Arts and culture : Buzz

On display at The Jewish Museum in New York, an exhibit called "Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore" recently received a review from Howard Kissel at the Huffington Post.

From the source:

"Nowadays one can buy art and immediately lend it to a museum, with tax benefits. The Cone girls made no such moves. They bought these works to hang on their walls because they loved looking at them in their separate Baltimore apartments. Only with the death of the younger, Etta, in 1949 did the invaluable collection go to the Baltimore Museum. (Her sister predeceased her by 20 years.)

What is remarkable about the works in "Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters" is how fully formed the artists already are. Nothing about the astonishing Picasso watercolor "Two Roosters" suggests the work of an experimental 25-year-old -- it is entirely masterful."

Read the full article.

"The Raven," star John Cusack and director James McTeigue's fictional account of Baltimore's own Edgar Allan Poe, is one step closer to release with a new distribution deal announced last week.

Here's the story.

It's not often that home movies receive the recognition they deserve, but the co-founder of the Baltimore-based Center for Home Movies has launched a new exhibition for amateur filmmakers.

Here's the story.

Nokio, founder of late-90's chart-topping hip-hop group Dru Hill, reminisces about making the group's second album.

Here's the interview.

No one needs to explain to us why Maryland blue crabs are great, but it's always interesting to hear someone else's take. This time it's Chef John Shields, owner of Gertrude's, who shares his wisdom.

Here's an excerpt:

"So what sorts of foods does a chef personally like to eat? Shields answers that he's a big fan of seafood stews, packed with shrimp, muscles, clams and crabs. And if you ask him if he has any other favorites, he'll add (and energetically at that), 'Crabcakes!'"

Here's the story.

Get your "Seinfeld" memorabilia ready: Julia-Louis Dreyfus will be shooting her HBO series "Veep" in Baltimore. The city will stand-in for Washington, D.C.

Here's an excerpt:

"The pilot will star Julia-Louis Dreyfus, who will play a former senator-turned-vice president. The comedy will center on Dreyfus's character finding out that "being vice president of the United States is nothing like she expected and everything everyone warned her about."

Here's the article.

We're not sure who's getting the better part of this collaboration. Dan Deacon, who's been tapped to score the next Francis Ford Coppola film, or Coppola himself.

Here's an excerpt:

"Dan Deacon will be scoring Francis Ford Coppola's next movie, Twixt Now and Sunrise, due out this year and starring Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Ben Chaplin, and Elle Fanning."

Here's the item.

Once just an Eastertime favorite, in recent years Peeps, the chick-shaped marshmallow candies, have become a part of popular culture. More and more they're showing up in works of art. The latest artful addition is a two-story Christmas tree at the National Harbor near DC.

Here's an excerpt:

"Standing almost two stories high, the tree is decorated mostly with undulating waves of green Peeps in the shape of Christmas trees -- it's a tree made out of trees. Some chicks and bunnies are grouped to create a few well-placed ornaments on the tree, and the yellow star on top is created entirely from Peep chicks. And this is the cutest part: Presents underneath the tree are wrapped in ribbons made of marshmallow chicks and bunnies."

Check out the tree.

Another traveler shares his charmed experience during a trip to Bmore!

Here's an excerpt:

"Name an American city with a vibrant waterfront for locals and visitors alike, a wealth of cultural opportunities, great restaurants, and friendly people.

Charleston, SC? Austin, TX? San Francisco, CA?

Nope. Try Baltimore.

Baltimore?

Yeah, Baltimore. I just got back from a whirlwind weekend in the Charm City, and fell in love with the setting, the activities, the people, the food, just the feel of the place."

Read the entire post.

Many fans of the former HBO drama "The Wire" consider the program thought provoking. Students and a professor at Johns Hopkins University agree. In fact, they are devoting an entire class to the drama. The show will help students understand the problems that big cities face, according to an Associated Press story that appeared in the Washington Post.

The creator of the Baltimore-based crime drama, David Simon, has been a guest speaker in the class. You can read the rest of the story here.

Baltimore's "Ace of Cakes" and the Food Network are parting ways, but Baltimore baker and star of the show Duff Goldman tells the Associated Press that he has three other shows in development that will hopefully get picked up by the Food Network.

Goldman and his team at Charm City Cakes are known for creating elaborate sugar concoctions using a blowtorch, saw, and other instruments you might use to build a house rather than a cake. The show's 10th season will begin airing in January.

You can read the rest of the story, featured in the San Jose Mercury News, here.

Slowly but surely, word is getting out that Baltimore is more than a compendium of competing images from "The Wire" and John Waters' films. The most recent convert is a journalist from the Bay Area Reporter who's spreading the good news -- Baltimore's got charm!

Here's an excerpt:

"It may not seem like it at first, but Baltimore � known as "Charm City," among other nicknames � does indeed have some charm to it.

There's more to the Maryland city, settled in the early 17th century, than the scenery that filmmaker John Waters made famous in camp favorites like Pink Flamingos and Hairspray .

Among the brick row houses and restaurants serving crab cakes, visitors can also find an art museum where a giant pink poodle is the star, and a cafe that celebrates women in beehives and leopard print jackets."

Read the entire article here.

A model train running in circles along a track below the Christmas tree was once a holiday must. And while it has faded from favor in most homes, anyone interested in experiencing the joys of a model train holiday display could head down to D.C.

But why bother when there's a much more convenient and dazzling display at the B&O Railroad Museum?

Here's an excerpt:

"The B&O Railroad Museum is home to the oldest, most comprehensive collection of railroad artifacts in the Western Hemisphere and within its iconic Roundhouse, surrounded 360-degrees by true historic engines, some of the most interesting of model train layouts are found.

Baltimore is known for producing many jazz legends. One of them, Cab Calloway, is the subject of a new book called "Hi-De-Ho, the Life of Cab Calloway" by Alyn Shipton.

The Washington Post reviews the biography about the "Minnie the Moocher" singer who left Baltimore for Harlem in 1931. You can read the review here.

As part of a year-long 20th anniversary celebration, the Baltimore Contemporary Museum is exhibiting 20 portrait photos taken by Ben Gest.

The exhibit, titled "Ben Gest: Commissure," gets a favorable review by the Washington Post's Michael O'Sullivan.

"Stare long enough at one of the photographer's large-scale portraits and you just might get motion sickness," the Post writes. "The people and the environments they capture - though "capture" is not exactly the right word; everything and everyone in them squirms a little too much - seem skewed or warped at impossible, even vertiginous angles"

But the exhibit gets high praise. "Like the best art, Gest's images ask a question, without providing an answer: Who among us is comfortable - or even fully at home - in his or her own skin?" the Post writes.