Arts & Culture

NEW YORK — Jon Robin Baitz's family drama 'Other Desert Cities' opened Sunday at the Hudson Theatre. Its cast includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Lily Rabe and Joe Keery. The Washington Post called it a showcase of famous names, but said the Public Theater's 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' is the best show of the fall. The New York Stage Review gave four stars to both 'Other Desert Cities' and 'Benjamin Button.' Billy Crystal's one-man show '860,' about losing his home in the Palisades fire, also opened this week to strong reviews. Bill Irwin's adaptation of Moliere's 'The Imaginary Invalid' opened Thursday. A Broadway revival of 'A Few Good Men' opens Thursday, Oct. 29.

KUENZELSAU, Germany — David Chipperfield Architects has completed a freestanding pavilion at Museum Wuerth 2 in Kuenzelsau, Germany. It exists to hold one work: Anselm Kiefer's 'Schwarze Flocken' (Black Flakes, 2007). The canvas is about 11 meters tall and 7.1 meters wide. It is the largest Kiefer in the Wuerth Collection and had not been shown before because of its size. The 140-square-meter building opened to the public Oct. 13, after a reception attended by Kiefer, collector Reinhold Wuerth and Germany's culture minister, Wolfram Weimer. Kiefer worked with the architects on the proportions, openings and wall colors. Thick concrete, brick and clay-plaster walls hold the climate steady without active controls, and skylights let daylight in. The painting takes its title from a Paul Celan poem on the Holocaust. A Kiefer exhibition runs at Kunsthalle Wuerth in Schwaebisch Hall until Oct. 3, 2027.

MONTREAL — Princeton historian Beth Lew-Williams won the 2026 Cundill History Prize for John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law, published by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Jury chair Emily Greenwood announced the result at a Montreal gala on Oct. 23. The prize carries US$75,000. The other two finalists, Jonathan Cheng for Korean Messiah (Knopf) and Alexander Lee for The First Ghetto (Picador), each received $10,000. The jury said the book examines the contradictions of anti-Chinese laws from the 1850s to the 1920s and how Chinese migrants responded. It also credited her use of data methods on legal and bureaucratic records to recover voices missing from the historical record. McGill University administers the prize. Lew-Williams is also the author of The Chinese Must Go.

Lin King, who translated Yáng Shuāng-zǐ's Taiwan Travelogue into English, has said she has begun legal proceedings against an unnamed European publisher. In an Instagram statement, she said the publisher plans a translation made from her English text rather than the Mandarin original. This practice is known as relay translation. King holds sole copyright in the English version, and she says she sent repeated warnings that the plan was unlawful. She says the case is not about money and aims to challenge an industry habit of working from existing translations without permission. The book won the 2026 International Booker Prize and the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The Booker Foundation lists And Other Stories as the book's UK publisher. Details of the case and the publisher's identity have not been made public.

LOS ANGELES — Lionsgate announced a joint venture with SP Media, the company of producer and financier Steven Paul. An unnamed person familiar with the deal told TheWrap that SP Media will invest about $100 million. The money is meant to expand Lionsgate's content offering and to support its 3 Arts business and others. SP Media will also produce independent feature films that Lionsgate distributes. Lionsgate will own a majority of the venture and control it. Paul's credits include the 'Ghost Rider' films and the Lionsgate-distributed 'Rambo: Last Blood'. TheWrap reports that Paul has also been lobbying President Trump, together with Jon Voight, for a federal tax incentive for film production. The companies have not published the terms, and the investment figure rests on that single unnamed source.

ROME — Clio Barnard's 'I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning' won best film in the Progressive Cinema competition at the Rome Film Fest on Oct. 24. The Birmingham-set drama had earlier taken the audience prize at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight. Anthony Boyle shared best actor with Paolo Pierobon ('Brianza'). Tim Blake Nelson's 'The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd' won the jury grand prize. Rafiki Fariala won best director for 'Congo Boy'. In Mexico, the Morelia festival gave its top Ojo prize to Bruno Santamaría Razo's 'Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building'. Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's documentary 'Naza' won the festival's international audience award. In Latvia, the Riga festival gave its feature prize to Sunniva Eir Tangvik Kveum's 'Nipster'.

NEW YORK — Soprano Judith Blegen, who sang at the Metropolitan Opera for 21 seasons, has died at 85. The company announced the death on Oct. 24 and gave no date or cause. Blegen made her Met debut in 1970 as Papagena in Mozart's The Magic Flute. By OperaWire's count she sang 284 performances in 20 roles there. She was best known as Adina in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore opposite Luciano Pavarotti, including a widely seen 1981 telecast. Her most frequent part was Sophie in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, which she sang 37 times. She also recorded often with Leonard Bernstein. Blegen retired from the stage in 1991. She had married Raymond Gniewek, the Met's longtime concertmaster, and leaves a son, Tom Singher.

PARIS — Krystian Zimerman gave a recital at the Philharmonie de Paris on Oct. 17 that the audience did not expect, according to a French-language review in Bachtrack. Instead of a standard programme, the Polish pianist played many short pieces joined by logical relationships between keys. Critic Pierre Michel, writing on Oct. 19, said the pianist astonished the hall and called his tone luminous, at times almost dazzling. The review also credits an almost aristocratic composure in his phrasing, with purity and clarity as hallmarks. Zimerman is selective about his appearances and recordings, so a single Paris date draws attention. The review does not list the individual pieces played.

Two reports from classical-music site Slipped Disc show a divided picture for American orchestras this week. On Oct. 23 it reported that the Philadelphia Orchestra received another $10 million gift, part of roughly $300 million raised under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. On Oct. 22 it reported that an unnamed US orchestra agreed a five-year contract with a 24% pay increase. The Phoenix Symphony, however, will suspend operations after Nov. 1. The orchestra says revenue has risen more than 50% since 2024, but donations fell short of what it needs for day-to-day costs, and most gifts to its $60 million endowment campaign cannot be spent on operations. Slipped Disc also reports, citing artists and agents, that Phoenix paid some fees more than six months late. That claim is unconfirmed.