Leonardo’s London Blockbuster: The Movie
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: February 15, 2012
Viewing an art exhibition on the big screen of a movie theater is not my idea of an optimal art experience. But if, like me, you wish, or even half-wish, that you had traveled to London for the blockbuster exhibition devoted to Leonardo da Vinci that recently completed its three-month, sold-out run at the National Gallery, you may find yourself doing just that, and gratefully.
The chance comes Thursday night with “Leonardo Live,” a strangely hectic, occasionally informative and sometimes even insightful high-definition tour of the National Gallery exhibition, “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter in the Court of Milan.” It will have a one-night-only showing at nearly 500 movie theaters across the United States — and at many others around the world — a slightly staggered, sort-of-collective screening that is being billed as “a first-of-its-kind cinema event.”
To some extent it is. In a time when various performing-arts organizations — operas, orchestras, and ballet and theater companies — are increasingly expanding both access and revenue by beaming live high-definition video performances into movie houses around the world (and screening not-live performances too), “Leonardo Live” may the first instance of the format being applied to an art exhibition. Thankful as I am to have an inkling of what the Leonardo show was like, I can’t say that it is entirely a promising debut.
Directed by the documentary filmmaker Phil Grabsky, whose previous cultural subjects include Mozart and Beethoven, “Leonardo Live” is an 85-minute mixture of once-live coverage of the exhibition’s opening reception on Nov. 8 — punctuated by short interviews with a range of specialists and invited guests, from the curator of the show to an Anglican bishop — and segments about Leonardo’s life and the preparation for the exhibition. A somewhat shorter version was originally broadcast from the National Gallery to about 40 sold-out theaters across Britain as the reception was taking place.
in full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/arts/design/leonardo-live-puts-london-exhibition-on-screen.html?_r=1&hp