SEE
San Francisco, California
“Playing Around” displays toys designed by artists; toy-making classes also offered The San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design will offer the exhibition “Playing Around: Toys Designed by Artists” beginning Sept. 8. A reminder of the days before toys were mass-produced, the exhibition features 50 works culled from a larger collection owned by the Arkansas Arts Center, which, in the early 1970s, initiated an annual exhibition of such toys inspired by Alexander Calder’s circus figures of the 1920s and 1930s. The museum will also offer free toy-making and art classes. San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design, 550 Sutter St., 415-773-0303 or sfmcd.org.
STAY
New York, New York
Blue Moon Hotel, a renovated boutique located
in the Lower East Side, sports an old N.Y. feel
Artist and New Yorker Randy Settenbrino, whose great-grandfather built the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island, took over an old tenement building in the Lower East Side and has transformed it into a charming boutique hotel with 22 rooms, including six suites, all with celebrity names – such as Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey – that give a throwback feel to the place. The rooms are spacious and the upper floors offer spectacular views of the Williamsburg Bridge, Lower Manhattan and Old Orchard Street. Promotional rates begin at $275 per night. Blue Moon Hotel, 100 Orchard St., 212-533-9080 or bluemoon-nyc.com.
LISTEN
Costa Mesa, California
Segerstrom Concert Hall opens with premieres from Plácido Domingo, Philip Glass, Midori
The Orange County Performing Arts Center will celebrate the opening of the Renée & Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall Sept. 15 with the world premiere of William Bolcom’s “Canciones de Lorca” performed by Plácido Domingo, followed by the Sept. 16 world premiere of “The Passion of Ramakrishna,” by Philip Glass (performed by the Pacific Symphony and Pacific Chorale) with Beethoven’s violin concerto featuring Midori. The celebration continues for six weeks, including a three-week residency by the Kirov Orchestra, Opera and Ballet of the Mariinksy Theater of St. Petersburg, Russia. Renée & Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, 714-556-2787 or ocpac.org/countdown/index.html.
– Denver Post staff and wire reports
