Christie’s is the world’s leading art business with global auction sales in 2007 that totaled $6.3 billion. This marks the highest total in company and in art auction history. Founded in 1766 by James Christie, Christie’s conducted the greatest auctions of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, and today remains a popular showcase for the [...]

The Studio Museum in Harlem’s exhibit, Flow, is the first twenty-first century exhibition focusing on art by a new generation of international artists from Africa. These artists are uniquely conscious of, and responsive to, recent African history, global economics and the idiosyncratic culture of the new millennium. Presenting approximately seventy-five works in all media by [...]

In this Young Opera selection, meet Eric Downs, a recent New York City transplant already singing his first role at the Met Opera in the recent production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler. Find out what he loves about opera and watch him sing “Vi Ravviso” from Bellini’s La Sonnambula with Chun Wei Kang on piano.

Today there are more artists working in more genres, using more varieties of material, and moving among more geographic locations than ever before. By exploring the networks that exist among contemporary artists and the work they create, the Biennial characterizes the state of American art today. Many of the projects included in the 2008 Biennial [...]

Nicola Benedetti started playing the violin at four. It would have been easier if her parents were musical, but they’re not, but that’s OK since Nicola is musical, very musical. Born in Scotland of Italian heritage, Nicola was accepted in the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin School. Named BBC’s Young Musician of the Year in 2004, Benedetti [...]

Judith Jamison is artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York. She joined the company in 1965, and was its principal dancer for many years. Learn more about Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at their Web site.

Through 140 masterworks of paintings, woodblock prints, and books, Designed for Pleasure examines—in the context of Japan’s famous floating world—aesthetic, social, and commercial forces active in contemporary art today: fashion, celebrity, marketing, and popular culture. Ukiyo, literally, “floating world,” means something like “going with the flow.” In practice, this implied disporting oneself in the pleasure [...]

Acclaimed tenor Anthony Dean Griffey tackles the title role in Benjamin Britten’s haunting Peter Grimes. Under investigation for unthinkable transgressions, Grimes proclaims his innocence in the face of the unrelenting accusations of his fellow townspeople. Director John Doyle’s Tony Award-winner for his interpretation of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd on Broadway makes his Met debut answering the [...]

On the heels of her triumph in Jenufa, Finnish soprano Karita Mattila adds another landmark role to her Met repertory, the free-spirited beauty Manon Lescaut. Puccini’s early success tells the story of the magnetic attraction between two young lovers. Joined by acclaimed tenor Marcello Giordani and conducted by James Levine, Mattila finds the perfect vehicle [...]

The creation of “In The Heights” seems like a fantasy in itself. A young man from immigrant parents wants to write a musical about the people in his neighborhood. Unlike the fairy-tale version of this story, this was not an overnight sensation – it was seven years of work before the show even opened off [...]