A panel of lectures on the work of leading Italian Mannerist Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572), by James Fenton, Elizabeth Cropper, Lucia Meoni, Deborah Parker, and Louis A.Waldman.

At left: Drawn from life, though inspired by a small Roman bronze, the Idolino (Museo Archeologico, Florence), this magnificent study is among the best published of Bronzino's drawings. The technique of subtle parallel hatching and cross-hatching, selectively blended for a soft sfumato effect on paper prepared with color, seems to emulate the surface of metal sculpture. The drawing was preparatory for the youth in the left foreground of The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua, the lunette fresco on the south wall of the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, which was the first of the walls to be painted. It is precisely datable, given that the inscription scratched on the marble door frame by the Brazen Serpent fresco in the chapel states: "On Tuesday on the 6th day of September [1541], the story of the pharaoh was begun; on the 30th day of March 1542, the story of pharaoh was finished."

Arts World Financial Center screens Sounds from the Black Box, South African artist Willima Kentridge’s most recent animation work and the latest in his long series of collaborations with South African composer Philip Miller.

A follow-up to and expansion of Kentridge and Miller's 9 Drawings for Projection project, Sounds from the Black Box combines the artist's  animations with scores by Miller, which is performed live by the New York City-based Ensemble Pi.

The screenings coincide with a major Kentridge exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (Feb 24–March 17) and a Kentridge-directed-and-designed production of Shostakovich’s The Nose at the Metropolitan Opera (March 5–25).

Based in Johannesburg , South Africa , William Kentridge began his "Drawings for Projections" series in 1989, introducing what would become his trademark technique of animating sequences of charcoal drawings that are rubbed out and sketched over on one piece of paper. He has since established himself as one of South Africa 's top artists, and his work has been exhibited in major institutions throughout the world.

Philip Miller is a South African composer and music producer who creates music and sound for television, video, live performance, and film, including director Philip Noyce's 2006 feature film "Catch a Fire." Ensemble Pi is a socially conscious new music group dedicated to performing the works of living and undiscovered composers.

2010 is the 75th edition of the Whitney Museum's signature survey of the latest in American art. Curated by Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari, this year's exhibition features 55 artists from across the country and includes well-established and emerging artists from all over the country, with works ranging from film and video to photography, paiting, sculpture, drawing, installation, performance, and architecture.

On the 5th floor of the Museum, the exhibition Collecting Biennals gathers works from the permanent collection by past biennal artists, looking at the way these previous exhibitions have formed the basis for the Whitney and the story it continues to tell about American art.

Entitled Tseng Kwong Chi: Body Painting with Bill T. Jones and  Keith Haring, this is an exhibition of photographs taken by the American artist Tseng Kwong Chi in 1983 in collaboration with the choreographer Bill T. Jones and the artist Keith Haring.

Shown in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of Tseng's and Haring's deaths, these large-format photographs document the spirit of interconnected creativity that pulsed throughout the East Village in the 1980's.

Tseng Kwong Chi (1950-1990) was born in Hong Kong and immigrated with his family to Vancouver, Canada as a teenager. He studied art in Paris before moving to New York in 1978. His work is included in numerous public collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Walker Museum of Art in Minneapolis, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2010, his photographs will be included in Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. and in Dreamlands at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France.

This exhibition is devoted to the extraordinary philosopher, statesman and teacher known as Confucius (551- 479 BCE ). Entitled Confucius: His Life and Legacy in Art focuses on the life, teachings and continuing influence of Confucius, who has become increasingly synonymous with Chinese culture.  Nearly 100 objects from the world of Confucius and his ennobled descendants are on view, including hanging scrolls, album leaves, bronze vessels, stone carvings, jade ceremonial implements, wood-block prints and textiles.  The works are on loan for the first time in the U.S. from the Shandong Provincial Museum in Jinan and the Confucius Museum in his hometown of Qufu. Confucius: His Life and Legacy in Art is the first exhibition in the U.S. to explore the culture of Confucius.  The show incorporates images and artifacts that were created to venerate the man himself, as well as the ideas associated with him, loosely called Confucianism.  A fully illustrated scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Confucius was born into humble circumstances in 551 BCE in Qufu, capital of the feudal state of Lu, which now forms part of the province of Shandong.  Although he held a series of minor offices in his home state and for a brief period served as minister of justice (with the responsibilities of a prime minister), he eventually became frustrated with conditions in Lu.  In middle age, Confucius left home to travel among the contending feudal states of North China, searching for an ideal ruler who would govern with benevolence and according to proper ritual.  After 14 years, he returned to Lu and from the age of 65, devoted himself to teaching and scholarship.  After his death at age 73, his most devoted disciples observed three years of mourning for him, as if for a father.  Confucius’s own house became a memorial shrine, the precursor to the great Confucius Temple in Qufu today.

Pithy remarks attributed to Confucius have been transmitted from one generation to the next, and his advice still resonates today. “Study as if you will never learn, as if you were afraid of losing what you wish to learn,” the great teacher once said.  He believed in the moral purpose of humanity and in the individual’s duty to strive to improve: “The only ones who do not change are sages and idiots.”  Confucius’s practical approach to moral cultivation and his reflections on the personal and social basis of ethics and politics are exemplified in such sayings as “Do not inflict on others what you yourself would not wish done to you,”  “Anyone who does not know the value of words will never understand men,” and “The full life seeks what is in itself; the empty life seeks what appears in others.”  The humanity of his ideas and their ability to adapt to a great variety of needs and contexts have made Confucianism an enduring force in the cultural heritage of China and the world. 

The exhibition is curated by Lu Wensheng, Director, Shandong Provincial Museum, and Julia K. Murray, Professor of Art History and East Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, under the directorship of Willow Hai Chang, Director, China Institute Gallery.

Exploring a cross section of art made during a period marked with revolution and socio-political tumult, this exhibition also embraces five interventions by a current generation of artists whose work reflects the concerns of 1969 and brings the exhibition into the present. This exhibition includes examples of painting, sculpture, photography, print, illustrated books, design, drawing, media, and film as well as a wealth of documents drawn from MoMA's archives. 

Diverse artistic practices, concerns, and themes are presented ranging from the minimalist sculpture of Sol LeWitt and Carl Andre, abstract painting and drawing of Helen Frankenthaler and Gego, to films by Walter de Maria and Michael Snow, and politically charged works of the Art Workers Coalition and Martha Rosler.

This exhibition includes a selection of around one hundred and fifty works by Xie Zhiliu (pronounced "shay jer-leo"), one of modern China's leading traditional artists and a preeminent connoisseur of painting and calligraphy.

Xie Zhiliu received a traditional Chinese artistic education, which combined the two disciplines of copying the work of earlier masters and drawing directly from life.

Xie Zhiliu was a native of Changzhou, a city with a strong tradition of bird-and-flower painting, a genre in which Xie excelled. Moving to Chongqing to escape the Japanese occupation in 1937, he became a close friend of a renowned painter Zhang Daqian (1899–1983), who introduced him to the Buddhist cave murals of the Silk Road oasis of Dunhuang. After the war, he became an advisor and preeminent connoisseur on painting and calligraphy for the Shanghai Museum as well as a professor of painting. Thanks to his access to the rich holdings of the museum, Xie expanded his style through the study of Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasty painting, a topic on which he published. Between 1983 and 1990 he led a team of scholars in evaluating the collections of China’s leading cultural institutions, which resulted in a twenty-four-volume illustrated index of more than seventy thousand paintings and calligraphies.

Verdi, Dvorak, Mascagni, Tchaikovsky, Leoncovallo

Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, baritone
National Philharmonic
Marco Armiliato, conductor

Beethoven Piano Sonatas:

Sonata in E Major, Opus 14, No. 1
Sonata in G Major, Opus 14, No. 2
Sonata in C Minor, Opus 13, “Pathétique”
Sonata in B flat Major, Opus 22
Sonata in E flat Major, Opus 81a, “Les adieux”

Till Fellner, piano

Ben Webster & Lester Young Centennial Concert featuring Jimmy Heath, Joe Lovano, Harry Allen, Jeb Patton, David Wong, Winard Harper.

Jimmy Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist,  composer and arranger.  Jimmy is the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers (Percy Heath/bass and Tootie Heath/drums), and is the father of Mtume.   He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis.
http://www.jimmyheath.com/

Joe Lovano is one of the most accomplished saxophonists in all of jazz. This Grammy nominated artist has recorded over twenty albums for the Blue Note label. 
http://www.joelovano.com/

Saxophonist Harry Allen has over thirty recordings to his name. Three of Harry's CDs have won Gold Disc Awards from Japan's Swing Journal Magazine, and his CD Tenors Anyone? won both the Gold Disc Award and the New Star Award.
http://www.harryallenjazz.com/

The first annual HSBC Jazz Festival features Spyro Gyra, Jonathan Butler, Al Jarreau, Christian Scott, Patti Austin, Tuck and Patti.

Jonathan Butler has led a life few could imagine. Born under the shadow of South African apartheid and raised in poverty, Butler while still in his teens, became the first non-white artist to be played on white mainstream radio and appear on national South African television. Nelson Mandela credits Butler's music as having inspired him during his long days of imprisonment. He has three decades of international acclaim and has topped the Billboard charts with Contemporary Jazz, R&B, and Gospel albums.

Twenty six year old, New Orleans native, Christian Scott is a GRAMMY nominated jazz trumpeter, composer and producer.

Native New Yorker Patti Austin made her professional debut at the Apollo Theater when she was 5 years old. Quincy Jones and Dinah Washington have proclaimed themselves her Godparents. She's had over twenty songs on the Billboard charts. She has sung duets with George Benson, Michael Jackson, Luther Vandross. In 2008, fifty-three years after getting her first record contract, Patti Austin was awarded her first Grammy, winning Best Jazz Vocal Album for Avant Gershwin at the 50th annual Grammy Awards. The award came for her ninth nomination in that category.

March 25, 2010   8:00pm (Spyro Gyra and Jonathan Butler)

March 27, 2010    8:00pm (Al Jarreau with Christian Scott)

March 28, 2010    7:30pm (Patti Austin with Tuck & Patti)

Verdi: Attila
Librettist: Temistocle Solera
Sung in Italian with Met Titles in English, German and Spanish

Riccardo Muti, conductor

Cast: 
Odabella: Violeta Urmana
Foresto: Ramón Vargas
Ezio: Carlos Alvarez
Attila: Ildar Abdrazakov

Production: Pierre Audi
Set and Costume Designers: Miuccia Prada, Herzog and de Meuron
Lighting Designer: Jean Kalman

Douglas Carter Beane: Mr. & Mrs. Fitch
Scott Ellis, director

According to the press release: Meet gossip columnists Mr. & Mrs. Fitch. When the social circuit no longer provides any scandalous news, they find that great celebrity can appear out of thin air. Tony Award nominee Douglas Carter Beane's wicked new comedy is a scathing look at who is in, who is out and who may not even exist at all.

Cast
John Lithgow, Jennifer Ehle

Previews begin 26 January 2010. Opening night 22 February 2010

Donald Margulies: Time Stands Still 
Daniel Sullivan, director

Cast:
Laura Linney, Alicia Silverstone, Eric Bogosian, Brian d'Arcy 

From the Geffen Playhouse press release for the world premiere:

"Time Stands Still focuses around a longtime couple and journalistic team – she a photographer, he a reporter – who return to New York from an extended stint in the war-torn Middle East. Sarah is a headstrong visionary who must negotiate re-entry into a domestic realm she no longer recognizes; James, a foreign correspondent whose chaotic profession threatens his personal life. Complicating Sarah and James’ readjustment to domestic life is the appearance of Sarah’s one-time mentor and editor Richard and his new, much younger, and 'very hot' girlfriend, Mandy"

Now in its first Broadway revival, South Pacific features  Kelli O'Hara (The Light in the Piazza) and baritone Paulo Szot in the leading roles with direction by Bartlett Sher (The Light in the Piazza and Awake and Sing).

Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Author, Tales of the South Pacific
James Michener

Cast:

Kelli O'Hara , Paulo Szot
Matthew Morrison , Danny Burstein , Loretta Ables Sayre , Sean Cullen , Victor Hawks , Luka Kain , Li Jun Li , Laurissa Romain , Skipp Sudduth , Noah Weisberg, Becca Ayers , Wendi Bergamini , Genson Blimline , Grady McLeod Bowman , Charlie Brady , Matt Caplan , Christian Carter , Helmar Augustus Cooper , Jeremy Davis , Margot De La Barre , Christian Delcroix , Laura Marie Duncan , Mike Evariste , Laura Griffith , Lisa Howard , Maryann Hu , Zachary James , Robert Lenzi , Garrett Long , Nick Mayo , George Merrick , William Michals , Kimber Monroe , Emily Morales , Darius Nichols , George Psomas , Andrew Samonsky , Jerold E. Solomon

Michael Longoria 
Christian Hoff - Tony Award Winner
Sebastian Arcelus
J Robert Spencer

Book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice
Music and Lyrics by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe
Directed by Des McAnuff
Choreography by Sergio Trujillo