1939-all young, vigorous, independent. And everybody goes to the theater. Prices are way above pre-war level, there is no heat, even in the national theaters, there are electricity troubles and restrictions so that matinees start at five, but the intensity of projection and response is all the greater.

The article presents information related to several issues. Several college controversies expressed that such difficulties are due to a bad system of government, in which the functions of president, faculty, and trustees are more or less confounded; and the suggestion was made that while these functions may not be defined in terms equally adapted to all institutions, it might be possible in any single college to frame a written constitution which should tend at least to the prevention of conflict between the various authorities. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts may be taken by any of municipalities, ambitious of distinction in the art training of their people, as a model which, within its limitations and restricted means, cannot, be excelled by any European museum. The idea of beginning a competition with the British Museum or Louvre, and expending large sums for showy partial collections, has had no place here, but rather the effort to give as complete a representation of the arts of the past and present as the moderate resources of Boston permit; and in what has been done there is nothing to desire, unless it be the substitution of original Greek work for the well-chosen casts which cover the entire period of the bloom time of Greece and include every important statue or a part of every important complex work ever discovered.

At the opening session last January of the Fifth Latin American Literary Competition, the international jury members were informed that political content was not to be considered in selecting the award winners. Meanwhile, partisans of Socialist-realist painting and sculpture were complaining of "discrimination" on the part of the' state art galleries. It was also at this time that the Imprenia Nacionat, Cuba's largest publishing house, listed works by various on its 1964 schedule. But a more complex example of both the present cultural atmosphere and certain shifts in political power is to be found in the recent "movie controversy."

Argues that accusations from the right have delayed the construction of two cultural institutions called for in architect Daniel Liebeskind's plans for the World Trade Center site in New York City. Report that the cultural center was to house two of four organizations chosen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, including the Drawing Center art museum and the International Freedom Center (IFC); Report that the Drawing Center was driven away after censorship-like demands for oversight; Demands placed on the IFC by Governor George E. Pataki that the IFC not present exhibits that denigrate the U.S., New York or freedom; Reference to an article by Debra Burlingame in the "Wall Street Journal" that criticized the IFC; Criticism of the IFC for agreeing to Pataki's demands and for being unwilling to say a word in favor of freedom of expression.

This article presents information regarding the San Diego-based multidisciplinary Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo (BAW/TAF). It is not as if the hybrid cultures of the Southwest have never been represented in a gallery. Corporate backing of shows by Latino artists and institutional efforts to include their work have become increasingly frequent throughout the country. But BAW/TAF does not attempt to define a Latino aesthetic, nor are its efforts easy to understand. The group's dialectical reinterpretation of ethnicity and assimilation, with its implicit critique of separatism, sets its art apart from the activist-inspired Chicano art that emerged in the 1970's.

The article presents information on several theatrical productions. Some of the plays are "Viet Rock" and "America Hurrah" of the Broadway productions. The author of "America Hurrah," is Jean-Claude van Itallie and its director is Joseph Chaikin. The Open Theatre is not literary; it stresses the purely theatrical: sights and: sounds, movement, acrobatics, a kind of juvenescent festiveness-not quite "Dienysiac." It is motivated by social as well as histrionic ardor. The Open Theatre is one rivulet of a current in dramatic entertainments and demonstrations in the streets, meeting places, union halls and the like. None of this is altogether indigenous with us although it recalls fairs and frolics around campfires, in saloons or boats of our virtually forgotten past.

The decision of the Whitney Museum of American Art to erect a new building on Madison Avenue in New York marked its advance from adolescence to manhood among New York's museums. Having been thought of for many years as a promising nephew of the brilliant Museum of Modern Art, it now purports to become an independent force and a major component in the city's pattern of cultural institutions. The new museum will strengthen the existing linear pattern and avoid fostering the nodal concentration, rather it would prefer a greater spread of institutions to enliven more sectors of the city.

The article discusses arts facilities. The city of Tacoma in the state of Washington, dreaming dreams of empire on the shores of Puget Sound, has built itself a high-school stadium which is said to be capable of holding more people than Harvard's great amphitheater. This magnificent monument to Tacoma's pride and her ambitions was dedicated last week with appropriate ceremonies which drew "24,000 cheering Tacomans" within the spacious concrete arena. Properly enough, the school children, whose nickels and dimes went to the making of the stadium, played the principal part in the festival.

This article presents the author's views on the use of museums. According to the author art museums do encourage the collection and preservation of valuable objects; and that the objects they collect will some day probably be of definite aesthetic influence. A magazine article written by a worker in and a special pleader for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York says very truly that one is in error when one sets apart fine arts and applied; that in fact both are noble. He adds, not quite so truly, that machine-production of applied art objects has, in the minds of the critical, in some degree degraded applied arts. Then he says, truly, that one can ennoble the applied arts once again by the slow processes of education in taste, with accompanying production of such designers as will teach our machines to produce applied art objects which are in fact of the fine art brotherhood.

Even before the year 1949 had seen the light of day, the German press had christened it the "Year of Goethe." The term Germany at that time had neither political nor national meaning. The "Holy Roman Empire," whose emperors were traditionally crowned at Frankfurt, still lingered on. During the war, the Goethe mansion on the Grosse Hirschgraben was ground into dust. But before it could sink into ruin, German culture itself had to become a thing of tatters. Now comes the "Year of Goethe," and the house -on the Grosse Hirschgraben is to be rebuilt. For the moment, however, it is new restaurants, cafes, movie theaters and places of entertainment, modern shops and department stores that mushroom overnight in Frankfurt and all the other German cities.

The article discusses arts facilities. Few who are not regular visitors to the British Museum realize the good work that is accomplished in its Print Rooms. Indeed, it is only the student or the artist who can appreciate adequately the discretion and judgment with which the fine collection of prints and drawings has been made, and the skill and sympathy with which it is arranged. Appealing more directly, however, to the general public are the special exhibitions which are held in connection with this department at occasional intervals, and continued so long as they seem to prove profitable and interesting.

The artist Charles Dudley Warner, has recently been telling people, in the Study in Harper's Magazine, that only last summer found the desire to be striking, to astonish, to do something odd in color and composition, the distinguishing characteristics of English as well as foreign galleries. The honest failure of a man seeking to solve some interesting problem of color or form, of light or atmosphere, would be a relief among the neatly turned-out exhibition pictures which fill the Academy. Even stranger than the total lack of distinction is the fact that whatever improvement is revealed comes from within the Academicals rank.

The article focuses on news related to issues at international level. The second Exhibition of Arts and Crafts at the New Gallery in London has witnessed a decline in the quality of exhibits. A section of the English Liberals, among whom James Bryce is prominent, propose to start in January a new English weekly to take the place of the Spectator. The resettlement of New Mexico in the eighteenth century, and the invasions of the Comanches, diverted the attention of the Spaniards for a long while from Quivira.

The article discusses arts facilities. Metropolitan museum displays, until May 5, 1957, a body of pictures collected for the New Museum at Sao Paulo, Brazil. These pictures are not from Brazilian sources-the greatest number not yet having been seen in Brazil-but are the works acquired here and in Europe during the last ten years for a Brazilian National collection. The pictures are numerous, the general quality is extremely high. Some seem to have suffered from restoration or excessive repairing and some are perhaps not a particular artist's finest work.

The article presents information on the book "The Japanese Theater," by Faubion Bowers. In the welter of reports on Japanese culture which have been appearing in the slick-paper journals since it became permissible to speak kindly of Japan, there have been a few scattered accounts of the marvels of the Japanese theater. Here James Michener and Joshua Logan have taken the lead, preparing the way for the theatrical feast. His book, the preface tells us, is a rep on the theater in all its forms in Japan a survey of what theater arts exist there today and how they arose.

A group of exhibitions recently encouraged put together some observations about modern sculpture. From "The Artist's Reality" at the New School for Social Research, to the displays of Pol Bury and Günter Haese to David Smith and the Jewish Museum's "Recent American Sculpture," the range is wide and illuminating. One can contrast, to an extent, European and American sculpture, the difference between a respected member of older generation of sculptors and an echelon of younger ones, and finally, learn something of the relation of sculpture to painting and other arts. The article discusses the subject.

Various factors like the "breakdown" of Broadway, the consequent propaganda for the theatre's decentralization, the aid of the foundations, the spread of university and community stages, the "cultural explosion" have all led to the establishment of a number of new repertory or semi-repertory theatres, with more or less permanent staffs, from New York to California, in the South and the Southwest of the U.S. The article focuses on the challenges faced by these theatres one can not expect miracles overnight. Time is required to mature all concerned: the directorate of the various theatres, their personnel and their audiences.

This article presents information on the Cleveland Museum, Cleveland, Ohio. It has a large and open dignity, not at all municipal, but rather like some princely residence temporarily vacated, and has a sober opulence. The original building, erected in 1916, has just recently been remodeled doubled in size by the skillful addition of a wing in the shape of a hollow square-and provided with all the latest in museum equipment from overhead daylight lighting and exhibition halls with movable partitions, to batteries of television cameras which act as electronic museum guards.

The article discusses arts facilities. Normally, the underlying purpose of a museum is the preservation and exposition of objects produced within the cultural area that happens to be its special province, science, history, art, Oriental art, modern art, etc. The main emphasis is on its collections and the interest they possess. Yet there comes a disturbing awareness, at this half-way mark in the twentieth century, that something else is needed: people to admire the collections and pronounce them a success.

Presents information on dinner theaters of Chicago, Illinois. Reasons for flourishing outer-city theaters in Chicago; Reference to the Arlington Park Theater, with a complex of facilities; Food services provided at the theaters.

Presents letters to the editor related to various political developments in the U.S. Assessment of judicial functions of the South Carolina Board of Canvassers; Prospects of Presidential candidate Rutherford Birchard Hayes in the U.S. Presidential election; Construction of theaters in Brooklyn, New York City.

This article presents information regarding literary activities. A complaint has been made because the Metropolitan Art Museum just opened offers but one free day to the public, instead of several, or instead of being wholly free. That the public has no reason to be dissatisfied with the present arrangement, however, a glance at the finances of the institution will show. It has, with the exception of the sale of admission tickets, absolutely no source of revenue with which to defray the charges for rent, heating, watching, and fire insurance. The first art college established in an American university took being on the 18th ultimo, when a Fine Arts Department was opened at Syracuse. Two courses are organized at present, architecture and painting, with which the faculty will undoubtedly find their hands fall, sculpture is not yet talked about, nor is room made for any fine art addressed to the ear, except "elocution."

This article presents information regarding the play "A Map of the World," by David Hare. into a movie. The play which ran at the Public Theater for much of the fall, is plain enough. It continues his saga of the New Left generation, this time without disguise. For if "Fanshen" showed the idealism of the New Left at its grandest and most self-defeating moment, and Plenty showed the pain of the post-revolutionary decline, "A Map of the World" shows someone with a New Left sensibility keeping the faith in spite of the failures and disappointments.

Presents information regarding the fiftieth anniversary celebration by Los Angeles' Pasadena Museum of Modern Art as of December 03, 1973. Different exhibitions held at the museum; Location of the museum; Financial condition of the museum.

Miss Katherine Hepburn is an actress who seems to have reversed that order of procedure which is usual in the theater if not in commercial transactions. She acquired a reputation upon the smallest of down payments and then, like the honest debtor she is, set about the unpleasant business of earning the fame she already enjoyed. But "The Philadelphia Story," as the play is called, is nole- worthy for much more than the opportunity it presents to an ambitious actress. of our high-comedy writers. An audience on pleasure bent will probably find "The Philadelphia Story" polite fun rather more than ordinarily delightful for reasons not immediately apparent.

The article discusses performing arts. English novelist and playwright J. B. Priestley never seems to be entirely at home in writing for the stage, and that is doubtless one reason why "Time and the Conways," now being acted at the Ritz Theater by an English cast with Dame Sybil Thorndike at its head, is structurally so cumbersome and unsatisfactory. Ostensibly the central theme is some rather Proustian conception that the true significance of any group of lives cannot be grasped by looking at any temporal cross-section of it but only by considering the pattern formed when successive relationships are contemplated as existing simultaneously in eternity.

The article focuses on various theatrical productions. In the performance of "Julius Caesar" by William Shakespeare, at Orson Welles's new Mercury Theater, with the bare stage and actors costumed in the conventional clothes of today, Welles must have spent about as little as it is possible to spend on a commercial production for Broadway. But he has achieved a performance which nearly everyone appears to find as absorbing as any seen in New York for many a year. But the beauty of this particular performance lies not merely in its simplicity but in the adaptation of that simplicity to the requirements of a specific work.

This article presents information on the charity works by the Hollywood fraternity. The general perception of people about Hollywood is like the Land of Boy Meets Girl. But they have conducted fundraising shows before "Bury the Dead" which opened on Broadway. And twelve hundred members of the film colony crowded into the Hollywood Women's Club auditorium to hear Frederic March, Florence Eldridge, and John Cromwell give a public reading of playwright Irwin Shaw's macabre anti-war play for the benefit of the local Contemporary Theater and the magazine New Theater.

Only the Yugoslavs thus far have thought of appropriating a Roman coliseum for a film festival, assembling tens of thousands of spectators to watch, not a contest between gladiators and beasts, but flickering images on a silver screen. Each year for the last fifteen, the magnificent Roman arena on the shores of the Adriatic at Pula, Croatia, built between 30 B.C. and 14 A.D., the most perfect such structure in the ancient world, is lit by flood lamps and strung with gaily colored bulbs. The grayish-yellow three-tiered shell, golden in the light, is stunning against the deep blue night sky. According to the author his first evening there, upon entering the coliseum well after the first feature had begun, was that the atmosphere echoed with Roman ghosts.

Since Thomas Hoving became director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the U.S. there have been about forty-live "Special Exhibitions," to take the term used in the museum's monthly calendar of events. This sounds impressive, but on inspection the statistic crumbles a little. Seven of these Special Exhibitions were of single works, usually new acquisitions, others were as peripheral as "Chess: East and West, Past and Present," etc. Now with "The Great Age of Fresco," the Metropolitan Museum can finally be associated with an important, temporary exhibition on a scale that no community center could afford.

The older the buildings, the better they seem in the Museum of Modern Art's current architectural exhibition Sixty-five Years of Modern Architecture in the U.S. The latest Victor Lundy original is a unique but irrelevant building. Lundy was just back, it is evident, from South and Central America, from the thin air of Machu Pichu to the dangerous lowlands of Chichen Itza, which impressed Wright too, and built, for IBM of all people, a pre-Columbian postcard of a building. The IBM job is fancy rather than forceful, and it says clearly what the show murmurs in other quarters: modern American architecture is dispersing its fervor in flourishes.

The large and impressive Senate caucus room is the stage for some of the most exciting theatricals in Washington D.C. There, under the blinding glare of the newsreel floodlights, writer Cordell Hull told the story of pre-war American foreign policy to the Pearl Harbor investigating committee. For four clays last week a deadly serious social drama replaced tan of melodrama and tragedy. Instead of the usual array of Senators behind the long table, there were three men, members of the Price Decontrol Board.

While the commercial houses are making books out of every faux pas on Broadway, it is good that the university presses should remember that there is also drama. "Scandinavian Plays of the Twentieth Century," first and second series and "Seven Plays of Maxim Gorky" are welcome additions to the dramatic library. And it is to be hoped that they will attract the attention of such little-theater groups as may still be interested in culture as well as in commodity. Two volumes of Scandinavian plays, if one is to believe the informative introduction of author Alrik Gustafson, provide a cross-section of the best Scandinavian drama since about 1910.

This article focuses on the drama "Foolish Notion," written by Phillips Barry who is a playwright with a considerable gift for sophisticated comedy and a great yearning for something else. The drama is presented by "Theatre Guild" at the Martin Beck. Whether foolish or not, the notion on which the play is based is certainly elaborate. The plot concerns a celebrated actress, or rather a celebrated stage personality, whose whimsical husband disappeared into the British army before entry into the war. As the action begins, she is about to marry again, choosing this time her leading man, when a mysterious message arrives by wire intimating that the supposedly dead husband is about to turn up again.

Presents letters to the editor. Discussion on the Republican party of the U.S.; Comments on a report on bimetallism; Information on the new art museum in Detroit.

The exhibition of Holman Hunt's great painting, "The Triumph of the Innocents," was opened to the public on March 2, 1885. The general expectation about this picture, of which for several years was very great, so that the room of the Fine Art Society in Bond Street in which it is shown is constantly thronged this week with visitors. The room is arranged with graduated benches, like a theatre, and the darkness secured by heavy dark draperies makes the light falling on the picture, and the picture itself, extremely brilliant. The picture, the prevailing tone of which is bright blue-green, is placed on a rich background of mulberry-colored plush, which is draped behind the frame. There can be seen a wide extent of cold wind-blown landscape, finely rendered, lighted by the moon.

This article presents information regarding the book "A History of the Four Georges," Justin McCarthy. Without philosophical goal, the utmost the historian can do is to make the past alive again as one may sees it at the theatre in an historical play, or in the pages of an historical novel. The new school of historical writing has accordingly produced a host of writers, able in their various ways, but often stopping short at picturesque or merely "interesting" writing.

This article presents information about schedules of several plays in various theaters. In the play "Dark Victory," staged at the Little Theater, Tallulah Bankhead being very attractive in a romantic tragedy. The play "Life Begins at 8:40," staged at Winter Garden is in competition with the play "Anything Goes," for first place among the revues. The play "Merrily We Roll Along," by George Kaufman and Moss Hart, staged at Music Box Theater, is one of the outstanding hits and very good indeed.

Artists Wachtang Chabukani and his partner made a surprising debut at Carnegie Hall. These initial Soviet artists were accorded a welcome as stormily enthusiastic and as innocently confused as their own dances. An audience dedicated to the cordial purpose of a bright red welcome did not allow the curious obsolescence of what was seen on the stage to deter their bravos for a second. And they were quite right. Such dancing, that is, such dance-training, such physical education, has not been seen in New York since 1916.

This article focuses on the motion picture "Counsellor-At-Law," directed by Elmer Rice. To being considered seriously either as drama or as cinema "Counsellor-at-Law" can lay small claims, Rice is a splendid example of the journalist in the theater. in the theater the journalist takes up one or another current idea, serves it up through characters who are all recognizable types, and gives us the illusion of thinking without any of the possible discomforts of following an idea through to the end. The essence of journalism, here as elsewhere, is caution.

This article explores about the people's choices regarding the theatrical productions. One thing is conspicuously absent from the current program and that is the play of social protest. The spectator who insists upon a discussion of economic conditions will have to seek out "Peace on Earth" down at the Civic Repertory Theater or wait until the Guild produces its promised drama based on the Scottsboro case, for the "problem" of `The Green Bay Tree" is purely an individual one and even "Men in White" does not suggest that the situation it presents is to be taken as an indictment of the capitalist system.