Around the Arts

Bloomington Early Music\nFestival this weekend\nThe Bloomington Early Music Festival kicks off its 10th year Friday with the performance of the seldom heard opera "Piramo E Tibse," produced by stage director Chía Patiño and music director Stanley Ritchie. This opera begins the 10-day festival celebrating early music and cross-cultural compositions.\nThe festival will include folk, opera and other musical performances. Highlights include "The Comic Intermezzo," "The Prince who Wanted a Bird" and "Publick Musick." In addition, there will be academic discussions about historic music and musical techniques. The Bloomington Early Music Festival is the only one of its kind in the Midwest and draws accomplished, established musicians and beginners trying their hands at the old works.\nA complete schedule of events and ticket information is available at www.blemf.org.\nNo clues in theft of renaissance figurine\nVIENNA, Austria -- Vienna's Art History Museum said Tuesday it would consider negotiating with whoever stole a 16th-century, gold-plated sculpture by Florentine master Benvenuto Cellini, a significant Italian Renaissance work valued at $57.5 million.\n"This was an attack against art, an attack against the museum and an attack against the world's cultural heritage," said museum director Wilfried Seipel, visibly shaken, his voice cracking at times.\nThieves broke into the museum before dawn Sunday, climbing up scaffolding on the building and smashing a second-floor window to seize the 10-inch object, known as the "saliera" or saltcellar, from its case.\nAn alarm went off Sunday at 3:55 a.m., but three security guards on duty failed to respond. The "catastrophic" theft was discovered by a cleaning lady four hours later, Seipel said.\nA $81,200 reward is being offered for information leading to the object's recovery, said the director, who also suggested the museum would be willing to talk to the thieves.\n"We are open to negotiate with anyone," he said.\nSeipel said the theft was "highly professional."\nThe ornately carved object, with gold, ebony and enamel, features a male figure holding a trident who represents the sea confronting a female figure representing the earth. Next to the male figure is a small vessel meant to hold salt.\nThe three guards were suspended pending an investigation, and Seipel offered Monday to step down from his post at the state-run museum. Austria's education and culture minister did not accept his resignation, saying responsibility for the theft rests with the guards.\nAt a news conference, Seipel said the guards believed Sunday's incident was a false alarm, which are common. There were four false alarms at the museum in the previous month.\nStill, he said, the guards' behavior "cannot be explained."\nDirector of Whitney Museum to resign\nNEW YORK -- Maxwell Anderson, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, will step down in the fall after five years in the post, citing differences with the board.\n"It has become clear in recent months that the board and I have a different sense of the Whitney's future, in both the scale of its ambitions and the balance of its programming," Anderson, 47, said in a statement Monday.\nThe decision to step down comes less than a month after the museum canceled plans to build a $200 million expansion by Rotterdam-based architect Rem Koolhaas.\nThe Whitney, known for temporary exhibitions such as its biennial survey of contemporary art, holds more than 13,000 works by more than 2,000 artists in its permanent collection.\nLeonard A. Lauder, chairman of the board, said in a statement that Anderson "brought a clear agenda ... to the Whitney, and made extraordinary improvements to our public profile and our internal operations."\nBut in an interview with The New York Times, Lauder added, "Max is a brilliant man of many talents. It is unfortunate that there wasn't a perfect match of his skills and ambitions and that of the Whitney's."\nAnderson, grandson of playwright Maxwell Anderson and former director of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, said he would stay on until the fall to give the board time to find a successor.\nThe museum is also searching for a deputy director. Willard Holmes, who held that post for nine years, resigned in March to become director of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Conn.\nLast August, Anderson secured a $200 million donation of works by Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and 20 other acclaimed postwar artists, significantly bolstering the Whitney's standing in the fields of abstract impressionism and pop art.\nDuring his tenure, Anderson also established acquisition committees in previously unsupported areas, such as film and video, architecture and new media.\nHe established the museum's first conservation department and increased public access to the collection, both on site and in touring exhibitions. He also helped bring a bill before Congress that qualifies artists for a fair-market tax deduction on donations of their own work.\nAnderson oversaw such monographic exhibits as Alice Neel, Wayne Thiebaud and Joan Mitchell as well as groundbreaking thematic shows, including "Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977" and "The Quilts of Gee's Bend." An upcoming July 3 exhibit, "The American Effect," will survey a global perception of the United States by artists who work outside the country.\nAfter he leaves the Whitney, Anderson will become a management adviser at the Chief Executive Leadership Institute at the Yale School of Management.\nROME -- Two Beatles fans have returned a diary they stole from Paul McCartney's London home 23 years ago.\nThe women -- Italian sisters who grabbed the book during a trip to London in 1980 -- showed up Monday at a hotel in Rome where McCartney was staying, said Geoff Baker, a spokesman for the musician.\nThey gave the book to an assistant, then waited an hour before the musician came out to meet with them, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported.\n"We have always loved the Beatles," one of the sisters, Paola De Fazi, told the newspaper. "Seeing Paul ... and talking to him was a dream."\nThe women, now in their 30s, had attended his concert Sunday outside the Colosseum.\nThe diary contains drawings and personal notes, along with references to meetings with the press, anniversaries and appointments with other members of the Beatles, according to Corriere della Sera and another newspaper, La Repubblica.\nOn March 12, 1970, McCartney drew two hearts and wrote "Happy Anniversary," to his late wife Linda. In another entry, dated April 10 of that year, he wrote: "Paul leaves Beatles."\nThe sisters said they hadn't planned to steal from him when they went to see his house. "There was some restructuring work going on, and the gate was open," the other sister, Francesca De Fazi, said. "We mustered up our courage and went inside."\nBesides the diary, the sisters took a pair of boots and sheet music, then fled. It was unknown what happened to the other items they stole.\nMcCartney played a benefit concert Saturday inside Rome's Colosseum, followed the next day by a free performance for an estimated 200,000 fans outside the ancient arena.