Verena Dobnik
NY’s Met Museum lets visitors climb to cloud 9
NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is big on bubbles.
They inspired Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno (toh-MAHZ’ sah-rah-SAY’-noh) to create a work that rises from the roof of the museum.
Titled “Cloud City,” the 16 stainless steel-framed bubbles are reachable via transparent staircases. Visitors get spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline and Central Park.
The 38-year-old artist says his work reflects the city. So when the sky is blue, you see blue. And when it’s cloudy, visitors feel like they’re in a cloud.
Sara Theeboom (TEE’-boom), a visitor from Sydney, Australia, called it “very cool,” but she wouldn’t recommend having a drink before you go up.
The artist says he wanted to challenge future architects to envision cities that float above Earth.
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Online:
“Cloud City” at the Met: http://bit.ly/FSEwYT
Painted ads resurface in NYC as urban ‘modern art’
in this April 17, 2012 photo, Art Pastusak, left, and his apprentice Liam McWilliams, paint a billboard on a brick wall in New York. Pastusak, a billboard artist since 1977 has taken McWilliams, a 2010 graduate of Pratt University, as his apprentice in August 2011. Their nostalgic form of advertising is thriving again in New York City. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)(Credit: AP) NEW YORK (AP) — New York is sprinkled with barely visible old ads painted on the sides of buildings — remnants of lost eras of urban life. Now, they’re making a comeback as a nostalgic art form.
Painters known as “walldogs” work on scaffolds, dipping brushes into a lineup of open paint cans. Then come the details, carefully brushed in gleaming color onto walls that are sometimes hundreds of years old.
“So it’s like, ‘Make me a bucket of soup,’” says Art Pastusak, 61, a master mentoring apprentice walldogs. “Slap it on the wall, and let’s crank.”
Continue Reading CloseOfficials probe Bronx SUV accident that killed 7
Police investigate the destroyed van that plunged over the Bronx River Parkway, Sunday April 29, 2012, in New York. Authorities say the out-of-control van plunged off a roadway near the Bronx Zoo, killing seven people, including three children. (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)(Credit: AP) NEW YORK (AP) — Three generations of a family died in a horrifying crash just a few miles from home when the SUV they were traveling in plunged more than 50 feet off a highway overpass and into a ravine on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo, killing all seven aboard, including three children.
“Sometimes you come upon events that are horrific and this is one of them,” FDNY deputy Chief Ronald Werner said shortly after the crash.
Authorities were trying to determine what caused Sunday’s accident that killed Jacob Nunez, 85, and Ana Julia Martinez, 81, both from the Dominican Republic, their daughters, Maria Gonzalez, 45, and Maria Nunez, 39, and three grandchildren. Police say Gonzalez was driving.
Continue Reading CloseOpera awards go to Peter Sellars and 4 singers
NEW YORK (AP) — Director Peter Sellars has won a special award along with four of the world’s finest singers.
On Sunday, the Opera News Awards went to the American theater whiz, and to Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky (dim-EETCH’-reeh hvoh-roh-STOV’-skeeh), German soprano Anja Silja (AHN’-yah SEAL’-yah), Swedish baritone Peter Mattei (mah-TAY’) and Finnish soprano Karita Mattila (kah-REEH’-tah mah-TEEL’-ah).
Sellars says he “took the starch out of the Bugs Bunny version of opera” with productions like the wrenching story of how the nuclear bomb was created in John Adam’s Grammy award-winning “Dr. Atomic.”
With his trademark hair shooting straight up, Sellars accepted the award at Manhattan’s Plaza hotel. He deadpanned to the bejeweled fans, “Nothing in my life prepared me for this ballroom.”
The opera magazine honored stars of an art form Sellars says still expresses today’s emotions, “here and now.”
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Online:
Opera News: http://www.operanews.com
Van plunges off NY road into zoo grounds; 7 killed
NEW YORK (AP) — Authorities say an out-of-control van plunged off a highway into a ravine on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo in New York City, killing seven people aboard, including three children.
Fire Department spokesman Jim Long say the victims were an 84-year-old man; three women, ages 80, 45 and 30. He says a 12-year-old girl and a 10-year-old girl were also killed, and a younger girl whose age wasn’t immediately known.
Police say the van bounced off the median Sunday, crossed all southbound lanes, went through the guardrail, fell more than 50 feet and landed upside down. A spokesman says it crashed onto a part of zoo property that’s closed to the public and not near exhibits.
The southbound side of the highway was closed while police investigated but has reopened.
Pete Fornatale, pioneering NY rock DJ, dies at 66
NEW YORK (AP) — Rock music fans Thursday were mourning the death of Pete Fornatale, a beloved New York radio disc jockey who promoted the best new musicians for decades in his easy, free-form style. He was 66.
Fornatale died in New York a week after suffering a stroke, his son, Peter Thomas Fornatale, told The Associated Press.
“He represented the golden age of progressive FM radio,” he said.
When The Beach Boys “were the most uncool thing in the world,” he said, his father had the clout, in the 1970s, to help make them popular again — by introducing them on the Carnegie Hall stage.
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