C2 NAMES & FACES


Top 2010 rock tours The numbers are in and this


year’s highest-grossing tours belong to rock veteransBon Jovi, RogerWaters,AC/DCandU2, Pollstar reports. The concert tracker estimates


thatNewJersey’s ownBon Jovi came in first,making awhopping $201million in 80 national and international concerts this year. TheAustralian bandAC/DC


came in second, performing 40 showsworldwide,making $177 million in sales. Pink Floyd’s legendaryRogerWaters, 67, came in second toBon Jovi inNorth American concert sales, grossing $90million. Irish rock bandU2’s


international 360DegreeTour came in third,with $160.9 million.TheDaveMatthews Band took the third spot stateside,with $72.9million. Though these are staggering figures in spite of the sluggish


ENNIO LEANZA/KEYSTONE VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS ELECTRIC: Brian Johnson, left, and Angus Young, of bandAC/DC.


economy, overall concert sales fell about 10 percent fromlast year. The only number that actually went up: ticket prices.But concertgoers can look forward to extra pocket change in 2011; promoters reportedlywill lower ticket prices to increase sales.


Leguizamo set to ‘Klown’ Comedian John Leguizamo


(“MoulinRouge,” “Romeo+ Juliet”) is heading back to Broadwaywith the autobiographical “Ghetto Klown,” theAssociated Press reports. “GhettoKlown” is based on the


Hollywood beginnings of Leguizamo, 46. The one-man showwill be directed by Fisher Stevens and


will previewinChicago during February, running officially for 12 weeks atNewYorkCity’s Lyceum Theater inMarch. TheGoldenGlobe–nominated


comedianwon anEmmy for his 1998Broadwaymonologue, “Freak.”


Jackson ‘autopsy’ decried Executors of the estate of


Michael Jackson demanded Wednesday that theDiscovery Channel ditch plans to air a show that purports to reenact the autopsy of the dead pop star, the Associated Press reports. In an angry letter to the Silver


Spring-basedDiscovery Communications, the executors, JohnBranca and JohnMcClain, said the showwas “in shockingly bad taste” and insensitive to the feelings of the Jackson family. According to theAP, the letter


accused the company of being motivated by a “blind desire to


exploitMichael’s death,while cynically attempting to dupe the public into believing this show will have seriousmedical value.” Particularly “sickening” to the


executorswas an Internet ad for the show, “Michael Jackson’s Autopsy,” showing a sheet- covered body on a gurney; a hand extending out fromunder the sheetwears the late singer’s trademark glove. Thewire service’s after-hours


calls toDiscovery headquarters were not answered.


Von Trapp daughter dies Agathe von Trapp, fromthe


Austrian family that inspired the musical “The Sound ofMusic,” diedTuesday, theAssociated Press reports. The oldest of the seven von


Trapp children died at 97 in Baltimore fromheart complications. She ran and taught at the SacredHeart


Catholic parish kindergarten in Glyndon,Md. Her family’s escape from1930s


Nazi-occupiedAustria inspired Rodgers andHammerstein’s 1965 musical classic “The Sound of Music.” JulieAndrews, 75,was nominated for anAcademy Award for her portrayal of von Trapp’s stepmother,Maria, in the film.


End note Musician and composer


WyntonMarsalis,winner of the Pulitzer Prize and nineGrammys, visited theNewseumWednesday afternoon.The artistic director for Jazz at LincolnCenterwas casual,wearing jeans and a brown sweater, touring the museumwith friends fromout of town.Marsaliswill appear on “60 Minutes” this Sunday.


—GabrielaMelendezOlivera, fromWeb andwire reports


Live from Lincoln Center: Exciting new urban potential lincoln center from C1


it also got amore substantial one. The architects have lightened and enlivened the space, opened it up to the city and added touches of humor and eccentricity that sug- gest both a subtle aesthetic and a playful one. Some version ofwhat they have accomplished in New York needs to be tried at the Ken- nedyCenter,whichsharesmanyof the same architectural and design problems asLincolnCenter. But even more, what has been


done at Lincoln Center manifests an urban philosophy in stark con- trast with the central organizing urban idea inWashington, which is nowabout security, closure, for- tification and containment. The redesign of Lincoln Center isn’t just about remaking 1960smonu- mentalismforanewera; itoffersa compelling alternative to cities thatplace fear abovedynamism.


The pieces of the Lincoln Cen-


ter redesign have come together over thepast four years.Two years ago, a remake of the building that holds theeliteJuilliardSchooland Alice Tully Hall opened with a startling, new, window-clad, prowlike face onBroadway, one of twomajor thoroughfares thatcon- verge on the plaza. It was as if someonehadtakena clean,diago-


nal cut through the building, ex- tending the liveliness of the street into a new glass atrium. It was an early but dramatic gesture that respected the basic lines of Pietro Belluschi’s original white-box de- sign,while symbolically anticipat- ing the basic thrust ofwhatwas to come: careful but sweeping inter- ventions made in favor of public space, public access and public intelligibility of the sometimes forbidding architecture. Major changes to the


streetscapeandpublicaccesssoon followed. Lincoln Center, very much a product ofRobertMoses’s suburban-orientedurbanism,was builtonalargebaseor,asarchitect Liz Diller calls it, a “plinth.” The plinth contained parking, but it also raised the center both physi- cally and metaphorically above thecity,creatingahuge,monolith- ic blank wall on Amsterdam Ave- nue, the center’s back side.Worse, access to the plaza favored the automobile, including a taxi lane that brought traffic directly to the plaza level, bisecting a pedestrian zone. The taxi ramp is now subterra-


nean, the plaza extends out to the street, and cleanly designedwalk- ways with glass canopies offer some protection from the ele- ments and offer a symbolic wel- come. West 65th Street has also been narrowed and new attrac-


tions now front it, including ac- cess tothe center’snewrestaurant and amovie theater. It doesn’t yet have the gritty patina of a real urban street, but it feels reborn, claimed from underneath the hulking pedestrian bridge that once shadowedit.


These are all basic examples of


smart urbanism, and similar thinking could radically improve the experience of the Kennedy Center,which also rises above the cityandstandsapart fromit.But it was aneasier task, inNewYork, to reconnect existing streets and minimize traffic into the center’s walking zones. The Kennedy Cen- ter’s designtook car-centric, isola- tionist grandeur to an extreme thatwon’tbeeasytofix.According to a Kennedy Center spokeswom- an,plansforaplazaacrosstheI-66 feeder lanes remain on hold, de- pendent on substantial amounts of federalhighway funding. But the spirit of the Lincoln


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Center redesign could be applied to theKennedyCenter, evenwith- out a new plaza to connect it to Foggy Bottom. That spirit is best seen in the new restaurant, Lin- coln, which was constructed on the plaza north of the Metropoli- tanOpera,next toareflectingpool with a giant Henry Moore sculp- ture.Lincolnsitsunder adramati- cally tilted roof that seems to have risen, tectonically, from the hori- zontalplaneof theplaza; theangle and sharp edges of the structure echo the “slice” that defines the Juilliard and Alice Tully Hall building. Ontopof the restaurant,agrass


roof offers passersby a gently in- clined hillock on which to sit, stretch out, daydreamand cruise. It is a surreal space, a grassy patch of park thrusting out of the rigid geometry of the plaza. It offers views of the city that seem as if theywere invented onPhotoshop, and it creates a play zone in the middle of a plaza that often feels windswept and barren. It is an eccentric vision, an invitation to spontaneity and informality and the gentle chaos of urban life. Somehowthe lawyers never got at this idea, never sank it with fears of imaginarydangers. It feelsfresh and accidental, adolescent and fun. That kind of eccentricity could


EVER!


happilybe appliedto theKennedy Center, which is surrounded by sterile, empty plazas and access roads. It also stands in sharp con- trast to Washington thinking, where public space is viewed as a problem—howdoesonepolice it? —not an invitation. Security fears have led to major incursions on public space, loss of belovedvistas


BEFORE AFTER


LINCOLN CENTER DEVELOPMENT PROJECT/LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS


EZ SU


KLMNO


THURSDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2010


MARK BUSSELL/LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS


COLUMBUSAVENUE: Access to the plaza favored the automobile, including a taxi lane that brought traffic directly to the plaza level, bisecting a pedestrian zone. The taxi ramp is now subterranean.


SANDOR ACS/LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS


MARK BUSSELL/LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS


JUILLIARDSCHOOLANDALICE TULLY HALL: This remake offers a startling, new, window-clad, prowlike face on Broadway, one of two major thoroughfares that converge on the plaza.


LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS


MARK BUSSELL/LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS


NORTHPLAZA: Landscaping changes all serve to make it a better public space. It offers more places to sit, better shade—and theHenryMoore sculpture now feels closer and more accessible.


such as the West Terrace of the Capitol,andthedecommissioning of ceremonial stairways and front entrances (as at the Supreme Court). Public land,whichmightbe left


to the public to define and ani- mate, is taken away for unneces- sary symbolic purposes, such as the loss of playing fields and open grass that will result if the ill-ad- visedVietnamVeteransMemorial visitor center goes forward. Even where spaces remain open, bol- lards send a symbolic disinvita- tion, and rude security guards have become pervasive and en- demic.


The arts, throughout America, DOONESBURYFLASHBACKS by Garry Trudeau


remain blissfully unsecured. The bag check at Washington muse- ums is perhaps themost perfunc- toryofanyprogramtosecurepub- lic buildings in the city. At the Kennedy Center it is nonexistent most nights of the year. In a larger sense, the arts, like the architects at Lincoln Center, stress a set of values that are the opposite of the security mindset. The arts are about access, exposure, serendipi- ty andcommingling. Transparency and flow are the


architectural ideal for most arts institutions: The most striking features of the new Arena Stage facility on the Southwest water- front are its giant walls of glass and its flowing atriumthat ideally should allow visitors to pass


straight through the building. Even one thing criticized about the Lincoln Center redesign — changes to the landscaping of the north plaza by famed landscape architect Dan Kiley—all serve to make it a better public space. It offers more places to sit, better shade — and the Henry Moore sculpture, which sits in a some- what shrunken version of the old reflecting pool, now feels closer andmore accessible. It has been a remarkable evolu-


tion.Thearts,accordingtooutdat- ed stereotypes, are rule-bound andhierarchical, enamoredof im- posing facades of cold stone, and closed off fromthe rabble and hoi polloi. The striking thing about the changes that Diller Scofidio + Renfro havemade at LincolnCen- ter is that they coexist with an architectural style—the giant col- umns of Philip Johnson’s New York State Theater, the colossal arches ofWallace Harrison’sMet- ropolitan Opera — that defined those oldandworncliches. Rather than subvert or sabo-


tage or demolish the old monu- mentality, thearchitectshave sim- ply addedto it, a fewwry gestures, a wink, a gentle touch on the shoulder. And suddenly the stone campus isn’t just friendlier, it seems to embody anideal the very opposite of the worst and most debilitating tendencies of the oth- er great architectural engine to- day: the relentless drive to secure public space. It’snot just theKennedyCenter


that should take a lesson. The whole ofWashington,withits fear peddlers, rule givers, bag check- ers, body scanners and barking security guards, needs to take note.


kennicottp@washpost.com 6


ONWASHINGTONPOST.COMTo viewa photo gallery of the


changes to LincolnCenter, go to washingtonpost.com/style.


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