Arts & Culture

ABU DHABI — Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will open on December 11. Abu Dhabi's culture department has described the building's design and said the opening programme will include an exhibition on the late Frank Gehry's work on the project. The show will use original sketches, hand-built early models and archive material. The museum has 11,600 square metres of interior galleries and 23,000 square metres of outdoor exhibition space. Its roofline is ten sculptural cones. Announced in 2006, construction began in 2011, was suspended for several years and resumed in 2019. Trade and design press report that the emirate's government owns the collection and has spent more than $1 billion on construction. Gehry died in December 2025. This is the first major building of his to open since then.

VICKSBURG, Miss. — Mississippi officials marked the start of a new Civil War visitor center and museum at Vicksburg National Military Park on Wednesday. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History puts the cost at $114 million. One broadcaster reported $144 million. Funding includes $56 million from the state, $15 million in private commitments, $3 million in federal money so far, and up to $15.5 million from the city and Warren County. The facility is about 60,000 square feet on nearly 13 acres next to the park. The state will own it, with the National Park Service as long-term tenant. Mississippi Today reported that completion is expected by 2030. The exhibits will cover Vicksburg from the prewar years through the siege, occupation and Reconstruction. The center replaces a visitor building from the 1960s that officials said was prone to flooding.

NEW YORK — Publishers Weekly released its Best Books of 2026 on Oct. 23. The list has a Top 10 plus category lists, 150 titles in all. Marlon James's The Disappearers, from Riverhead, is on the Top 10. The magazine praises its ability to sustain an idea across about 600 pages, and its portrait of homophobia in Jamaica. Ben Lerner's novel Transcription, from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is the cover pick. The Disappearers is also on the six-book Booker Prize shortlist, and the Booker Prize site says the winner will be named Nov. 9 at Old Billingsgate in London. The prize is worth £50,000. The shortlist also includes Elizabeth Strout (Viking) and Douglas Stuart (Picador). The book is also on the National Book Awards longlist, according to NPR. The U.S. winners are due in November.

NEW YORK — Publishers Weekly's bestseller list for the week of Oct. 26 shows how screen adaptations are driving sales. I'll Believe in Anything, by Heated Rivalry creator Jacob Tierney, is the first official tie-in to the TV series and ranks No. 2 in hardcover nonfiction. It has annotated scripts and a foreword by Rachel Reid, author of the source novels. Her six Game Changers books sold about 91,000 print copies in 2025 and more than 1 million so far in 2026, according to PW. Bonnie Garmus, whose Lessons in Chemistry has sold 1.9 million print copies, debuts at No. 5 in hardcover fiction with Peck & Peck. Two independent-press titles also charted. Josh Silver's Fruit Fly (Crooked Lane) has sold about 40,000 print copies, and A24 has optioned it for TV. Eli McCann's Stitched (Torrey House) has sold nearly 38,000.

NEW YORK — Alex Gibney's nearly four-hour documentary 'Musk' has disappeared from most U.S. screens. It opened Oct. 9 in four theaters and expanded to 472 a week later. Showbiz411, a newsletter by veteran columnist Roger Friedman, reports it was pulled from nearly all of them after one week. It notes Bleecker Street was sold in the same period to Outerlight Entertainment, which is backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The AV Club points to a plainer explanation: according to Box Office Mojo the film grossed under $1 million in two weeks and ranked 20th in its wide week. It also notes Elon Musk's open hostility to the project. Gibney is urging viewers to see it while they can. HBO Documentary Films holds the U.S. streaming rights.

LOS ANGELES — Laika's stop-motion fantasy 'Wildwood,' directed by Travis Knight, earned $4.2 million on its opening Friday and is heading for about $11 million for the weekend. That should be good for third place. The Hollywood Reporter says it holds a 100 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval rating and an A CinemaScore. It opened in about 2,900 theaters. The Numbers' model put the weekend slightly lower, at around $10.5 million. The studio's record opening is $17.3 million, for 'The Boxtrolls,' so 'Wildwood' will fall short of that. The film went out through event-cinema company Fathom rather than a major studio, which leaves its box-office future riding on word of mouth. Carey Mulligan, Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Jacob Tremblay lead the voice cast.

BOLZANO — The 66th Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition begins its preliminary stage as the Glocal Piano Festival. Its rules put the 120 selected pianists in a run of 'marathons' from Oct. 26 to Dec. 15. The venues on the competition's schedule are Florence (Nov. 8), Paris's Salle Cortot (Nov. 11), Shanghai, Miami, Tokyo, Dortmund, Vienna, Rome and Boston's New England Conservatory (Nov. 30). A jury follows the auditions online and will choose 26 pianists for the finals. The audience at each venue also votes to send one pianist through. The jury includes Lukas Geniušas, Sophie Pacini, Claire Desert and Mūza Rubackytė. Winners of first or second prize at competitions affiliated with the World Federation of International Music Competitions have until Oct. 31 to apply to skip ahead; up to three can be admitted. The finals run Aug. 25 to Sept. 5, 2027, in Bolzano.

LONDON — The Academy of St Martin in the Fields has completed its acquisition of the London Festival Orchestra, which owns The Warehouse in Waterloo. The Warehouse is one of London's best-known rehearsal and recording spaces. In a statement circulated on Oct. 23, the ensemble said the deal comes out of decades of close ties between the two groups. It gives the Academy its first permanent base and puts all its activities under one roof. It will own and run the studios. A commenter on Slipped Disc, which reported the news, hoped the venue would stay affordable for outside hire. Slipped Disc's own editorial view was that the move signals security at a time when British orchestras are nervous. The Academy's statement did not give a purchase price, and none was found in the reporting.

MEMPHIS — The Memphis Symphony Orchestra follows its Saturday Rigoletto with Orchestra Unplugged: The Planets on Friday, Oct. 30, at 7:30 p.m. at the Halloran Centre. Music Director Robert Moody conducts and hosts the program. The MSO's calendar also lists Home Alone in Concert on Nov. 28 and Handel's Messiah on Dec. 21 to 23 at three churches. The 2026-27 season is the orchestra's 75th. Moody, now in his 11th year, has said it will include the world premiere of a Requiem about U.S. forces in the Pacific from 1942 to 1975 and a tribute to Navy aviator Jesse L. Brown. Piano fans have two concerti ahead: Rachmaninoff's Third on Jan. 30 and 31, 2027, and Grieg's in May. Ticket pricing for the Halloran Centre program was not listed.