Historic Green-Wood Cemetery: Public Art Project “Here Lie the Secrets of Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery”

Historic Green-Wood Cemetery: Public Art Project “Here Lie the Secrets of Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery”

Historic Green-Wood Cemetery: Public Art Project "Here Lie the Secrets of Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery"
Green-Wood cemetery image source green-wood.com

A fascinating public art project will take place at the historic Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY. The cemetery, founded in 1838, is a designated Historic Landmark. It is well-known for its peaceful beauty and for being a resting place for many prominent public figures.

The Creative Time is organizing this public art project with French conceptualist Sophie Calle. The artist is well known for her installations and books exploring the questions of intimacy, identity and relationships often using her own experience as a subject of her work. She had represented her country at 2007 Venice Biennale.

The project at the Green-Wood Cemetery will kick-off on April 29 with a two-day event with the artists on hand and will continue through 2042. A marble obelisk designed by the artists will be installed amid the graves. The obelisk will have a mailbox-like opening for visitors to slide in their secret messages and to unburden themselves from the secrets. The messages will be buried in the grave beneath the obelisk. The project will be ongoing during cemetery visiting hours through 2042.

The Artnet preview of the project quotes Creative Time artistic director Nato Thompson noting that this “personal, and yet also public act” is particularly urgent at the time of social upheaval like ours.

For the visiting hours click here.

Venue: Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY                 Dates: April, 2017 – April, 2042

Beyond NYC: Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at Boscobel in Garrison, NY

Beyond NYC: Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at Boscobel in Garrison, NY

2017 Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival June 8 – Sept 4: Rehearsals begin

If you are a theater fan with a particular taste for shakespearian plays think about visiting Garrison, NY. There at Boscobel mansion, a historical landmark restored from the Federal-era house and the Beaux-Arts gardens and grounds 60 miles north from New York City, the Hudson Valley Festival theater company will perform starting from June 8, 2017.  The rehearsals have just began! Take a look at what is going on behind the scene here:

We’ve been hard at work putting a brand new system in place that will make your experience of buying HVSF tickets faster and easier. On Wednesday, March 15, you’ll get the chance to try it out when tickets go on sale to the public!

via It’s almost time for tickets! — Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival

Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at Boscobel in Garrison, NY

Long before the Theater Tent is erected on the edge of the Hudson, our acting company gathers in New York City to begin the rehearsal process — memorizing lines, developing their characters, reviewing sets and costumes with designers, meeting staff and supporters, and more. Go behind the scenes with our 2017 company! Photos by Ashley Garrett.

via First Look: 2017 Rehearsals Begin — Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival

This year Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival program includes Twelfth Night and Love’s Labor’s Lost by W. Shakespeare, Pride and Prejudice adapted from Jane Austen, The Book of Will by Lauren Gunderson and The General from America by Richard Nelson.

Plan to arrive early to enjoy the gardens and the scenery of Hudson river and its Highlands.

Venue: Boscobel House and Gardens, Garrison, NY                2017 HVSF Dates: June 8 – September 4

April – August, 2017 Art Event in NYC – Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III at Guggenheim Museum

April – August, 2017 Art Event in NYC – Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III at Guggenheim Museum

April - August, 2017 Art Event in NYC - Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III at Guggenheim Museum

“The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents the first-ever realized work from a group of installations conceived by Doug Wheeler during the late 1960s and ’70s: Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III. Produced in close collaboration with the artist, the Guggenheim installation is developed from drawings executed in 1968 and will be on view in the museum’s Tower Level 7. In […]

via Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, through August 2, 2017 — Arts Summary

The installation recreates the experience of the desert with its stillness and near silence to synthesize “lunar space”.  To reach that state the gallery has controlled optics and sound environment with Wheeler’s large abstract paintings of infinite geometric forms in hermetically closed gallery. That way the visitor can experience the cosmic infinity of space.

Doug Wheeler is associated with the Light and Space art movement  popular on the West Coast in the 60s.

The installation is best experienced with as little distraction as possible, so it requires a timed ticket. You can reserve it here. 

Venue: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY                            Time: Though August, 2, 2017

April 2017 Classical Music: Two Pianos Concert at Carnegie Hall

April 2017 Classical Music: Two Pianos Concert at Carnegie Hall 

Leif Ove Andsnes / Marc-Andre Hamelin 

April 2017 Classical Music: Two Pianos Concert at Carnegie Hall
Leif Ove Andsnes, Marc-Andre Hamelin / image source carnegiehall.org

This concert with two greatest pianists sharing a stage at Carnegie Hall promises to be an event to remember. The concert is part of the spring tour program performed in Europe and the United States. In keeping with spring celebration, the program very appropriately features Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”, as well as the music of Mozart and Debussy.

Leif Ove Andsnes , a Norwegian pianist who was inducted to the Gramophone Hall of Fame in 2013, is a master in delivering what the New York Times calls a difficult and beautiful recital program. Marc-Andre Hamelin whose fame grows with each performance, is not only a brilliant pianist, but is a well known composer. Its extremely fascinating to hear music by the composer himself, which Mr. Hamelin sometimes includes in the encore at his concerts.

The tickets can be booked here.       Performance date: April 28, 2017

 

Venue: Carnegie Hall, 57th Street, NY      Directions to Carnegie Hall

 

April 2017 Opera in NYC: Rigoletto at Met Opera

April 2017 Opera in NYC: Rigoletto at Met Opera

April 2017 Opera in NYC: Rigoletto at the Met Opera
Scene from the opera / image source metopera.org

Rigoletto in Las-Vegas?  This vibrant and colorful production of Giuseppe Verdi’s beloved opera is sure to entertain and engage everyone. For the original opening of the opera in 1851, Verdi and his librettist Francesco Maria Piave shifted the setting in Victor Hugo play which the opera is based on  from early-16th century french court to Renaissance time Mantua, Italy.

It seems the story is destined for such transformations in time and place as the current production is set in Las Vegas in the 60s with all the bells and whistles of that turbulent era. Even if you are not a big fun of modern adaptation for traditional art forms, you will enjoy the time-tested tunes and passionate performance. Think about finding repeating patterns of history and savor the music in all its glory. The New York Times review for 2013 opening of this production called it “the Rat Pack “Rigoletto'”.

You can buy tickets here.

 

Venue: Met Opera, Lincoln Center, NY                                  Dates: April 19, April 22, April 27